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campsite media.
From campsite media and Sony Music Entertainment,
this is Infamous and I'm Vanessa Gribbary-Audis.
I'm Gabe Sherman and this is part two
of a three-part series, Retail Revenge.
Where did we leave off in the story last time?
So, Chris Birch thought that Torrey was cute as a button
and they got married.
They had a few kids together,
but after some years their marriage started to sour.
So then what the hell happened?
So have you ever heard the one about the flower
and the gardener?
Might sound like a British period movie with Helen Mirren,
but it's actually a theory about relationships.
According to the theory, in every relationship,
one person is a flower and one person is the gardener.
That means one person's a caretaker
who's carefully tending to the flower's needs.
And the other person is just a beautiful rose
that's blooming, just the eye-catching center of attention.
It's actually quite true when you start looking at it.
And it means that in terms of prison Torrey Birch,
there was obviously a problem
because they both seem to be flowers.
She's this cool girl who everybody wants to be like.
And then Chris is brash and buccaneering.
He's like a bright yellow snap dragon.
These two flowers are very different.
They have very different needs and they behave differently.
And that proved to be true of Torrey and Chris
when I began my reporting.
Torrey Birch, to me, is like one of the like unknowable characters
of New York City.
That's Jessica Pressler.
She wrote a big piece about the Birches for New York Magazine.
But you might be more familiar with her Hollywood stories.
If you saw the J-Lo movie Hustlers
or the Anna Delvey series inventing Anna on Netflix,
you know something about Jessica Pressler
because her articles inspired both of them.
Hi, Anna.
I just had some questions.
I have a question.
What's you wearing? You look tall.
I'm Jessica Pressler and I wrote a story about Torrey Birch
and her ex-husband, Chris Birch.
So Jessica set out to report on the Birches.
So I didn't speak to Torrey
or I didn't participate in this story.
But the imicers were sent from the land of Torrey Birch.
I love the sweaters and new shape for us.
You can layer it. What a fun way to just tie in a whole outfit quickly.
She's like a perfectly put together outfit, right?
She was just this like kind of glossy, like lacquered human being.
And he was kind of just like Linus with like lint trailing off of him a little bit.
He's kind of like a little bit absent-minded, I think.
Or maybe it was that he was wearing his shoes on the wrong feet.
There's something about Torrey Birch that's so frustrating
in the way that Meghan Markle is frustrating,
where it's like every single statement is turned to be the exact perfect messaging machine.
But if Torrey is like Meghan Markle,
does that mean that Chris is sort of Prince Harry?
I don't even know if the guy drinks,
but there's just something a little last guy at the bar about him.
A little Jimmy Buffett.
Here's Michael Schineresen again,
who wrote about Torrey for Vanity Fair.
When he sat down, he would talk to you about sort of personal things.
It was that phrase TMI, you know, too much information.
In other words, while Torrey was cool, polished, and always put together,
Chris was unrefined.
The universal truth is very few products are meant for men.
Don't waste your time.
Most products are meant for women,
because they want to be noticed and they want to be told they're pretty.
Women just want to be told they're pretty.
I mean, this is not something Torrey would ever say.
At least not out loud.
Now, we don't know a ton of the details of their divorce
straight from the horse's mouth,
but there's something in here about the way they were so different
that is the real problem.
More after the break.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I don't know what's wrong with this, but it's not the right thing.
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C'est L'Oeze.
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The set ear.
Hi I'm Jay Catlstein, author of Tokyo Vice.
I've been covering Japan's criminal underworld for 30 years, and I've seen more people disappear
than I'd care to.
Including my old accountant, who as it turns out was getting up to a lot more than taxes.
My co-hosts Shoko Planbeck and I are tracking him down, and along the way, we're exploring
what's really happening with Japan's missing people.
We call them Joe Hatsusha, or The Evaporated.
From campsite media and Sony Music Entertainment, The Evaporated, Season 1, Gone with the Gods,
is available now.
Subscribe on Apple Podcast to binge all episodes or listen weekly wherever you get your podcast.
You're listening to infamous from campsite media.
Whoever they really were under the surface, it just seems like Chris and Tory had different
values, especially when it came to the company.
The fashion label was about accessible luxury.
Tory wanted to put the emphasis on the luxury part, but it seems like Chris didn't really
care about luxury, or even quality, fashion.
