She co-founded Tory Burch, moved from New York to Hong Kong and then established her global luxury brand. We meet the entrepreneur who has life in the bag
Jacket and blouse by Gucci; Trousers by Burberry; Photographed by Jason Capobianco
It was the chance discovery of a trove of 1950s vintage brocades in a Kowloon warehouse that set Fiona Kotur Marin on the path to creating her luxury accessories brand. Inspired by the gorgeous fabrics, she designed a small run of zippered clutches to raise funds for a favourite charity. It was to be a one-off line—“I never intended it to become a brand”—but the bags were such a hit that W ran an article about them. Suddenly companies like Bergdorf Goodman came knocking and before she knew it, Fiona was designing a collection. Today, the imaginative Kotur range of clutches, minaudières and totes sells worldwide and has recently been joined by a line of shoes.
“My mother was very fashionable, quite avant garde,” says Fiona in tracing the roots of her own design aesthetic to her upbringing in Manhattan. Her English mother, the noted fashion illustrator, interior designer, painter and one-time Dior designer Sheila Camera Kotur, presided over a fabulously stylish household that revered beauty and creativity. Fiona remembers growing up in a sea of easels, art books, English paintings, Cowtan & Tout fabrics, Staffordshire figurines and beads, and being dragged to every exhibition, art opening and opera the city had to offer. “We went to everything, even auctions. Sometimes it would be so boring. But I’m actually incredibly grateful because it gave me a vocabulary in art and an invaluable understanding of how things go together.”
Top by Chloé; Jeans and jewellery Fiona’s own; Photographed by Jason Capobianco
Given her genes and the cultural feast of her childhood, Fiona was destined to have an artistic bent. “She was always creative,” recalls her younger sister, Alexandra Kotur, former style director of American Vogue and the author of several books on fashion. “My earliest childhood memories include watching her doodle the most intricate and detailed drawings on her napkin or on the margin of a book. And with a spoon, she’d sculpt her soft ice cream into an abstract form while I devoured mine.”
As the young designer matured, she undertook more formal training at the all-female Wellesley College in Massachusetts, graduating with a triple major in art history, studio art and English, and later studied at Yale and Parsons School of Design. Careers at Ralph Lauren and Old Navy in New York followed, the latter seven-year stint seeing her depart as vice-president of Old Navy’s children’s division.
Like the home she grew up in, Fiona’s Sheung Wan office is crammed with myriad artefacts of creativity, including framed sketches by her mother, mood boards, fabric swatches and art books. “I love Pinterest, but you can’t beat a good design book for inspiration,” she says, perched daintily on a sofa in a meeting room lined with shelves displaying a treasure trove of jewel-encrusted, candy-coloured mini clutches, intricately enamelled box clutches and bags emblazoned with eye-popping lettering such as “Lady Luck” and “Merde.” Talking through the inspirations behind her designs—whose celebrity fans include Tilda Swinton, Jessica Alba and Jennifer Lopez—Fiona gives an insight into the breadth of the visual references she stores in her magpie mind. “Inspiration comes from everywhere. It can be from a family member, a piece of art, from nature… When you’re inspired, that’s just the happiest moment.”
Jacket, shirt and trousers by Bottega Veneta; sandals by Jimmy Choo; ring Fiona’s own; Photographed by Jason Capobianco
Fiona looks chic in an elegant black silk shirt, cropped trousers and ballet flats. She has just come from home, a 1960s Western District tenement building she and her financier husband, Todd, bought as a dilapidated wreck in 2011 and transformed into a beautifully decorated, unusually spacious haven for themselves and their four boys—Rex, 15, James, 14, and twins George and Wyatt, 9. Fiona met Todd in 1998 at a family friend’s Christmas party in New York. Despite the slew of embarrassing tatler_stories her father told him about her, Todd asked Fiona out to dinner. “That was our first date—and the last time we dated anyone else,” she remembers. In 2002, by then married and with a two-year-old and an infant in tow, they flew to Hong Kong for Todd’s work and “to have an adventure as a young family.”
When she arrived in Hong Kong, Fiona had already been working for some time with Tory Burch, a close friend since their days as colleagues at Ralph Lauren, to conceptualise and co-found the Tory Burch label. She established an office in Hong Kong to co-ordinate the label’s sourcing and production in Mainland China. Says Tory of Fiona, “I remember sitting with her at my kitchen table when we were launching the company and brainstorming about things that were hard to find—graphic prints, a colourful tunic, a great tote… Her contributions were immeasurable. Fiona is an incredible example of someone who balances being a devoted mum, entrepreneur and designer all with impeccable style and grace. I have always admired her creativity and business savvy as well as her unique point of view.”
