Coach (Q2804)
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Coach is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Coach |
Coach is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
2013
creative director
Stuart Vevers used everyday denim, leather, khakis, and cotton T-shirting for his spring 2025 Coach collection. Yet even when he was using these raw materials—and, sometimes, they were literally raw, thanks to the clothes’ frayed edges and tattered seams; other looks were delightfully creased and crumpled—they were a reminder that Vevers has the Midas touch right now. I mean, come on, did you see those last-quarter results for Coach?! The brand is on an up-and-up-and-upward trajectory, which is all the more impressive given that we’re in a moment of hand-wringing about stalling sales and tanking interest in fashion. Yet leading with this financial factoid feels a bit off, a tad crass, for the simple fact that the reason his Coach is connecting is because Vevers has put his creative faith in the future: in youth, in sustainability, in the idea that an honesty about authenticity and heritage go hand in hand with a certain joyfulness, playfulness, and—this might be the first time I’ve written this in a review—friendliness.That’s the approach and here’s how it all played out courtesy of Vevers’s newest offerings. Like other designers these past few days, he’s been looking at classic American archetypes, the things that have loomed large in the national—and global—psyche. He has been breaking them down and reconstructing them, testing their strength and durability. As he put it at a collection preview some days ago: “I’m really very intrigued by how the new generation is discovering those American classics and seeing them through fresh eyes.” So the preppiest of looks opened his show, a navy blazer and khakis with an “I Heart NY” tee. The relative classicism of Vevers’s tailoring was in sharp and cool contrast to the upcycled, patched-together sloucherama beige cotton pants; the look was weathered, worn, and wonderful. (And as with many of the looks here, it turned up on a girl and then a boy, but the mindset at work is definitely fashion first, gender second.)Likewise, aviator and Perfecto leather got a second life from being reworked into roomy multi-buttoned cardigan jackets or teeny-tiny biker jackets. At that preview, Vevers mentioned that the best way to reuse things is to take them and then chop them up with merry abandon, so that by using the smaller and best parts of whatever you’re upcycling, you let the pieces have a meaningful reinvigoration. Let the imperfection become an age-patinated perfection of sorts, as it were.
Also, he noted that the amount of seams that are needed has “become part of our design language, which is interesting; piecing things together has helped us create new silhouettes.” Elsewhere, he rode the wave of the ’60s with zingy satin minidresses—“I love the colors, I love the optimism they bring”— as if uptown debutantes had had one too many acid freak-outs and decided to fuck them up, giving up a life of the Carlyle for the Velvet Underground’s “Exploding Plastic Inevitable” in the process. (I mean: Who wouldn’t?!)Of course, Vevers wouldn’t be Vevers if he wasn’t also giving sly winks. Yep! Bring on the bags! Bigger-than-big clasp-frame clutch purses in vegetable-dyed leathers, based on a 1969 Bonnie Cashin design, as well as other clutches in the shape of cartoonishly large lips, hearts, and bones. Smaller shoulder purses jangled with teddy bear and heart charms; cassette tape and toy car novelties were atop scuffed-to-hell white sneakers. Many of the accessories had also been scrawled on with pen graffiti the way you did when you were in fifth grade. (Well, maybe you did: I was way too much of a goody-two-shoes.) All of this was a salient reminder that Coach might be a big, international corporate brand, but there’s no cynicism at work here. You can feel it, sense it, and—best of all—you can wear it and carry it.
9 September 2024
“We call resort winter,” says Stuart Vevers, who is standing in the middle of the Coach showroom one sunny June morning the other day, “because that’s when it appears, around the holidays. Our belief is that our client is living in the real world: She’s not at a resort, she’s not on a cruise. She’s living in the moment.” Realness and being in the moment are two things that have stood Vevers well. He has constantly focused on them at Coach, and suffice to say his instincts have always been spot on. Standing over this season:grandpacore, andcottagecore, but to reduce what he has done to hashtags rather does this collection a disservice. The truth is he has a pretty canny knack of intuiting not only how we want things to look, but how we want them tofeel, which is to say, loveworn, weathered, and lived in.Vevers’s resort—sorry, winter!—collection is stuffed full of things that perform the sleight of hand marking out what many of us want from fashion now. The comfort of the past, quite literally, in this case; there’s plenty of nostalgia-tinged fuzzy-soft cozy cable knits and full tweedy skirts with huge taffeta bows, rocking a Victoriana-goes-1950s vibe. Yet also the thrill of newness: That might come from the way brushed flannel pajamas' collars have been faced with satin, à la a tuxedo, or the way that oversized Argyle check knit polo shirts are designed to layer up at will, one of the many pieces in his winter denuded of gender specificity. Likewise the jewelry: Diamanté bows and chandelier earrings to pin here, there, and everywhere, and single earrings with a delightfully kitschy quality to them—pumpkins, candy canes, essentially the John Waters-approved inventory of holiday tree decorations.For layering up with those sweaters Vevers suggests a delightfully ratty tee emblazoned with Popeye; it was inspired by a black and white image of Debbie Harry back in the day wearing a t-shirt with the pipe smoking, spinach loving cartoon character. Popeye also appears on comfy, roomy knits, including one sweater where the sailor man is toting a Coach purse. (He’s not the only pop cultural icon in play here, either. Vevers was also looking at images ofTwin Peaksstars Madchen Amick and Lara Flynn Boyle between takes, in their homespun, 1950s-esque looks warped by the ever original eye of director David Lynch.
)And as for those purses, the powerhouse of the brand: A squashy, capacious frame purse from 1969 has gotten a reissue, rendered in a washed leather or yet more knit (it’s everywhere in this collection) and small purses hanging from chain straps have been patched together out of regenerated leather. Like so much else here, those purses possess that same loveworn feel, which feels intuitively right for now, when shellacked perfection feels out of place. In other words: Make it pristinely, just don’t make it look pristine. “That wasn’t my original training—luxury was meant to be perfect,” says Vevers. “It was always perfection—a constant strive for perfection. And when I joined Coach, I felt I wanted something perfect in a different way. So we’ve done a lot of deep research into garment washing, and washing [our leathers], dyeing things; it’s all those techniques that are starting to, I think, feel very Coach.”
11 June 2024
Last season, Stuart Vevers celebrated his tenth anniversary at Coach. This season, fall 2024, Vevers admirably demonstrated that he has absolutely no interest in resting on his laurels. Or, for that matter, settling to live off the accolades which have recently come his way: In a tough economic landscape, sales at his Coach have been on the up and up. At a preview a few days before his show, Vevers mentioned that he’s intent on moving sustainability—all the recycling, upcycling, and reevaluating—to the very forefront of his design processes, making it an integral part of his creative expression for Coach. “That sense of creating, designing with relevance and responsibility, and a certain sense of urgency about all this—that’s where my head is,” he said. Essentially, what it means is anything is fair game for his vision of Coach: Newness shellacked with a hyper-glossy perfection isn’t what he has in mind. It’s an approach that has been validated by the experimental side of offshoot label Coachtopia."What's different about how we approach sustainability in the show versus the brand is that generally the show is all about experimentation and trying new things,” he said. “So, we’re pushing ourselves creatively and aesthetically, but also experimenting with sustainability and some things work and some things don't. Approaching things without fear was a big shift for me. And sometimes seeds of an idea become big ideas within the business later.”Fall, then, rejoiced in a fantastically spirited celebration of the found and the fucked up, the loveworn and the just plain old worn-worn, an approach which worked across the collection regardless of gender. It looked great. There were weathered coats, slouchy and oversized and slope-shouldered, which looked like they’d been lived in for years; ditto the denims, which look distressed and beaten up (they were) but were also intricately patched together from ones the Coach team thrifted, assemblages of fragments of different life cycles of the humble jean. Also sourced were a gazillion aviator jackets, which were cut up and reconstructed into terrific barn jackets with a gorgeous patina of age. (There were also versions made from new shearling and leather, one swishing with fringe, alongside those of vintage origin.
)Vevers opened and closed the show with black, pink and lilac taffeta evening looks which he’d gone at with the scissors, snipping dresses into tops, then keeping the skirts for other looks, and deftly festooning them with bows, some spangled. There was a distinct Amy Arbus ’80s vibe going on, what with the East Village thrift store cocktailania, the tuxes, the pointy Oxfords and chunky biker boots, but also the ’90s, the era when Vevers first landed in New York. “I’m playing with references from my ’90s experiences in New York with a certain nostalgia,” he said. “But it’s about reinterpreting them with a more inclusive point of view, which I think my Coach has—and which I enjoy.”
