“I haven’t told my mother yet,” Tory Burch said Sunday afternoon of bringing back the shoe that helped put her brand on the map in 2006, with 300,000 pairs sold in the first two years.
The Reva ballet flat — named after her mom whose colorful style filled the family’s Philadelphia Main Line home — is back, with a slightly wider, more rounded toe and new cutout logo hardware. And it comes as a mule as well as a flat.
It’s not the only news to come out of Burch’s spring 2025 collection, shown Monday night in Brooklyn at the Diamond Sugar Refinery, designed to look like a vintage-y green tiled swimming pool. The designer also introduced the Pierced bag, expanding on her hit Pierced shoe group. “I’ve been working on it two years,” she said.
Debuted in 2023, Burch’s Pierced mules, which made Lyst’s top-10 list of hottest products alongside brands like Miu Miu and Loewe, became a symbol of the brand’s new, more modern and sophisticated aesthetic, and its resonance with younger customers.
The Pierced bag is great-looking without any logos or branding — a sleek, flat oval shape like a futuristic hobo, made of unlined leather that’s super light and soft, with a single oversized gold ring adornment at the base.
“These are kind of amazing, because they come off,” she said, unfastening the sculptural ring. “I was thinking it would be so cool if you could change it out, because you know how annoying it is when you want silver hardware?”
It’s just the kind of functional detail Burch aims to bring to clothing, too. Case in point: the light metal wire she designed into skirts to fold and bend around the curves, as seen on the uber sexy black fringe jacquard skirt, and cream second-skin zip-front quilted silk-cotton sleeveless crop top previewed for WWD.
“It’s all about movement and form,” she said of the spring 2025 collection, which touched on several of the season’s emerging trends, including texture and sportif.
She nodded to martial arts in chic sharp-shouldered wrap blazers, and beautiful scarf-y dresses with side ties and a waist cutout, paired with the new twisted pump with a sculptural heel for the office siren.
Sequined nylon swimsuits as bodysuits, shrunken polos, curve-hugging ribbed knits, and gorgeous fluid pleated silk jersey skirts and dresses also proved what any Paris Olympics watcher knows — sporty is sexy. And comfy doesn’t have to be sloppy — check Burch’s slouchy-cool featherweight washed suede drawstring pants, worn with a red-and-cream color-blocked sweater.
On the business front, Burch continues to elevate in her collections, and customers will notice prices have inched up into the $2,000s for special pieces, such as an elegant black and brown chenille jacquard statement coat with a repeating swimmer pattern abstracted to the point of resembling animal stripes.
It’s a dash of weird, something Burch has always loved, she said, but that’s become more recognizable in recent years as she’s rolled out Jell-O mold patterned sweaters, galactic-looking hoop dresses, and the Walter Schels black-and-white cat’s meow shirts that launched a craze, a spinoff capsule collection and series of global pop-up shops, including one now at the Mercer Street store in New York.
“J.D. Vance helped,” Burch deadpanned of how the collection struck gold after the U.S. Republican vice presidential nominee struck a nerve with his “cat lady” insult.
“It’s about how we make it weird but really beautiful,” Burch said, sharing her latest coup — a custom black-and-white toile with scenes of Martians and witches. Ha! There are also super-light gouache metal dangling Martian earrings, and beaded purses, inspired by a vintage bag in her collection, with Japanese koi motifs and extra-long silk fringe.
She’s clearly having fun delighting her customer, but always with wearability in mind: “I want things to be off but I want them to work.”
