A House in Paris

Tory Burch has spent 20 years at the helm of her company. Now a new chapter—and a new home—are opening up.

- Chloe Schama

WELL FRAMED In the living room of Tory Burch and Pierre-Yves Roussel's Parisian home, a painting by the 17th-century Dutch artist Dirck Wijntrack hangs next to a self-portrait from Françoise Gilot (1921). Sittings Editor: Tabitha Simmons.

“I’m not there yet,” says Tory Burch, as a model walks into a conference room wearing a satin jacket in an athletic, boxy shape, with leather twine threaded through eyelets around the collar and hood. On one side of her sits Pookie Burch, associate creative director—and Burch’s stepdaughter—and on the other Brian Molloy, a stylist who has worked with Burch since 2020, just after she took a purely creative role at the company in 2019, relinquishing many of her CEO duties to her husband, Pierre-Yves Roussel.

The satin of the jacket is maybe a little too “maternal evening,” says Pookie, bordering on something heavy like brocade, but she’s sold on the unusual lacing. Burch, not so much, it seems.

The model leaves to change, and Burch has an assistant pull a 19th-century dinner jacket from her archives that she wants her team to study: “It’s oddly relevant in terms of detail.” There is a lot of this playful plumbing of the past in a Tory Burch meeting, a lot of challenging of those around her, and an expectation that they will challenge her too. The model returns, the pants gathered at her sacrum with a clip. "You look a little like Oliver Twist," Burch says, not unkindly. The model smiles.