Tory Burch staging her Fall 2025 fashion show, an ode to "twisted American sportswear," at New York City's Museum of Modern Art felt like "serendipity" to Saturday Night Live star Chloe Fineman. Explicitly, she tells me after just after the show, because Fineman's mother, Ellen Gunn, scored an extra invite, and she's one of many painters in the family. Sitting across the runway from one another in coordinating black Tory pumps after an afternoon of primping with hairstylist Takuya Yamaguchi and makeup artist Marc Reagan at The Fifth Avenue Hotel was a "delight"—the kind you can only share when you're also on first-name basis with one of the New York Fashion Week calendar's most beloved designers.
But the expansive collection's debut on a night at the museum came with another accidental source of joy. The MoMA is also a few short blocks away from Rockefeller Center, where Fineman spends most weeks writing, rehearsing, and performing on SNL. Taking in the runway while wearing a Spring/Summer 2025 look styled by Yael Quint, Fineman saw pieces she could wear to Studio 8H when they finally hit the market this fall.
"It was like beyond divine, but I felt like it was a very working girl collection, which was exciting," she says. "You want to be able to wear stuff you can actually, like, walk to work in." She then acts out pointing at pieces as they came down the Tory Burch runway and mentally adding them to her shopping cart: "I was like shoes, one, blazer one, leopard coat, one. Every belt down the runway, I was like, I need it. It's like a weirder version of things I already have."
"Weird" is a word that comes up a lot in our quick conversation, but it's important. In fact, it's almost an essential quality for Fineman's current work wardrobe. While she considers her approach to workwear fairly classic, she doesn't want it to be basic.
"I think that there was like a weird thing that happened in the last few years at SNL, maybe not so much like other cast members, but me and all the producer girls [realized we] were all like in...business lady fashion," she says. "I was like, it's weird to do a comedy job when I'm always in a blazer!" So she started looking out with pieces that deviate from the writer-producer-comedian mold in the right kind of "weird" way. Tory Burch is one of the places she's found them.
On the other side of her front-row-ready style evolution, Fineman has found outfits that break the mold: a seafoam green, asymmetrically ruched Tory Burch skirt here, a snatched dress from the Mugler archives there. "I think I feel rebellious at work by kind of being chic and glamorous," she laughs. "I think that's unexpected in comedy, so that's my thing."
While she was the only SNL cast member in attendance at Tory Burch's runway presentation, Fineman is quick to say she's not the sketch show's only style muse. "Sarah Sherman, you go in her closet, and her wardrobe is so quintessentially her," she says. "I think she clearly has such a point of view."
In fact, everyone who's forward-facing has their own thing. Heidi Gardener reads to Fineman like a "sparkly, early 2000s" movie heroine; Devon Walker's Aimé Leon Dore collection is a source of awe and mild envy.
But the unspoken style icon of the evening was, without a doubt, Fineman's mom Ellen. She balanced her daughter's anti-winter white sleeveless top and urban mermaid skirt in a stately black coat (from Tory, of course). "We're like two interpretations of chic," Fineman says, grinning over at her parent. "We have our shoes coordinated, and we accessorized."
I think I feel rebellious at work by kind of being chic and glamorous. I think that's unexpected in comedy, so that's my thing."
What Fineman's taking away from the show is the balance of carefree expression and thoughtful experimentation Tory Burch has brought to recent collections—those indicative of a "Toryssance" among fashion editors and longtime fans.
"I remember hearing someone describe Tory earlier this year as really weird and really beautiful, and I think that's kind of what I'm always trying to go for when I go to her show," Fineman says. "Tory's stuff is always really classic, but she's entered this new way of making things a little weirder, a little more surreal, and I think that really speaks to me."
Wearing Tory Burch from the night of the show onward is another way Fineman can be "rebellious" and not just at work. "The world is so impossible to make sense of that if you can find playful and cool [clothing]....why not?"