12 February 2024
This year marks Stuart Vevers’s tenth anniversary at Coach. “I was reflecting on it a little, not too much,” he said the day before during a preview at the brand’s Hudson Yards headquarters. “I wanted to capture New York archetypes—myNew York archetypes—but rather than look at vintage images of that time I wanted to remember it in my own way.” He added, “It’s a very personal collection.”In a way, New York City played the starring role here: the show took place at the main branch of the New York Public Library near Bryant Park (another iconic fashion landmark), with Vevers’s children and father present (it was the first time he’d attended a fashion show). It’s the city where the British designer met his husband and started a family; the city where he’s been hard at work cementing the legacy of Coach as “America’s House of Leather,” especially what it means to be a house of leather in 2023, when so many conversations revolve around topics of sustainability and climate change. That Vevers has made these an important part of his collections, working with upcycled leather and denim, as well as regenerated cotton and leather, made the rare appearance by an anti-leather protester all the more strange, though it’s worth noting that security did not force her off the catwalk. “I respect all points of view,” Vevers said later at the celebratory dinner.But what about the clothes? Although Vevers was in a wistful mode, this wasn’t about bringing back the greatest hits from his early collections. Rather, it was a continuation of the shapes and experiments on construction and silhouette that he’s been developing in recent seasons. The show opened with a black slipdress made from pieced-together leather with exposed stitches, moto boots, and a cool little rounded bowling bag. “There was no archival reference for it,” he said. “It was just what I imagined a Coach bag should be—and maybe that’s a reflection of my time at Coach.” Vevers’s great fascination with oversized leather jackets continued: a single-breasted blazer, worn over a mesh turtleneck and pointy jelly flats, was a very chic proposition indeed. There were also fringed suede jackets, and upcycled denim jackets, with the let-out hems acting as a trim detail on pockets.
8 September 2023
Bright pinks, caution oranges, and electric blues; it was a bold scene at the Coach showroom on Hudson Yards. “This season we’re really highlighting what we’re calling acids,” said Stuart Vevers. “I don’t think they’re quite fluoro.” In the room in front of us stood a mannequin in a fuchsia leather motorcycle jacket; a hue that most would call novelty but for the right individual is the exact color for their forever favorite jacket.That individual could be someone like Lil Nas X, the Coach Ambassador and “curator” of a capsule within the pre-collection, which they are calling The Lil Nas X Drop (actually the full name is The Lil Nas X Drop: Designed by Coach, Curated by Lil Nas X). “We took inspiration from Lil Nas,” Vevers explained. “We then asked him to curate his favorite pieces from the collection. So we took inspiration from him, we created the collection, and then we asked him his favorite pieces.”His name may appear in several graphic t-shirts and the label affixed on the inside of clothes, but the vibe here harks back to underground ’90s scenes and rave flyers, with a mix of techno and groovy typefaces, and high Xerox-contrast images of kittens and that sun with a face (you know the one). Special attention was given to a run of black tees and hoodies; the team figured out the exact color palette that years of washing and drying would fade to, and used it for the print. It was an uncanny combination of real and not real—it’s not that it was meant to look old, necessarily; rather, it was about finding the details that make an old favorite t-shirt, well, a favorite. (Elsewhere, the team sourced vintage hoodies and printed on them, to get that real distressed effect.)The graphics were also used on leather goods, creating genuinely covetable, off-kilter accessories, especially on a small, square leather bag seemingly screen printed in cyan with the aforementioned sun and the Coach logo rendered in block-y letters. Vevers also brought back a monogram print of a horse and cart and then mixed it with colorful leather and leopard print to create collaged bags that had the appeal of candy.The designer is clearly delighting in mixing classic “heritage” pieces in unexpected pieces that are geared towards engaging a Gen Z audience (witness the lookbook of self-shot iPhone photos), but the Coach collection remains fun for the whole family.
In these pictures, that aforementioned moto jacket is worn with a midi-length column leather skirt with classic gold Coach hardware details at the hip, which would make perennial workhorses in anyone’s closet; ditto a classic long trench, or a peacoat with a shearling collar. Even the leopard print had cross-generational appeal, and not just because it was a Bonnie Cashin animal print from the 1960s. Vevers added, “We want people to see there’s a playfulness here.”
7 June 2023
We were back at the Park Avenue Armory for Coach’s fall collection, but it wasn’t a repetition of last season’s large-scale presentation, bleacher-style seating and all. Instead, the show took place in the “reception rooms” at the front of the space. Surrounded by the military portraits, dramatic chandeliers, and dark wood touches, the setting became about the history of the building itself. “There’s a certain sense of intimacy that I wanted to bring to the collection and to the way we present it,” Stuart Vevers explained a few days before the show at his studio in Hudson Yards. “I want it to feel like we’ve invited you into our home; you’re much closer to the collection, much closer to the cast.”The silhouette this season was long and lean. The show opened with a long knitted striped turtleneck in a mended/repaired style with an intarsia apple bearing the NY initials inside. “There’s something almost modest about it as a silhouette, but it’s really body-hugging,” Vevers explained. “And I always think knit works really well next to leather.” Maxi skirts and flared jeans anchoring both cropped and oversized outerwear were worn by a super diverse crew of models, some of whom had been street-cast.This was another season for great leather coats and separates; not surprising since Vevers considers Coach to be “America’s house of leather.” The designer and his team leaned into treated and textured leathers that felt like they had already lived lifetimes before making their way to the runway (and eventually, people’s closets). Patchworked leather—made from actual scraps from their factory so every piece is different—was used to great effect in a tailored leather maxi coat with a distinct 1970s vibe, and featured a small golden old-school logo plaque at the chest. Vevers referred to it as “an imagined heritage.” “Even though Coach has a long history, it doesn’t have a history in ready-to wear, so it’s always fun to play with the idea of what a coat from the ’60s or ’70s might look like,” he said.Gauzy ruffled slipdresses in dusty shades of lavender, dark mint, poppy, and a coppery mustard, all dyed with natural dyes (logwood, leaf, safflower, and marigold, respectively) in collaboration with the artist Maggie Paxton were a welcome contrast to the heavy leathers and denim pieces that made up the bulk of the collection.
And to keep things from getting too serious, Vevers and his team had an absolute blast with the accessories: purses in the shape of dinosaurs, lips, stars, and moons were instantly collectable and looked especially good when paired with a big leather tote. Earrings were made from molds of doll shoes, candy, and lollipops. “It was nice for me to explore American candies,” said Vevers. “I didn’t know Dum-Dums.”The stars of the show were the instantly covetable shearling pieces, especially a double-breasted distressed metallic yellow jacket worn with matching flared pants. “Shearling has become a real reference point for Coach ready-to-wear,” Vevers said. “The idea of distressed and love-worn really comes through in these.” Shearling that was treated until it achieved the grey tones of an abandoned cement wall was another standout; but for the real shearling aficionados, it’s the reversible aviator coat that will prove irresistible. It was made from different lengths of shearling, and the belt and buckles were also covered in the material. “It gives it an almost teddy-bear effect, but the starting point is quite utilitarian,” said Vevers. For the finale, the shearling came adorned with little jewels almost invisible to the naked eye except for the way they caught the light, almost like a sparkling Instagram filter come to life.
13 February 2023
Being inspired by the beach for a spring collection is as groundbreaking as florals for spring, but at Coach, Stuart Vevers wasn’t thinking about just any beach. He was thinking about the very specific event of going to the beach in New York. “I don’t think I’ve ever referenced the beach at Coach,” Vevers said at his studio, a few days before the show. “We thought you could go to Coney Island, but you could also just go to the West Side and hang out on a pier, and you almost feel like you are at the beach.”Of course the piers in New York have a history of their own, most memorably captured in theParis Is Burningdocumentary, images of which adorned this season’s inspiration board. The Armory was transformed into a pier and the show opened with a dreamy vignette, first a young man in a sailor hat, then a yuppie couple walking hand in hand, while behind them, the real action unfolded. A group of young people appeared, some vogueing, others egging each other on, up and down the boardwalk.This is a lot of mood setting for a collection that was tightly edited in conception. Vevers focused basically on three pieces this season: a light leather jacket, pieced knits, and very short vintage-inspired dresses. “Our collections have been a bit more stripped back of late,” the designer explained. “We quite liked the honesty of [saying], ‘this is our leather outerwear statement,’ ‘this is our dresses statement.’ It’s unconventional.”In the spirit of going to the beach with whatever you have on, the show opened with a series of boxy leather jackets, double breasted or moto-inspired, and sometimes made from repurposed materials, worn with nothing else. (Though not visible, models were wearing black high waist jacquard logo underwear and sometimes leather bras. Vevers: “I always think even if you don’t see some of these pieces, it’s important that they feel dressed.”) On their feet the models wore scuffed up sneakers, or jelly sandals in a delightful cornucopia of colors. The jacket story continued in a logo’d twill, worn in and frayed at the edges, which gave way to the perfect cream beach sweaters, pieced together from different kinds of Aran knits, and visibly mended with colorful thread that gave the impression of moss or another natural organism.
