His father, Paul Brûlé, was a Canadian football star and later went into business. His mother is an artist. Tyler Brûlé attended more than ten different schools while his father went from one football team to another, until his parents split up. He guessed that he was gay when he was aged seven, and that he was always obsessed with clothes. His father stopped talking to him when Tyler Brûlé told him that he was gay.

Brûlé studied journalism and political science in Canada and the United States, then worked in television in Australia. In 1989 he moved to Britain to take up a job with BBC Manchester's youth television department and worked on style stories as well as some hard news. He worked as a freelance writer for Vanity Fair, Vogue, and other publications.

In 1993 he was sent by Sky magazine to Afghanistan with photographer Zed Nelson to do a story about Médecins Sans Frontières. While driving through Kabul they were machine-gunned and Tyler Brûlé was shot. They managed to escape and get to a hospital where it was found that Tyler Brûlé's injuries were to his arms. He returned to England and continued to be hospitalised for some time.

He set up the style magazine Wallpaper in 1996. He sold it to Time Inc. in 1997 but continued to oversee it. By 2001 it had a worldwide monthly circulation of 134,402 with sales in the UK and Ireland of 34,398. He also launched the sports magazine, Line, but it was not successful.