And remember, they're not just exes, they're tied together as business partners.
They're like, Siamese twins.
So in 2006, professionally, Tory is having a fantastic year.
Hard at work, getting ready for her high profile runway show during New York's upcoming fashion
week.
Her clothes are flying off the shelves, she's still a social darling, she's making those
regular appearances at New York's Society Gala's, but behind the velvet curtains, she
and Chris are bumping heads, and there's a meeting at Tory Burch's offices in Manhattan.
From what I read, Chris is in a conference room with a bunch of Tory Burch execs, and
Tory herself could be perhaps sitting at the head of the table.
She's got that aquiline profile, her prim smile.
Perhaps she has her honey blonde hair tucked behind an ear.
Her tanned arms folded across her chest.
She, Chris's, blue eyes are twinkling.
He's got a treat to show everyone in this office.
So he pulls out a shoe, and it looks exactly like the best-selling Riva Ballet flat.
It has that slim sole, the round toe, the big silver dollar logo on the top.
But as Tory looks closer, perhaps she realizes something.
It's cheap.
And there's Chris talking up the shoe in his blustering way.
But this shoe isn't leather.
It's plastic.
No wonder it was so much cheaper.
The Tory Burch team may be indignant.
This brand stands for affordable luxury, but they put equal emphasis on both words.
Tory Burch is not going to sell cheap plastic shoes.
If there's product out there with my name on it, it's me, so I want it to be good.
We're feeling different.
Too different.
The marriage can't last.
She's filing for divorce.
Chris should now step aside.
It doesn't give you the right to control how for the rest of your life.
Tory is not happy.
Oh, it was incredibly hard.
We have six children together that we love.
And then, of course, going through publicly was not fun.
Now, wasps like to be private.
They only want to be in the paper when they're born, when their marriage is announced, and
when they die.
So the public attention around the divorce is devastating for Tory.
Tory and Chris do not speak for months.
She stays at the Pierre Hotel.
He moves to another ritzy, uvary side hotel called the Carlisle.
But then, Chris has a health scare that leaves him with partial use of an arm for months.
And gradually, the two start to talk on the phone together.
We have six kids that we love, and at the end of the day, that's what we both think
about.
They also keep things civil, obviously, for the sake of the family business.
Chris still has a 28% stake in Tory Burch and a seat on the board.
Tory doesn't have the cash to buy out this very large stake, and Chris doesn't want to
be in any business, one plus one equals 100.
In 2008, Chris signs a management deal with Tory Burch that pays him a couple million dollars
a year.
And as part of that deal, he says he consults on branding and sourcing.
I went to the factory on an ongoing basis.
I ran the business.
Okay, for the first, a long time.
Chris flies repeatedly to Asia to meet with suppliers, or at least says he does.
So I, Chris, look, you gotta understand, Troy did not come out of the business background.
She came out of a marketing, PR background.
She came out of the business background.
She's attained business skills and it's gotten older and more experienced.
Yeah, she definitely attained some skills, because she even survives the 2008 financial
crisis and the brand just keeps growing.
The line is so popular that Tory even makes a cameo on the prep bible of the time.
Gossip Girl.
Thank you so much for seeing me on short notice.
He came highly recommended by Anna Winter.
I was happy to make the time.
Tory Burch had made it, but things were about to take a turn.
That's after the break.
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He is Ronald Pella, a legendary combat.
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Remember when, at the beginning of the pandemic, President Donald Trump suggested disinfectant
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It just seemed nuts.
Like no one would do that, right?
Turns out, in the dark corners of the internet, a radical group made a fortune doing just that.
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From Neon Hum, Sony Music Entertainment and Bloomberg.
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podcasts.
This is infamous, from campside media.
So let's skip forward a bit.
It's 2009.
The ink has dried on the divorce papers, and even though he's only a consultant, Crystal
thinks he has a silver bullet for Tori's worldwide domination.
What is that silver bullet?
It's China.
It's cheap stuff.
That's what worked for Chris's sweater company, those cheap sweaters from Asia that he turned
a profit on quickly.
And actually, when I went to visit Chris in Southampton, I remember him pointing out that
all the nice waspie furniture he had in there, like the good looking dressers and impressive
mantel pieces and striped this or that, it was all made in China.