13 September 2022
“We don’t call itresort,” says Stuart Vevers in Coach’s sunny Hudson Yards office. “We call it winter.” If anything can make customers excited for the return of the Polar Vortex, it’s this Coach collection, which gives gothy mall looks some heritage details. (That it was served on a July day with a side of super-high humidity in New York City also helped make the case for the cold).Vevers’s approach at Coach of late has been to reassess the past with a magpie lens, culling his favorite Bonnie Cashin references with Etsy styling tips and TikTok trends. It’s a diplomatic, engrossing design philosophy that operates more on instinct than analytics—which is probably why Vevers’s clothing is resonating with a younger audience that craves authenticity. You can tell he’s been checking out the For You Page, merging Gen Z Y2K obsessions withThe Craftto create devilishly twee velvet minidresses and sporty, clunky Mary-Jane flats with rubber soles. Worn by street-cast models, some of whom appeared in the brand’s fall 2022 show, the clothes look realistic. Even the C monogram, at times a little full-on, is overdyed and washed in black denim to complement dark tonal varsity jackets and shearlings. Cashin coats are black, leather boardshorts are black, and chokers with dangling dino charms are sometimes black too, lending a broody mien to these sweet clothes. “It should feel a little worn-in,” Vevers said, “but joyful.” Come snowy days and chilly temps, these happy knit minis and peppy plaid skirts will be hard to resist.
14 July 2022
After the Coach fall 2022 show, guests spilled out of Pier 36, roses in hand, Sonic Youth’s cover of The Carpenters’s “Superstar” still ringing in their ears: “Don’t you remember you told me you loved me, baby?” The soundtrack and the flowers were Stuart Vevers’s nod to his Valentine’s Day slot during NYFW, but they also reflected his romantic mood for the season. “Seen through the lens of romance, every day can be romantic,” he said, waxing poetic during a preview.Vevers’s design philosophy was to revisit the things he—and his customers—have loved most from Coach and organize the show in small capsules rather than adhere to a single, overarching theme. That structure is certainly interesting, especially in our post-pandemic age; the single, monolithic seasonal idea is less compelling than exploring the diversity and chaos of how real people dress. Offbeat styling unified the feeling of Vevers’s popular shearlings and babydoll dresses in secondary tones. The outerwear will surely be bestsellers; several starlets arrived in their big shearlings and many others rocked Vevers’s chevron striped ’70s-style puffers. Leather pieces were upcycled and reworked—see the trench in exit 27—or emblazoned with graffiti graphics by the Californian duo Mint & Serf. Corduroy wrap skirts, worn by all genders and body types, often knotted with flannel shirts around the waist, were one of Vevers’s coolest ideas—neither sexy nor cerebral, just about attitude. His crochet babydoll dresses were on the opposite end of the spectrum: The apex of sincerity and twee.Set against an “ordinary and unusual” suburban backdrop where models walked dogs, unpacked groceries, and hung out on rooftops, the Coach collection had a cinematic quality to it. Several people remarked that it reminded them of E.T. or Stranger Things. But isn’t that just what life feels like when you’re in love? That the world revolves around you, your fantasies, and your obsessions? These were sweet, sentimental clothes to fall in love with—and in. Finding the partner, well, that’s up to you.
14 February 2022
Bonnie Cashin, the godmother of the Coach brand, advocated for both comfort and pragmatism. She also cut some of the best outerwear American fashion has ever seen. Cashin casts a long shadow over much of current chief creative officer Stuart Vevers’s work at Coach, but this season he put his homage to the sportswear designer at the fore. His runway show opened with a group of models in A-line silk and cotton anoraks printed with houndstooth and plaid patterns. Each was paired with a coordinating skirt and cap and just a bralette underneath. “It’s a collaboration between Stuart and Bonnie through the lens of the future,” Vevers said at a preview. Sure, it was a little twee, but sweet sincerity is shaping up to be the mood in New York this season; even the bitterest among us can’t help feeling happy to be back at it.The oversized structure of Cashin’s shapes soon gave way to skate brand signatures: big, boxy tees; calf-length boardshorts, and low-rise jeans worn with exposed boxers and no shirts. There’s an unlikely commonality here—Cashin never got too close or cut too precious a shape around the body. These were mixed with a hodgepodge of blouson leather trousers, curve swallowing tees printed with logos of classic NY haunts, bead necklaces, hotdog earrings, kisslock anoraks, and the occasional pump. “It’s something of a new language,” the designer admitted. The audience picked up on it; in a long aftershow car ride, my backseat mates discussed how, even if a little awkward at times, the Coach mix was reflective of a new mood in fashion that’s less fussy, more fun.The show closed with about a dozen skateboarders launching onto Pier 76, followed by a drum corps, and the models walking about in every direction. It looked like Grand Central Station at rush hour, a chaotic mass of incredibly well-dressed bodies. The scene was broadcast on a giant TV screen that had previously played a new episode of Coach TV, this one hosted by Rickey Thompson and public access-themed. The contrast of the sheen of the TV segments against the grit and texture of the live show made it all the more clear how lucky we are to be seeing fashion in the round, together again.
10 September 2021
For all the chatter about sustainability and “doing things differently” that the pandemic has brought about, who has actually changed? Stuart Vevers, for one. Over the past 15 months Vevers has not only masterminded the addictive Coach TV programming where stars like Jennifer Lopez, Megan Thee Stallion, Michael B. Jordan, and Bob The Drag Queen perform kitschy skits in Coach products, he’s also remodeled his design ethos. What started as an idea to incorporate archival pieces into new collections has become a new, full-time way of working. For resort 2022, Vevers overdyed leftover plaids from fall 2021 to create moody midi dresses trimmed in black lace. He also put a sizable amount of that fall collection on the runway in Shanghai, styled with new resort looks.Over a Zoom call from his home in New York, he wondered what the point was of tethering successful products to a certain season. Now, his best Coach pieces commingle. The “sheep herder” shearling coats—his first hit at the label—return for resort in a plethora of styles and patterns. The brand’s intarsia sweaters are repeats of past successes, and the lug-soled boots in pastel hues are redos of the shape Kaia Gerber wore in the fall lookbook.This kind of evolution works at Coach because Vevers’s references remain in the same all-American wheelhouse. He pulled up a moodboard of Olympic uniforms, skiers, and stills from Terrence Malick’sDays of Heaven, new ideas that marry nicely with his previous work. He spoke of dressing for the future—hence the new tailored pieces and dressed-up evening coats—but he’s wise to know that a brighter tomorrow has to be built on the best bits of the past.
4 June 2021
Stuart Vevers and Coach’s collection videos may end up being front-runners for fashion film of the year. The brand’s Coach TV program, a lineup of shorts written and directed by Frances Frances (with additional footage by Dani Aphrodite, Alessandro Simonetti, and Cake Films), is the rare instance of a digital fashion experience being just as good, if not better, than the real thing. It’s not just because of the popcorn and candy the brand sent in the mail: Coach’s method leaves fashion shows firmly in the past. The label has gone all in on the dynamism, narrative, and comedy the silver screen offers, letting the clothing be the supporting cast for its stars: Megan Thee Stallion, Michael B. Jordan, Jennifer Lopez, Tavi Gevinson, Cole Sprouse, KJ Apa, Rickey Thompson, Hari Nef, and more. The many segments that make up Coach TV are kitschy, funny, sensual, and surreal, spoofing TV shows likeFriendsand the Home Shopping Network. Fashion is truly in the service of storytelling—and isn’t that the point of all this? To sell clothing in a way that allows people to imagine it in their own lives, in their own stories?Coach is not just innovating in format, but in form. The Coach Forever program Vevers started for spring 2021, reviving past styles from the brand’s archive and showing them alongside new garments, remains one of the most compelling ideas for fashion’s future. For fall 2021, Vevers has extended the idea, upcycling bags from the ’60s and ’70s alongside leather and shearling jackets made into new, collaged-together styles. Kisslock bags from the Bonnie Cashin era are remade in soft, cozy leather, like pillows; knits from Vevers’s early seasons are remade with Mickey Mouse and Rexy the dinosaur patterns.On a video call from his Hudson Yards office, the creative director spoke of the “indulgence of nostalgia.” Finding something soft and comforting in our shared past is proving to be an overarching idea of the season. Vevers also wants to offer a cozy, indulgent silhouette. A surprising majority of the collection, including Basquiat-worthy coats and very of-the-moment long johns, is knit. Vampy shoes are replaced by fluffy slippers and mules, and there is a breadth of stretchy, cozy layering pieces. It’s styled together with a certain magpie sensibility that makes it look all the more believable. Yes, you could see these puffy silhouettes shuffling along the sidewalk or at the grocery store right now.
That’s the brilliance: Coach has saved the fantasy for its film and delivered the reality through its garments. What a winning formula for digital Fashion Week.
