Tory's Glory

In the New York luxury hotel that she calls home, designer Tory Burch takes a casual approach to splendor—ideal for three skateboarding sons and a life of entertaining.

- Hal Rubenstein

It all seems so stately when you first walk into designer Tory Burch’s New York apartment in the Pierre hotel. The marble-floored foyer flanked by wood-paneled walls and topped by a coffered ceiling leads to one plush salon after another, each anchored by tables laden with art books and vases of fragrant flowers. It’s shelter-magazine material except ... there’s a full drum kit in a corner of the expansive entryway. And near the Ming vases is a plexiglass table filled with curls of gold leaf. But those aren’t the only elements that take you by surprise.

In every room of the single-floor, Georgian-inspired home, there is something decidedly and wildly off, which is precisely what makes Burch’s 7,000-square-foot apartment so much fun to explore. “I always fantasized about Tracy Lord’s home in The Philadelphia Story—it was so serene and grand,” she says. “But it’s so much easier to live that way when you exist in a movie.”

For one thing, Katharine Hepburn’s character in the classic film didn’t run a skyrocketing fashion business built on a keen eye for lively prints and eclectic colors and a canny way of making T-shirts work for evening and sequins for daytime. The fictional role model also didn’t have three boys who live to skateboard—everywhere. Nor did she grow up mad for one particular color.