Tom Mora

Tom Mora is an American fashion designer whose career spans American sportswear, ready-to-wear and accessories. He graduated from Parsons School of Design in 1990 and held positions at Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger and Coach before spending fourteen years at J.Crew, where he rose to senior leadership in women’s design. He later became Creative Director of Women’s and Licensed Product at Cole Haan and joined Tapestry in 2021.

On 7 September 2022 Kate Spade New York formally named Mora SVP and Head of Design, RTW and Lifestyle Categories. His remit covered ready-to-wear, footwear, jewellery, home and licensed lifestyle categories. Tapestry paired him with Jennifer Lyu, SVP and Head of Design for Leather Goods and Accessories, as the principal designers across the full brand assortment and members of the Ideation Studio.

Mora and Lyu debuted their shared public direction with Spring 2023 at 3 World Trade Center, followed by Fall 2023 at the Whitney Museum and Spring 2024 at the High Line. Their work revisited archival products and house colour while loosening the clothing into a brighter, more casual New York wardrobe. Mora left Kate Spade during 2024; his professional profile dates the end of the role to February.

Mora’s work is grounded in American sportswear. Clean separates, practical layers and familiar wardrobe pieces provide a stable base for colour, print and accessories, allowing a collection to feel lively without requiring elaborate garment construction. His long experience at J.Crew and later roles sharpened this balance between design identity and broad everyday use.

At Kate Spade, Mora handled clothing and lifestyle categories while working in tandem with Jennifer Lyu on accessories. The pair developed seasonal ideas across categories so that a coat, cardigan, shoe and handbag could share one visual direction. Mora’s clothing often used relaxed proportion, graphic checks, stripes and saturated colour to create an easy counterpart to the brand’s more expressive bags.

Archive references entered his work through editing and recontextualisation. The return of Sam, the 30th-anniversary Kate Spade Green and renewed attention to older house motifs placed familiar codes inside a cleaner contemporary wardrobe, keeping the label recognisable while shifting its styling towards greater ease.