23 February 2021
For many brands, letting go of the runway has been hard to do. Several have stuck to the reliable format this season, staging shows without audiences. Not so for Coach. Creative director Stuart Vevers felt it important to wipe the slate clean and think differently about presenting fashion under such strange new circumstances. With the help of photographer Juregen Teller, he started by bringing together what he’s calling the global Coach family. The film presentation that was released today was captured almost entirely Zoom across three continents, with recent Coach star Megan Thee Stallion in Los Angeles leading the charge dressed in one of the brand’s new belted trench coats and carrying one of its new vegetable-tanned handbags.Overall, the collection reflected a modern, non-linear approach to dressing that’s no longer tethered to the relentless forward march of new fashion. Mixing future, past, and present was how Vevers summed up this focus on personal style. True fans of the brand will recognize many of the trophy items from seasons past that are seen throughout, including the much paparazzi’d Basquiat coat that Kate has been rocking all summer and a pastel vintage-inspired dress that Kaia Gerber is wearing from the spring 2018 Keith Haring collection.Beyond its starry cross-generational casting (hello Debbie Harry!), the project signals significant changes at Coach. In an effort to steer the brand in a more socially responsible direction, Vevers has been connecting with New York’s manufacturing community. Back in March, when the pandemic hit, he made the decision to support factories facing financial hardship. An offering of locally produced sweatshirts, biker jackets, and T-shirts is being released this week.Coach is also taking pains to lessen its carbon footprint, with a commitment to upcycling fashion that’s rarely seen at a brand of this size. In addition to the charming embroidered recycled denim, there are handbags upcycled from 1970s purses and recycled plastic bottles. In fact the logo tote bags are made from 100% recycled materials right down to the thread. That’s a message well worth sharing, regardless of the medium.
22 September 2020
The energy of 1980s New York has been on the agenda at Coach since last season, and creative director Stuart Vevers turned up the volume on that mood for fall. Though the address on the invite read Midtown, the vibe at today’s show felt decidedly south-of-14th-street with raw concrete floors, lofty ceilings, and a host of cool characters in the front row—models Paloma Elsesser and Coco Gordon Moore, jewelry designer Malu Byrne, and more.On the runway, leather culottes and snap-front midiskirts in vivid primary colors continued the mood, as did squiggle-print day dresses with a vintage-y, East Village sway. Beyond the graphic palette, it was the silhouette—broad across the shoulder, slightly tapered through the body—that seemed most emblematic of a certain downtown look and attitude. The oversized Crombies and trench coats that were layered up and styled with chunky socks and pointy loafers immediately called to mind that unforgettable street style portrait of Madonna, a then little-known hipster, captured by Amy Arbus on St. Marks Place.If Madonna was in the house in spirit, so was another celebrated downtown legend: Jean-Michel Basquiat. Both his work and his personal style have been a recurring source of inspiration for the fashion world, and his most distinctive motifs were featured on key pieces in this collection, including an oversized leather trench coat, a blanket-style wool scarf, and the new, structured mini box bag, all trophy items with truckloads of Gen-Z appeal (if there is one artist the late-’90s babies will recognize, it’s Basquiat.) Vevers worked with members of Basquiat’s family, who oversee his estate, on the collaboration; the late artist’s sisters, Jeanine and Lisane Basquiat, were in the audience this afternoon; his adorable niece Jessica Kelly walked the runway, carrying the aforementioned It bag.The show ended with another unexpected cameo, when Debbie Harry emerged from backstage wearing her signature black shades and a sweater printed with Basquiat’s unmistakable brushstrokes. As the models took their final lap, Harry belted out a rendition of “Dreaming,” a performance that will undoubtedly go down as one of the best surprise acts of the week.
11 February 2020
The notion of camp and all its complexities has been batted around plenty in fashion over the last 12 months, thanks in no small part to this year’s Met gala theme. Coach creative director Stuart Vevers took on a much less complicated interpretation of the word for pre-fall, using the classic American campground as a starting point. Vevers was fresh from a five-day camping excursion in Peru when he presented the new collection at the brand’s showroom this morning, though the timing of the trip was largely coincidental. Ultimately, the new anoraks, puffer vests, and chunky-soled hiking sandals seemed best suited to an urban landscape. It was easy to picture the snug belted leather jackets in a cool downtown setting, for example. The retro-inspired tees printed with graphics of the New York skyline and the slogan “Big Apple Camp” spelled out that city-dwelling mood too.After last season’s unabashed 1980s vibe, there was a softer, vaguely 1970s feeling about the clothes, starting with slinky striped knit cardigans and tank tops. The butterfly collar has been popping up all week—at Michael Kors and 3.1 Phillip Lim, just for starters. It showed up in more casual iterations here, with chambray shirting and suede jackets that were paired with structured A-line wrap skirts and more whimsical printed maxi skirts. One novelty print covered in classic luggage, drawn from what was a groovy, imagined archive, looked particularly good on wide-leg pajama pants.Vevers took an outdoorsman’s approach to the handbags, creating tiny pouches that clipped to the brand’s classic cross-body purses with utilitarian carabiners. If micro-bags are here to stay, then the message here was two (three or even four) are better than one.
6 December 2019
Stuart Vevers is not shy about his obsession with Americana. In his six years at Coach, the British designer has looked mostly toward the West and the Great Plains for inspiration, bringing prairie dressing and a late ’60s vintage charm to the leather goods brand. This season Vevers switched things up, steering the Coach aesthetic toward a new direction entirely. And with the runway set up along the High Line in midtown this afternoon, Vevers was clearly in a New York state of mind.As the Human League blasted out of speakers over 11th Avenue, the starting point for the new collection was loud and clear: ’80s New York. After the best-selling moto jackets, shearling coats, and puffers of seasons past, the cherry red leather trenchcoat that opened the show offered a cool new outerwear proposition and came in all manner of New Wave–inflected bright colors. Vevers usually adds an artistic note to his clothes, and this season he partnered with the estate of Richard Bernstein, the artist behindInterviewmagazine’s distinctive illustrated covers.A relatively new face of Coach, Michael B. Jordan was among the stars enjoying the action from the front row. The crew of high schoolers he brought as his guests today would have been hard-pressed to name the celebrities in Bernstein’s portraits who appeared on tank tops and tees—Michael J. Fox, Barbra Streisand, and Rob Lowe, all of whom Vevers idolized growing up. Having plucked one handbag style from the brand’s 78-year history, Vevers took the opportunity to celebrate Coach’s legacy, too. Denuded of charms, bells, and whistles, the classic lunch box–size styles that were carried by models on the runway had an appealing simplicity. As the craze for teeny-tiny bags begins to tire, these could be the anti-It bags to relieve that fatigue.
11 September 2019
Coach creative director Stuart Vevers has recently taken up residence on the Upper West Side, a move that may have also shifted his design perspective. Where he once craved the expansive landscapes of Terrence Malick’sBadlandsandDays of Heaven, the British designer is now binge watching city-centric East Coast dramas such as Whit Stillman’sMetropolitan. Released in 1990, the movie depicts a group of young, wealthy uptown New Yorkers during debutante season and was the jumping point for Resort. It’s perhaps why the central piece in Coach’s latest lineup is not a prairie dress but rather a tweedy cropped two-piece suit.For all its preppy origins, the collection still delivered a certain downtown attitude. Vevers cited perennial New York cool girl Chloë Sevigny as an influence, and the new suits seem designed to be twisted and turned with kooky accessories the way she does best. With that in mind, the ankle-nipping retro running shoes took the current yen for clunky dad sneakers in a streamlined new direction.Vevers has always had a rich archive of handbags and outerwear to play with thanks to Bonnie Cashin, Coach’s first designer, who helped make the leather goods brand a household name in the ’60s and ’70s. When it comes to clothes though, the history is considerably shorter. That got Vevers thinking about what a vintage piece of Coach might look like had ready-to-wear been produced way back when. To flesh out this revisionist picture, he used the classic horse and carriage motif. Replete with graphic racing stripes, the V-neck knit horse-and-carriage tanks and shrunken button-down shirts had an appealing thrift store quality that was in line with the personal, lived-in vibe of previous collections. More than anything though, that old-school pattern was especially fresh on Coach’s new oversize shoppers and saddle bags. As the craze for logos reaches its peak, this was a nice way to move the idea forward.