That's what he said.
It wasn't from a Rockefeller estate sale.
He had just made it in China, had it shipped over.
Anyway, Chris doesn't understand why Tori doesn't want to make a lower priced brand
in China of her own stuff.
This is where the money is.
She's leaving so much cash on the table.
It seems like it's just deeply annoying to him.
What I want to know is Tori wants us to come together.
And in April 2009, in an email to Top Exacts, Chris writes that Tori Birch needs to offer
items at lower price points and it needs to become a mass market brand.
He even brings up the idea of launching a cheaper line at board meetings, which is sort
of inappropriate corporate etiquette.
But like the plastic riva flat he made, Tori Birch and her management team brush him off.
And that's when Chris has a lightbulb moment.
It's time for him to go.
If he can't do a cheaper version of Tori Birch at Tori Birch, perhaps he's going to do it
on his own.
It's full of color.
It's gorgeous, puribilis.
It's what Cal board is you like.
Right.
In 2012, Chris launches his own clothing and home goods store, the name of his boutique,
C Wonder.
And Jessica Pressler is there for the launch.
In my mind, he was wearing like a smoking jacket, but really it was probably just like
a blazer or something like that.
Solange Knowles, Beyonce's sister is spinning on the decks and Chris gives her a grand tour.
There's a black and gold lacquer table that has red and orange leather handbags.
There's a geometric green carpet covering the floor.
In another corner, she sees an ivory round table laden with pillar candles, blue glassware.
Yes, C Wonder was kind of like wasp and porium of delights.
They had, you know, the sweater sets and the brightly colored clothing, the heart-shaped
waffle maker, like phone charging station that was shaped like a pig.
There were all of these kind of delightful things that a certain person might find delightful
around the store.
They had a lot of products.
And immediately, Jessica Pressler noticed something.
Well, the C Wonder logo looked a lot like the Tory Burch logo, except that it was the
C.
And it was the Tory Burch.
She has these two signature colors, that kind of orange, which she calls marmalade and
this lime color green, which they call peridot for dual.
The Tory Burch logo was marmalade and the C Wonder logo was a peridot.
It was that lime green color.
As with Tory Burch, the C Wonder logo was everywhere.
It was on shoe buckles.
It was on buttons.
It was on leather clogs.
People were noticing this.
Here's CBS this morning with Gayle King.
Christopher Burch, welcome.
It's good to have you here.
Listen, you know, people could say when they look at the C Wonder Brent, looks like he's
ripping off Tory Burch into that, you say?
Yes, the same ex-husband who helped her start Tory Burch now appeared to be selling clothes
that were a carbon copy of the very things that made Tory famous.
The thing is, you can do this in fashion.
It's a weird quirk of American law.
You can't copy a few bars of music in this country.
That's why there are always these big lawsuits between stars and composers who feel like they've
knocked off their songs.
But you can totally copy any sort of fashion design you want, and US copyright law doesn't
have anything to say about it.
We didn't have big fashion houses until relatively recently.
Like remember how I said Tory was perhaps the most famous American female designer?
Most high-end designers that are popular here are European, Chanel, Prada.
And look, a lot of them involve very complicated fashion families.
The Versace, the Prada's, or Father, Son, and House of Gucci.
I have never heard of a fashion family where one spouse is accused of copying another spouse.
It's like, and I have absolutely no basis to say this in fact, this is just a metaphor.
It's sort of like robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Because Chris is still invested in Tory's company.
So what does Chris have to say for himself about all this?
Well, that's the next episode of Infamous.
They were livid about Team Wonder, and it was unequivocal.
New York's nasty $2 billion war of the X's just gotten nastier.
Infamous is executive produced, created, and hosted by Gabriel Sherman and me, Vanessa
Grigory-Oddis.
Not only Robomhead wrote and reported this episode, our managing producer and editor
is Shoshish Malavitz.
Heather Shrarring and I edited this episode and Grace Herriman, Garrett Graham, Rajiv
Gola, and Lily Houston Smith produced.
David DeBrogle's sound design of the episode ended was recorded by Ewan Lai Trumuen.
Some of this reporting appeared in Vanity Fair magazine.
Thank you so much.
See you next week.
Bye.
♪ ♪ ♪
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