Fashion’s biggest night may be just days away, but Tory Burch Foundation’s annual Founders Breakfast has now established the Thursday before as the earliest morning in May. As is now tradition, hundreds of people dutifully set their alarms to ensure they arrived at The Pierre well in advance of the 7:45 a.m. call time. They were in good company. After all, few value punctuality as famously as this year’s Iconic Founder honoree: Anna Wintour.
Among those who turned up bright and early to celebrate the honorees of the 2026 Founders Breakfast was last year’s Iconic Founder recipient Martha Stewart. Guests, including Chloe Malle, Amanda Seyfried, Huma Abedin, Aerin Lauder, and Steven Kolb, took their seats at tables dressed with Tory Burch’s Jardin d’Été poppy and mustard flower linens and listened to the class of 2026’s stories of resilience, entrepreneurship, and motherhood. They included Viola Sutanto, founder of bags and accessories brand Maika; Andrea Seymour, who, as the co-founder and CEO of Springdale Custom Builders, is one of the few women leaders in the construction industry, and Pilar Guzman, a community advocate and founder of Half Moon Empanadas.
Burch also took to the stage to present the final Founder’s Award to Jennifer Pitt, granddaughter of Olive Ann Beech. The late co-founder of Beech Aircraft Corporation was a force: she topped the best-dressed lists of her time and toppled an attempted coup by the corporation’s all-male board in 1940. “Something tells me that Anna would have loved Olive Ann. She had a backbone of steel, was a fashion icon and a brilliant entrepreneur,” Burch said. “But not all entrepreneurs start companies. Some, like Anna, transform institutions.”
With that, Burch invited Wintour, her longtime friend, the chief content officer of Condé Nast, and Vogue’s global editorial director, to accept her award. The pair took their seats on stage for a conversation on how Wintour harnessed her early interest in fashion and journalism (sparked by her father’s editorship of London’s Evening Standard) to irrevocably shape the American fashion and magazine industries.
The conversation spanned mentoring and hiring wisdom—“Make sure they know what they’re talking about, and make sure that you like them,” Wintour said of the philosophy she inherited from her father—as well as what she’s learned from chairing the Met Gala, a position she inherited from Oscar de La Renta and fondly referred to as her “second full-time job” of 30 years.
As for honing her eye as an editor and talent scout, she said: “The secret of a great designer; it’s someone who has studied their craft, studied the business, understands what is happening underneath all the glamour, and is very, very focused on what they can say.”
Before the breakfast concluded, Wintour offered one final reflection on her own recent career evolution. “One of the great joys of my job is helping others learn their craft and become who they can be,” she said. “I feel so, so lucky that I am in this position now where I have more freedom to focus on my global role, travel more, and look at the bigger picture.”
When all was said and done, the entrepreneurial attendees dispersed from The Pierre with enough time to grab a coffee to go and make their awaiting 10 a.m. meetings, right on time.