4 June 2019
The front row at Coach is always pretty major. Joan Smalls, Chloë Grace Moretz, and Michael B. Jordan, the new face of Coach men’s, were among the celebrities who braved the freezing rain today. Still, there was one important fashion figure in the crowd who went relatively unnoticed: Kaffe Fassett. The famed ’70s decorative arts guru is famous for his psychedelic works, and once posited, “Color is one of the most mysterious, miraculous, wonderful things about life.”Fassett’s philosophy was a guiding principle for Stuart Vevers this season. After the melancholy mood of Spring, the mesmerizing painterly florals were a welcome dose of sunshine, enlivening everything from all-weather parkas to Lurex sweaters and lace-trim frocks. The creative director has a knack for making opposites attract, and this season the brand’s sweet and light chiffon dresses were toughened up with basketball-style shorts in hefty checks and plaid. That late ’90s approach to layering has been popping up all week, although nowhere have the proportions appeared quite as fresh and youthful as they did here. The woolen bomber jackets and cardigans played to a larger cultural shift that’s been percolating for the past six months; as of last October, Coach is officially fur-free, and these were the brand’s warm and fuzzy alternatives.Vevers has been experimenting with tailoring for both men and women lately, and the new Crombie coats demonstrated the range of his fashion smarts. You only have to take one look at the street style images on this website to know that the brand’s mountaineering-style shearling jackets are popular with fashion-conscious boys and girls alike. Increasingly, Vevers has proved he has his finger on the pulse of the red carpet, too: Aside from Selena Gomez, a frequent collaborator, Coach recently dressed rising soul singer H.E.R. in a custom look for the Grammys this past weekend. On that note, the charming needlepoint cocktail dress modeled by Adesuwa Aighewi serves as a celebration of Fassett’s legacy and Vevers’s five-year anniversary with Coach all at once.
13 February 2019
Coach 1941’s Stuart Vevers is the third designer in three weeks to stage a “destination show” in Asia. Following Valentino and Dior Men in Tokyo, Vevers’s men’s and women’s Pre-Fall collections traveled 7,377 miles from New York City to Shanghai, which has become one of Coach’s biggest markets since its launch there in 2003. It’s not just the handbags that do well in China; at a cocktail party on Friday night, CEO Joshua Schulman reported that Coach’s ready-to-wear is booming. How could Vevers not be inspired? The decision to show in Shanghai came about nine months ago, before he designed the collection, so he had the city in mind when he whipped up the acid-color shearlings, handkerchief dresses, and trippy knits we saw on the runway tonight.We’ve learned that the optics of a far-flung, one-off show can be tricky. Tonight’s event wasn’t a “Chinese show”—there were no dragon prints or chinoiserie—nor was it a marketing stunt that ignored China’s history and codes completely. Instead, Vevers thought of it as a “mash-up of New York and Shanghai.” That started with the set: a supersize version of a New York City street, complete with a two-lane road, blinking traffic lights, neon bar and restaurant signage, and vintage cars. A few of his favorite New York models were flown in for the occasion, including Lexi Boling, Adesuwa Aighewi, Kiki Willems, and Indira Scott. Those beauties walked the runway alongside several new Chinese models whom Vevers scouted less than a week ago; Huang, the male model who opened the show, was one of them. It isn’t an overstatement to say it could make his career. In addition to promoting the new collection, generating excitement among Chinese customers, and all the other things a runway show is supposed to do, this one created a platform for young talents, too.As for the clothes, the mash-up of Coach’s hometown with its new favorite city was relatively subtle. “What I’m really struck by is the casualization of fashion on the streets,” Vevers said. “A lot of that has come from Asia, and it’s becoming a bigger part of everyone’s collections.” At the same time, young Asian shoppers have a deep appreciation for fashion and newness; they’ll wear Coach’s metallic prairie dress but maybe with sneakers and a denim jacket. That high-low sense of style may have inspired Vevers to dial back the ruffles and eclecticism; in their place, he worked with rich colors, specifically monochrome looks that mixed different textures and shades.
“I liked the idea that these clothes were dipped in color,” he said, pointing out a men’s look that combined an oxblood jacket, maroon track pants, and a bright red T-shirt. “It gives it a more polished feel, and it’s a bit more pulled-together.”That doesn’t mean he abandoned Coach’s tongue-in-cheek charms. Vevers said he was most inspired by Shanghai’s contemporary art—“I don’t think there’s anywhere in the world with an art scene at this scale,” he added—and tappedfour local artiststo reinterpret Coach’s mascot Rexy the dinosaur for the collection. (This is where those aforementioned young talents come in.) The twin brothers behind the music collective Yeti Out incorporated her (yes, Rexy is a her!) into their signature smiley face motif, for instance, and Guang Yu painted Rexy in spontaneous, graffiti-style paint. Also happily weird: Vevers’s mention of “early Alice Cooper” glam-rock references. “It feels Coach-y,” he said. There were touches of that “exuberant” vibe in the clothes but more so in the collection’s standout shoe: a heeled, chunky platform boot worn by guys and girls alike. We have a feeling you’ll see it on the streets of New York, Shanghai, and everywhere in between.
8 December 2018
With a giant iron dinosaur looming over the front row and sand strewn on the runway, you’d be forgiven for thinking you were at Burning Man not Fashion Week this evening during Coach’s Spring show. Turns out creative director Stuart Vevers was on his way to Santa Fe, New Mexico—specifically the Ghost Ranch, famous for its prehistoric fossils and Georgia O’Keeffe paintings. What does one do with 24 hours in Santa Fe? Well, if you’re Vevers, after you’ve seen the ranch, you figure out where the cool kids are (in this case, an open-all-night dive bar).Dressed in long distressed leather jackets, billowing cotton blouses, and languid slips that trailed the floor, the bedheaded models seemed like they’d emerged from some secret desert party. Though the moody, Stevie Nicks–inspired palette of last season was wiped clean, there was something vaguely spooky about this collection. Even the most innocent leitmotifs came with an eerie twist—scenes from classic Disney movies (Dumbo,Bambi,Pinocchio) were printed upside down on hoodies, for example. Those lovable characters were used in charming tongue-in-cheek ways, too, replacing traditional micro florals on Coach’s now-signature prairie dresses and skirts.Of course, leather goods are this label’s main bag. Of the new outerwear ideas, the cozy, Patagonia-inspired jackets, cut from shearling instead of fleece, were the most compelling—even if the oversize proportions might be challenging for some. The backpacks and fanny packs—trimmed with fringe, covered in patches, and sometimes toggled with bungee cord—were a modern way to evolve Coach’s practical approach to luxury. They were a fun and reliable pick-me-up, whether you’re festival-bound next spring or not.
11 September 2018
In the last few seasons, Stuart Vevers has had Coach on a cross-country road trip of sorts. You can trace the route of his inspiration through space and time, from the gritty downtown sidewalks of Keith Haring’s New York, through the rolling plains of the American West at the turn of the century. The latest stop lands the brand in the netherworld of Los Angeles, specifically the dark, smoke-filled rooms of legendary Hollywood hangout, the Viper Room, circa 1992. The British creative director has vivid memories of visiting the club on his first trip to the West Coast 20 years ago, and that moody rock ’n’ roll vibe was unmistakable in the new collection. Where last season models breezed in with the ethereal spirit of Stevie Nicks at their heels—all witchy attitude and trailing chiffon—Pre-Spring was made for cool lounge lizards. In fact, Coach has an official partnership with the Viper Room, so there’s nightlife merchandise galore, including satin jackets with glitter-trimmed collars.It makes sense that Coach set the scene for a party when other labels are prepping for a cruise at this time of year, even if many of the free-spirited fans of the brand will be too young to remember the club’s heyday, let alone to have ever heard of it. Vevers built on the long fluttering line of Fall, adding velvet patchwork maxi dresses to his repertoire of diaphanous, knife-pleated dresses, though there were a slew of thigh-grazing looks in the mix that seemed primed for the dance floor, as well. Cropped and slightly boxy, the transitional leather jackets and shearlings were accompanied by miniskirts cut raw at the hem with a rugged charm. They came sprinkled with Art Deco–style trimmings, including mirrored pyramid studs and geometric motifs, to replace the Western details of seasons past. In that vein, the Coach cowboy ankle booties that were popular a couple of summers ago, were updated with greaser-friendly creepers that are likely to be a runaway hit. Vevers is charting new territory outside of a traditional holiday wardrobe, too, with Nick Cave–inspired suiting that’s cut for party girls and boys alike.
30 May 2018
Creative director Stuart Vevers took Coach into the woods for Fall. He set the tone with a dimly lit forest on the runway, where smoke hovered ominously above piles of autumn leaves. There were old-school televisions strewn across the set that seemed to foretell some spookyBlair Witch Project–style narrative as well. The British designer has a deep affection for American pop culture, and has drawn on some of the nation’s landmark style references to help shape a compelling vision for Coach. If one had to sum up the story of this collection in a matter of words, then it might go something like “American Gothic goes to the Southwest.”Models floated out like a gorgeous troop of well-dressed specters, with their pretty ruffled hemlines sweeping the floor behind them. Vevers has done an impressive job of pushing Coach beyond its humble roots as a heritage leather goods brand, and this season he took things up a notch yet again. The distinctive stand-alone power of his dresses was evident right out of the gate. Indeed the opening look brought all the craftsmanship of the popular Coach leather jackets—tassels, braiding, silver charms—to the idea of evening. And though the long-sleeved, high-neck silhouette was modest, there was a translucent allure and lightness to the dresses that felt fresh. The winter floral prints and paisley scarf patterns were a feminine foil to the brand’s wide range of streetwise outerwear. The show closed with a shimmering passage of lamé pleated dresses that offered a sophisticated alternative to the traditional sequined party number.Selena Gomez was one of the first to make red carpet moves in Coach, stepping out at the Met Ball last May in a custom slip dress from the brand; she turned heads once again at the British Fashion Awards this past fall with an ethereal white satin Coach gown. The singer sat front row at the show this afternoon alongside stylish global celebrities such as New York rapper Joey Bada$$ and the adorable Japanese-American actress Kiko Mizuhara. Beyond the star-studded lineup lies a socially engaged audience of millennials who are tuning in to Coach’s newfound cool, thanks in no small part to Vevers. Given the collection he showed today, they’ll have even more reasons to stay plugged in.
