What do you think of when you think of Tory Burch? Chances are, you’re picturing the black leather ballet flats with the oversized logo that defined early 2000s fashion. Tory Burch’s signature leather is not rugged, as used in a motorcycle jacket, but rather a cheery and optimistic take on the material. And that perspective formed the basis of the latest Tory Burch fragrance, Sublime, which launched on Monday.
“We wanted brightness. We wanted optimism. We wanted empowerment. We wanted energy,” said Givaudan master perfumer Rodrigo-Flores Roux, who, along with fellow Givaudan perfumer Christine Hassan spent the last two years working on Tory Burch Sublime. “It was important you thought about leather and not suede. And I thought about the shine.”
Hassan and Flores-Roux built Sublime around a fresh take on leather, and went with an art deco-inspired architectural bottle to match. The new campaign for the fragrance stars Kendall Jenner and was photographed by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott.
“For me, it was just about creating an extraordinary, interesting fragrance. My approach to beauty mirrors my design philosophy: I’m interested in tension and contrast, reimagined classics, and building confidence. I want women to feel powerful above anything else,” Tory Burch told Glossy.
For Hassan and Flores-Roux, leather was the answer to Burch’s desire for an empowering, fresh scent.
“We went down this leather rabbit hole and came up with this idea of a tethered leather — so, a new structure where you would have leather at all points of the fragrance: in the top notes, in the heart and in the base,” said Hassan, who also worked on the 2022 Tory Burch scent Electric Sky. “The ivy combination with the leather was almost our take on the classic combination of violet leaf and leather. But this has a new, modern, more fresh approach to it.”
Tory Burch, the eponymous fashion house launched by Tory Burch in 2004, first moved into fragrance with Estée Lauder in 2013 before selling the brand’s beauty license to Shiseido in 2019. Since then, the Tory Burch line has expanded its fragrance offerings with launches like the Middle East-exclusive Essence of Dreams line, released earlier this year. Now, Tory Burch debuts Sublime as the company as a whole has been experiencing a broader renaissance.
2019 marked a shift for the Tory Burch company beyond transferring its beauty license. The same year, its founder stepped down from her role as CEO to focus on designing, which proved to be a successful strategy. The brand found another hit leather shoe with the Pierced Mules that launched last fall and quickly found their way into many fashion editor wardrobes. That year, revenues reportedly approached $2 billion, marking the company’s highest earning year in its 20-year history. Following that success, Tory Burch has reportedly been contemplating an IPO, but the designer remains quiet on the possibility.
IPO or not, Tory Burch isn’t the only fashion house to bank further on the ever-growing fragrance market. Numerous fashion houses, from Fendi to Rabanne have expanded their fragrance lines in recent months. But many of those new perfume launches have gone for exclusivity rather than availability, with prices trending upward of $300 and distribution limited to proprietary stores.
Tory Burch Sublime, meanwhile, sticks to the traditional model of designer perfumes with more accessible pricing and distribution. The scent is available at Ulta in the U.S. as well as Tory Burch’s stores and e-commerce platform, with prices ranging from $35-$155 a bottle. Additional global launches will come in the fall.
Even with niche and offbeat fragrances trending in recent months, Flores-Roux and Hassan believe there is room for innovative scents at the mass level. Sublime is not the sweet gourmand style that has been taking over mass perfumery in recent years — instead, it’s somewhat challenging and sophisticated with its inclusion of vetiver and rose.
But that doesn’t mean it won’t be commercially successful. In their day, those signature leather ballet flats pushed the boundary with their oversized metal emblem, before their popularity made the style mainstream.
“When you started seeing those shoes with a big, big, big Tory Burch logo, they were odd. And people took a liking to them,” said Flores-Roux. “This is reflective of that hugely successful, commercially successful brand and image.”