Fiona’s shirt and trousers by Ports 1961; Photographed by Jason Capobianco
The Tory Burch experience came in handy for the young entrepreneur in establishing her own brand in Hong Kong in 2002. She cleverly launched her initial line of minaudières, small, strapless clutches, in 2004 when the market was saturated with oversized totes and so-called It bags. Later she developed the signature Get Smart bag with a clasp on the outside for an iPhone, which earned wide acclaim—and a patent. Fiona embraces whimsy, too, alongside her classic designs, from glittery snow globes and gold-studded balls on chains, to Mahjong-tiled clutches and feather boa-clad bags, even packs of cards and balls of peonies. The designer has a rare knack for giving people what they never knew they wanted.
Excited by technology—“It’s so creative and it’s moving so quickly, I would love to 3D-print a bag one day”—Fiona is simultaneously very focused on craftsmanship. On a visit with her to Shenzhen workshops that make her bags, I am struck by how much of the process is done by hand. “We do things the long way, for sure, but I think people gravitate towards things that have a sense of touch, of humanity,” she says. A wide range of techniques, as varied as Chinese embroidery and the ancient art of cloisonné, are used to craft her bags, and Fiona is always on the hunt for new ones—which in turn often inspire a design.
“I love the process, interpreting techniques and materials,” she says, beckoning me over to look at a woman painting what appears to me to be an ugly pattern on the side of a vast pottery vase. “Imagine this technique on napkin rings, or kitchen tiles, or perhaps a set of plates for Tory’s birthday,” she enthuses. Given my dubious expression, she elaborates: “You have to get past what this looks like and imagine the technique in a great design on something beautiful.” Her creative vision and enthusiasm are infectious, and I soon find myself pointing out floor tiles that might make good earrings and brooches—“I love it!” Fiona exclaims. “We’ll have to start a jewellery collection.”
Top by Chloé; jeans and jewellery Fiona’s own; Photographed by Jason Capobianco
Fiona’s appreciation of craftsmanship and passion for great design rule her shopping habits. She’s a tenacious hunter and buys from the heart. A beautiful hand-beaded, feathered Lanvin dress she bought off the runway purely to admire—“It will never fit me but it’s amazing.” The perfect sold-out Céline silk shirt she spent years searching for online. The steel Well Tempered Chair by Ron Arad that took nearly 10 years of scouring auctions to find—it was delivered dented but she loved it so much she kept it anyway and calls it the Ill Tempered Chair. “The things I love are the things that have a story. Whether it’s the jewellery that Todd has given me or the pieces that take a lot of work to get, I appreciate what the intrinsic value of something is.” Other major passions are shoes—she admits owning 500 pairs—and chocolate, which she says is her Achilles’ heel. “I can’t buy it too often as I will literally lie in bed thinking about where the chocolate is.”
Such luxuries are understandably treasured in the whirlwind of skateboards, footballs and sports matches that accompanies life with four boys. “Their DNA is very sports oriented. They can’t sit still.” And while her second son, James, will occasionally help her sift through a Net-a-Porter order—“He’s the one I ask for wardrobe advice because he’ll tell me the truth. He’ll say things like, ‘Suck in your tummy,’ or ‘I really like that’”—Fiona finds most of her weekends dominated by playing, watching or talking sport. “It’s a total learning curve for me as I’m not competitive and just don’t really understand sports, but it’s great fun.”
Despite all the testosterone flying around, Fiona, the product of a female-dominated household and a women’s university, is most definitely a girl’s girl and radiates sisterly warmth. She is inspired by other women and consciously champions them. A regular fixture on the charity social scene, she sits on the executive committee of the Women of Hope Foundation, whose most recent event Kotur sponsored. “Women supporting each other is what we’re all about,” she says of her brand.
“Inspiration comes from everywhere. It can be from a family member, a piece of art, from nature… When you’re inspired, that’s just the happiest moment.”
Looking to the future, Fiona’s creative energy promises to deliver a growing range of luxury products. She designed a capsule home decor line for Shanghai Tang in 2008 and has ambitions to expand the Kotur aesthetic into homewares and interiors. And she is currently designing a jewellery collection for Swarovski. “I don’t think of the future as a particular product necessarily; I think of it evolving in collaborative projects,” she explains. “As much as I love the product, it’s about being inspired by something. That’s the root of happiness, certainly for me.” That and a good bar of chocolate.
Photographed by Jason Capobianco; Styling by Justine Lee; Hair by joey Li @ Alchemy by Justinpaul; Make-up by Megumi Sekine; Stylist's assistants: Becky Chan and Spencer Leung