13 February 2018
Creative director Stuart Vevers took Coach into the woods for Fall. He set the tone with a dimly lit forest on the runway, where smoke hovered ominously above piles of autumn leaves. There were old-school televisions strewn across the set that seemed to foretell some spookyBlair Witch Project–style narrative as well. The British designer has a deep affection for American pop culture, and has drawn on some of the nation’s landmark style references to help shape a compelling vision for Coach. If one had to sum up the story of this collection in a matter of words, then it might go something like “American Gothic goes to the Southwest.”Models floated out like a gorgeous troop of well-dressed specters, with their pretty ruffled hemlines sweeping the floor behind them. Vevers has done an impressive job of pushing Coach beyond its humble roots as a heritage leather goods brand, and this season he took things up a notch yet again. The distinctive stand-alone power of his dresses was evident right out of the gate. Indeed the opening look brought all the craftsmanship of the popular Coach leather jackets—tassels, braiding, silver charms—to the idea of evening. And though the long-sleeved, high-neck silhouette was modest, there was a translucent allure and lightness to the dresses that felt fresh. The winter floral prints and paisley scarf patterns were a feminine foil to the brand’s wide range of streetwise outerwear. The show closed with a shimmering passage of lamé pleated dresses that offered a sophisticated alternative to the traditional sequined party number.Selena Gomez was one of the first to make red carpet moves in Coach, stepping out at the Met Ball last May in a custom slip dress from the brand; she turned heads once again at the British Fashion Awards this past fall with an ethereal white satin Coach gown. The singer sat front row at the show this afternoon alongside stylish global celebrities such as New York rapper Joey Bada$$ and the adorable Japanese-American actress Kiko Mizuhara. Beyond the star-studded lineup lies a socially engaged audience of millennials who are tuning in to Coach’s newfound cool, thanks in no small part to Vevers. Given the collection he showed today, they’ll have even more reasons to stay plugged in.
13 February 2018
After Spring’s glittering homage to Keith Haring, Coach creative director Stuart Vevers is shifting the narrative of the brand into darkly romantic territory. “An American-gothic fairy tale born of New York,” was how he summed up the inspiration for his latest collection, the lookbook for which was shot against a cheeky montage of dimly lit midtown peepshows. Poison apples, spooky castles, and black roses were just some of the charming motifs that showed up on faded blue patchwork jeans, powder pink lamé sweaters, and the latest Coach handbag, a modern take on Bonnie Cashin’s classic duffel. Vevers’s approach to American craftsmanship has always been underscored by a sense of personality and play, and the new bags came laden with cool-girl attitude—whipstitching, heavy metal straps, and chunky charms that are best loaded up in handfuls. There was some pretty covetable footwear to rival all that arm candy as well, including lace-up cowboy boots that were spiked with witchy chic à la Stevie Nicks. You could sense the influence of the legendary folk-rock star in the many pretty lace- and sequin-trimmed black dresses that dotted the lineup, though, ultimately, those party-ready looks were created at the behest of Coach’s current circle of muses, including high-profile brand ambassador Selena Gomez. “I often ask myself, ‘What would Selena wear?’ ” said Vevers, picking one of the flirty, diaphanous frocks off the racks in the brand’s light-filled showroom.With a social media following in the hundreds of millions, Gomez has certainly helped to bring celebrity buzz to Coach—see her latest bombshell turn on the AMA red carpet last week in custom Coach for proof—but it’s Vevers who’s the real star of the brand’s recent success story. In the four years since he took the reins, the British designer has moved the American label beyond its heritage leather goods roots, adding best-selling shoes, coats, sweaters, and now party dresses to its growing repertoire. Vevers has partnered with Disney for a second time with a wickedly humorous twist on Snow White to follow the popular Mickey Mouse collaboration. With retro skateboards, logo hoodies, and monogram clutches for each of the Seven Dwarfs—Sleepy, Dopey, Sneezy, and the rest of the crew—the new collection is surely destined for a fairy-tale ending on the shop floor.
30 November 2017
The streets were paved with glitter at Coach’s show this afternoon, with a sparkling life-size replica of a New York alleyway sitting smack bang in the middle of the runway, giving aTinsel Townfilm set a run for its money. The brand has accumulated some major Hollywood players in the last few seasons, including Selena Gomez and James Franco, who is the face of Coach’s new men’s fragrance. The real star of today’s show, though, was cut from a different cloth entirely—the late, great Keith Haring, whose graffiti-style works left an indelible mark on the downtown scene in the early ’80s. Coach’s British creative director, Stuart Vevers, has a deep personal connection with Americana, and Haring—who is the second legendary Pop artist to be celebrated this week after Warhol at Calvin—had a democratic, art-for-all approach that resonates at the core of this American leather house.If you were expecting an homage to flashy, ’80s club-kid gear, however, then you’d have been mistaken. Instead, Vevers filtered Haring’s graphic lines through a ’30s lens in a way that was refreshingly unexpected, with pretty pastel slip dresses covered with the faint trace of Haring’s signature squiggles. His cartoonish characters were more recognizable on ’70s-style leather jackets and sweatshirts, a new addition to the brand’s popular series of novelty knits. Vevers riffled through the archives for handbag inspiration, hitting upon a Bonnie Cashin favorite from 1972, called the mailbox. The boxy cross-body handbag was treated with the same personalized magic that has made Coach’s accessories fly off the shelves since Vevers came on board in 2013; the designer now has a CFDA Award on his mantelpiece to boot. Laden with charming floral hardware, cheeky slogan patches, and Haring’s signature love hearts, the bags felt like modern keepsakes for the social media generation, as did the shoes, which were also replete with highly Instagrammable trimmings.Vevers has lately been extending his reach beyond the accessories closet, and this season he put eveningwear into the spotlight. The satin slips managed to combine the innocence of the prairie—think patchwork quilting and sun-bleached vintage floral petticoats—with the vibrant energy of the dance floor. You can certainly imagine a cool girl like Gomez boogying the night away in one of the twinkling pieces, perhaps with a tough biker jacket thrown over her shoulders.
Collectible party pieces like these are sure to find favor with stylish young magpies the world over.
12 September 2017
The streets were paved with glitter at Coach’s show this afternoon, with a sparkling life-size replica of a New York alleyway sitting smack bang in the middle of the runway, giving aTinsel Townfilm set a run for its money. The brand has accumulated some major Hollywood players in the last few seasons, including Selena Gomez and James Franco, who is the face of Coach’s new men’s fragrance. The real star of today’s show, though, was cut from a different cloth entirely—the late, great Keith Haring, whose graffiti-style works left an indelible mark on the downtown scene in the early ’80s. Coach’s British creative director, Stuart Vevers, has a deep personal connection with Americana, and Haring—who is the second legendary Pop artist to be celebrated this week after Warhol at Calvin—had a democratic, art-for-all approach that resonates at the core of this American leather house.If you were expecting an homage to flashy, ’80s club-kid gear, however, then you’d have been mistaken. Instead, Vevers filtered Haring’s graphic lines through a ’30s lens in a way that was refreshingly unexpected, with pretty pastel slip dresses covered with the faint trace of Haring’s signature squiggles. His cartoonish characters were more recognizable on ’70s-style leather jackets and sweatshirts, a new addition to the brand’s popular series of novelty knits. Vevers riffled through the archives for handbag inspiration, hitting upon a Bonnie Cashin favorite from 1972, called the mailbox. The boxy cross-body handbag was treated with the same personalized magic that has made Coach’s accessories fly off the shelves since Vevers came on board in 2013; the designer now has a CFDA Award on his mantelpiece to boot. Laden with charming floral hardware, cheeky slogan patches, and Haring’s signature love hearts, the bags felt like modern keepsakes for the social media generation, as did the shoes, which were also replete with highly Instagrammable trimmings.Vevers has lately been extending his reach beyond the accessories closet, and this season he put eveningwear into the spotlight. The satin slips managed to combine the innocence of the prairie—think patchwork quilting and sun-bleached vintage floral petticoats—with the vibrant energy of the dance floor. You can certainly imagine a cool girl like Gomez boogying the night away in one of the twinkling pieces, perhaps with a tough biker jacket thrown over her shoulders.
Collectible party pieces like these are sure to find favor with stylish young magpies the world over.
