Future: Tory Burch Fights for Aid to US Fashion Industry, Victoria's Secret Sycamore Sale Falters

© Tory Burch

March was a painful month for Tory Burch, writes Christina Binkley for Vogue Business. She paid the US Treasury $3 million in tariffs and duties for her overseas production shipments. A week later, she closed about 116 stores in the US and Canada, furloughing employees with no knowledge of when her stores can reopen.

Burch, the founder and chairman of her eponymous, privately held fashion company has also become a spokesperson for the retail and fashion industry, asking the Trump Administration why hotels and airlines are receiving US government support with nothing for retailers and fashion manufacturers, who are hit equally hard.

“A very large sector of people are not being represented, and do not have a voice, and that's fashion retail apparel,” Burch says. “There's a misperception that it is a light industry when in fact it’s the opposite. We're talking about millions and millions of jobs, and close to a trillion dollars to the GDP, from an economic standpoint.”

Five million people have jobs in the American fashion industry until COVID-19 arrived. Fashion contributes an estimated $4 trillion to annual gross domestic product, according to the Council of Fashion Designers of America. Read on at Vogue Business.

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