12 September 2017
Coach 1941 creative directorStuart Veversis in a party mood this season. He dressedSelena Gomez, the brand’s most high-profile ambassador, for theMet Galalast month in a floor-sweeping pink slip dress, and is letting those good times roll into Pre-Spring. The British designer has been quietly carving out a place for pretty little day frocks at theAmerican leather goods brandfor quite some time now, but it’s the first time he’s taken that idea into the night. The moody floral prints of Fall have been replaced with a glittering star-spangled motif that feels right for evening and worked particularly well on a tea-length, drop-waisted silhouette. Continuing that longer line was a 1930s-inspired silk and lace slip sprinkled with what Vevers called “prairie rivets,” a nice balance between tender and tough, and not too far removed from the look that Gomez wore to the Met.Still, the airs and graces of the red carpet are a long way off from the carefree spirit of Coach. To that end, there was a small but decidedly eye-catching offering of denim in the collection. The patchwork quilt jeans and peasant-style dress were far from basic, and a charming alternative to the current craze for reworked designer denim. The party-ready outerwear in the mix was just as attention-grabbing, including satin bombers and varsity jackets of the kind that Gomez has been seen wearing around town recently with her beau, The Weeknd. The singer isn’t the only celebrity to have fallen for the brand lately, either. Known as the “Rexy,” Coach’s dinosaur sweater has a seemingly endless list of famous fans that runs the gamut from young guns like Zayn Malik to style icons including Kate Moss. Vevers added a new novelty knit to the roster for Pre-Spring with (what else!) a unicorn sweater that’s likely to top holiday wish lists when it hits stores this November.
1 June 2017
Coach creative director Stuart Vevers might be British, but his fondness for Americana of the most nostalgic kind is well documented. With a makeshift prairie house at the end of the runway and tumbleweed scattered all over the set, it was clear where Vevers was headed with his inspiration for Fall 2017. There’s been a homespun thread running through the collections this past week, and at Coach that naiveté felt particularly right. Vevers has been honing the brand’s new ready-to-wear signatures with trimmings that have a one-of-a-kind feel since he took the reigns, and this season he took that idea to a new and charming place. His wildly popularly shearling coats and tough-girl biker jackets were softened up with sweet embellishments—floral and songbird appliqué, for example—and one fuzzy caramel-colored jacket was cut with an intarsia pattern that was literally in full bloom. The designer added puffer jackets to the growing repertoire of Coach outerwear, and the floral-print down-filled coats were as pretty as they were practical. They were certainly a refreshing counterpoint to the pumped-up sporty versions that are dominating the street style conversation right now.Vevers has put dresses high on the agenda of this leather goods brand as well, and the lovely midi-length frocks that came underneath those cozy layers deserved a closer look. Sprinkled with sequin roses and trimmed with lace, the wispy chiffon and cotton pieces had a soulful, city-centric grit paired with cozy shearling-lined sneakers, fuzzy baseball caps, and adorable mini handbags that were covered in quirky novelty motifs. The look was thoroughly modern, and yet came with all the comfort and personality of a vintage patchwork quilt. You could imagine a cool girl like Selena Gomez, who was sitting in the front row today, wrapping up in these clothes on a blustery New York City day. The singer is the new face of Coach, though the extent of her partnership with the brand is yet to be revealed. She looked right at home with a Coach fringed jacket thrown over her shoulders and the label’s best-selling Rogue bags at her side. Of course Vevers doesn’t need a celebrity endorsement to prove he’s got what it takes to succeed; he’s been consistently hitting all the right notes at Coach for the past three years. That said, it will be interesting to see where the new alliance will take the brand next.
14 February 2017
Who would’ve thought three years ago, before Stuart Vevers’s arrival at Coach, that we would be gathered at Pier 94 on a blustery winter night to watch the label’s Pre-Fall show? In a short amount of time, Vevers has worked magic at this American heritage brand: designing shearling coats and jackets that have spawned all sorts of copies and conceiving a T. rex mascot, Rexy, that you see all over town—on bus stop ads and dangling as charms from editors’ handbags. Last month, a new 20,000-square-foot Coach flagship opened its doors on Fifth Avenue. Not a bad way to cap off the company’s 75th year in business, but tonight was the real celebration.As an Englishman, Vevers has a deep well of curiosity and affection for America. That, and a savvy way of repackaging it. Boiled down to their essences, his collections are about playfully practical bags and shoes, and, by extension, item-y leather-driven outerwear, with clever statement knits and toss-them-on dresses to sweeten the mix. But each time, he finds a new approach. One season it’s cowboy boot–wearing prairie girls, the next it’s Elvis-loving biker babes. Pre-Fall was his most eclectic mash-up so far, starting with the fact that he put both women’s and men’s collections on the runway. “Uniting the collections got us thinking about togetherness and optimism,” Vevers said. “That inspired the clothes, the set, the casting. It’s diverse; it reflects real life.”There were girl and boy versions of biker jackets, varsity jackets, nostalgic shearlings, and M-65 parkas, nearly all of them bearing embroidered patches. “Give a Damn” read one, a slogan lifted from New York Mayor John Lindsay and the New York Urban Coalition circa 1968 that feels particularly apt circa now. In a bittersweet bit of synchronicity, with astronaut John Glenn’s death earlier today, Vevers put NASA logos on sweatshirts and space shuttle intarsias on sweaters, an elaboration of the Apollo sweater from his first Coach outing for Fall 2014. Vevers caught the fever for the statement tee early on via his collaboration with that artist Gary Baseman. That phenomenon played out here in sequined embroideries of The Stooges’s logo and ice cream cones not just on T-shirts, but leather jackets, too. Everybody wants to announce their identity on their clothes these days. Vevers is giving his customers all sorts of options, but he’s being a contrarian about it. You rarely, if ever, see a Coach logo. At least I didn’t spot one.
The show culminated with the 75-person (a coincidence, the PR insists) Young People's Chorus of New York City and their rendition of the Alicia Keys hit “Empire State of Mind.” Then it was time to toss one back and post an Instagram. Like the collection itself, the photogenic party space was a loving, slightly batty ode to Americana: 1970s gas guzzlers, roadside neon, and a “motel” straight out ofStranger Things. Hey, it’s not a melting pot; it’s a mosaic.
9 December 2016
Who would’ve thought three years ago, before Stuart Vevers’s arrival at Coach, that we would be gathered at Pier 94 on a blustery winter night to watch the label’s Pre-Fall show? In a short amount of time, Vevers has worked magic at this American heritage brand: designing shearling coats and jackets that have spawned all sorts of copies and conceiving a T. rex mascot, Rexy, that you see all over town—on bus stop ads and dangling as charms from editors’ handbags. Last month, a new 20,000-square-foot Coach flagship opened its doors on Fifth Avenue. Not a bad way to cap off the company’s 75th year in business, but tonight was the real celebration.As an Englishman, Vevers has a deep well of curiosity and affection for America. That, and a savvy way of repackaging it. Boiled down to their essences, his collections are about playfully practical bags and shoes, and, by extension, item-y leather-driven outerwear, with clever statement knits and toss-them-on dresses to sweeten the mix. But each time, he finds a new approach. One season it’s cowboy boot–wearing prairie girls, the next it’s Elvis-loving biker babes. Pre-Fall was his most eclectic mash-up so far, starting with the fact that he put both women’s and men’s collections on the runway. “Uniting the collections got us thinking about togetherness and optimism,” Vevers said. “That inspired the clothes, the set, the casting. It’s diverse; it reflects real life.”There were girl and boy versions of biker jackets, varsity jackets, nostalgic shearlings, and M-65 parkas, nearly all of them bearing embroidered patches. “Give a Damn” read one, a slogan lifted from New York Mayor John Lindsay and the New York Urban Coalition circa 1968 that feels particularly apt circa now. In a bittersweet bit of synchronicity, with astronaut John Glenn’s death earlier today, Vevers put NASA logos on sweatshirts and space shuttle intarsias on sweaters, an elaboration of the Apollo sweater from his first Coach outing for Fall 2014. Vevers caught the fever for the statement tee early on via his collaboration with that artist Gary Baseman. That phenomenon played out here in sequined embroideries of The Stooges’s logo and ice cream cones not just on T-shirts, but leather jackets, too. Everybody wants to announce their identity on their clothes these days. Vevers is giving his customers all sorts of options, but he’s being a contrarian about it. You rarely, if ever, see a Coach logo. At least I didn’t spot one.
The show culminated with the 75-person (a coincidence, the PR insists) Young People's Chorus of New York City and their rendition of the Alicia Keys hit “Empire State of Mind.” Then it was time to toss one back and post an Instagram. Like the collection itself, the photogenic party space was a loving, slightly batty ode to Americana: 1970s gas guzzlers, roadside neon, and a “motel” straight out ofStranger Things. Hey, it’s not a melting pot; it’s a mosaic.
9 December 2016
Making a fashion statement en masse, or what is known as girl-squad style, has quickly usurped the selfie in the age of social media—just askTaylor Swift. ClearlyCoach 1941executive creative director Stuart Vevers had girl gangs of a more throwback, rebellious variety in his mind’s eye for Spring 2017. Along with varsity jackets and the brand’s popular shearling coats, biker jackets have became a Coach mainstay under Vevers. This season they were tougher and more embellished than ever, covered with handfuls of studs, fringing galore, and all manner of charms and embroidery, which fed into the quirky, hand-hewn aesthetic of last season. It was the most unlikely outerwear mashup in the lineup—one that was parka in the front and fringed moto jacket in the back—that felt fresh and new for now though, as well as the patched and quilted shrunken jackets with a homespun, prairie feeling.The British Vevers has a self-confessed obsession with classic Americana, and it’s not surprising that Elvis showed up in his psychobilly mix. The chunky medallions and miniature handbags that came cut and pasted with images of the King were reminiscent of the stylings of the Elvis fans that Swiss photographer Karlheinz Weinberger captured back in the ’50s. Elvis’s influence came through again in the chunky creeper boots and moccasins, a shoe silhouette that has been making the rounds in New York. The footwear was just as tricked out, with rock ’n’ roll trimmings—studs, grommets—and pretty rose embroidery, in a way that should appeal to the magpie sensibilities of Coach’s millennial audience,Strip back all the more-is-more cool girl bravado though, and the lighter floral notes in the collection had a stand-alone power of their own. The sheer lace-trimmed dresses that came tied up in black ribbons and printed with flowers like vintage petticoats added a welcome sense of romance to the show. It wasn’t the first time that Vevers has made a case for the pretty little summer dress at Coach—last year his Spring 2016 floral frocks stole the spotlight. With their easy drop-waisted silhouette and quirky details—note the anarchic scribblings on the petals—his new dresses are likely to come up roses on the shop floor in six months time, too.
13 September 2016
Stuart Vevers is one of those designers as concerned with the bottom line as with the hemline, as preoccupied with the commercial afterlife of a product as the exact angle for its runway debut. Those designers are rare—although, increasingly, less so, given the demands of IPOs, CEOs, and, increasingly, a press corps that devours financial information as rabidly as new lines.Coachhas been through some rocky times of late, but the company’s latest financial results are rosy (sales in the latest quarter spiked up 13 percent on the year), and revenue stands at $4.24 billion annually. Before his Spring 2017 menswear show, Vevers clutched a lukewarm latte and jabbed at looks pinned to a board: “That’s the best seller,” he said, highlighting first a bag, then a coat, then a T-shirt, with lightning speed.Vevers is turned on by the idea of dressing the world, which is why his Coach 1941 collections—for him, and her—are so immediately and easily accessible. For Spring, it was once again a riff on American wardrobe classics. “Every look is styled with a T-shirt,” stated Vevers. They were, but it was more interesting that the ethos of the T-shirt—an American working-class underwear staple pulled center stage in the mid-’50s, and now an indispensable everyday staple for the majority of the planet—informed every piece. Coach clothing is easy to wear, uncomplicated, fuss-free. It’s also comfortingly familiar—both in that we know the garments from our own wardrobes (classic bombers, skinny pants, penny loafers, those T-shirts) and because they have, over the seasons Vevers has been designing, created an identifiable Coach look. They included, naturally, multiple iterations of the best sellers Vevers pointed out. “We’ve reset the idea of the brand people thought they knew,” said he. “Now we can push further.”As befits a designer interested in commerce, the push was as much about selling as showing the collection. Vevers chose to respond to the ongoing debates about instant access selling. His tagline: See now, buy now—or else! After the show, Coach will release a selection of pieces from the collection, in limited quantities. When they’re gone, they’re gone—and, presumably, you have to wait until next spring. “We trialed it with a handbag in the last women’s collection,” said Vevers. “It sold out in an hour and a half.” Impressive.
13 June 2016
Coachturns 75 this year and executive creative director Stuart Vevers is busy putting down his own milestones on the timeline with the first Pre-Spring collection in the brand’s history. The British designer has brought a youthful, buzzy energy to the accessories house since he joined in 2013, and builds on that momentum with his latest offering. Fast cars and the open road have been recurring themes for Vevers, and this season the archetypal rebel without a cause gets thrown into the melee of beloved Americana references he’s mined in the past, including the tried-and-true collegiate wardrobe and more quirky pop culture motifs (yes, Felix the Cat, we’re looking at you!).The resulting clothes reinforce the cool-girl attitude and irreverent wit that has been Vevers’s calling card since he began. Outerwear is undoubtedly one of the brand’s strong suits, and the hybrid varsity-cum-moto jacket takes several forms for Pre-Spring, with raglan sleeves, fringing, and novelty appliqué all remixed and remastered in ways that are appealing and fresh. The best-selling floral dresses of Spring 2016 get a moody, biker-babe update as pretty patchwork plaid frocks, while Western-inspired silk shirts are finished with charming retro touches such as rocket launcher patterns. Vevers drives home his message with the accessories, and Coach’s utilitarian Rogue bag seems poised to be a future classic alongside the anniversary saddle bags in stores now, especially given the range of collectible styles on offer. Chances are, the patchwork and suede fringed versions in the bunch will fly off the shelves this winter.
7 June 2016
It’s been two years sinceStuart Veverswas charged with givingCoacha reset. In that time he’s honed in on new brand signatures to go with the much-loved handbags, and made a particularly compelling case for the pretty little Coach summer dress last season—whimsical festival-ready frocks that have since been snapped by Colette, arguably one of the coolest stores in Paris.For Fall 2016, the British designer took that bohemian spirit back to school, so to speak, and the show space was made to look like the gymnasium of some Ivy League college. Vevers likes to immerse himself in the nostalgia of cult cinema, and his references for Fall were a disparate and quirky mix that included Jodie Foster inTaxi Driver, Rob Lowe inYoungblood, and Scooby-Doo’s bespectacled sidekick, Velma Dinkley. You could trace Velma and Jodie’s characters in the kooky butterfly-collar dresses that were a patchwork of paisley and plaid, the 2.0 installment of those popular summer dresses.Ultimately, though, it was the tougher pieces in the collection that stole the show this time around. Vevers zeroed in on the current trend for shearling with his very first collection, and his sheepskin coats have proved to be a street style hit—undoubtedly one of the warmest layers to stand up to the arctic temperatures that swept the East Coast this past weekend. The most appealing new coats came lined with groovy prints and were finished with a rugged hand. The collection lost some of its momentum in the accessories department, and it felt as if the block-heeled boots and structured gym bags lacked some of the charm of seasons past. Still, there was definitely something warm and inviting about the new fur-lined high-top sneakers: Young fans of the brand who aren’t ready to ditch their flats for the incoming stiletto trend will get their kicks here.
16 February 2016
Familiarity, they say, breeds contempt. So what does the unfamiliar gestate, in a creative brain? Fascination, perhaps. Stuart Vevers certainly seems to be fascinated with his new digs atCoach 1941, its HQ towering over the High Line bang in the center of New York City. There’s a wide-eyed wonder, a wholehearted embracing of Americana in his work. It must all seem like a dream to a boy from Yorkshire who dared to think big.That’s painting Vevers as a slack-jawed yokel, but his Coach 1941 collections do play fast and bold with American archetypes in a way that an American designer would never attempt. He’s evidently enamored with his new home, so after a Spring show devoted to Andy Warhol (could there be a more American artist?), he dedicated his Fall 2016 collection to American music, to late-’70s hip-hop, and Bruce Springsteen.Sounds like a strange mash-up: Fab 5 Freddy and The Boss? It mostly manifested in accessory tricks, such as Born In the USA bandanas knotted around necks and hips, or deep bucket hats tugged low on the face. A few jackets in patched leathers of various variegated browns were distinctly ’70s, but otherwise what Vevers showed was a luxed-out bunch of menswear staples, the sort of lumberjack shirts, peacoats, down jackets, and battered Perfectos that guys (and a few girls) have already got in their closets. Granted, a few of the leathers looked as if half a dozen jackets were ripped apart and stitched together in a modern, never-before-seen hybrid. They were a lot of work, but they wound up appearing pretty basic.Which is a decidedly good thing. Vevers talked about the notion of “heroing the blue collar” in this collection; I wound up thinking how old-fashioned it seems to wear a tricky, tricksy outfit that seems overtly “designed.”It was meat-and-potatoes, blue-collar garments—staples, basics, codes, whatever you want to dub them—that Vevers was really interested in this time around:Archetypeswas his choice noun: “A cool sweatshirt, a witty bag, and a pumped-up sneaker—that’s what appeals to me today, and to a younger guy. That could be luxury.”Coolis a word Vevers is interested in, too—a quintessentially American notion, it popped up in the ’40s, when Coach was founded (the label celebrates its 75th birthday this year) and when the idea of the teenager first began to be mooted as a cultural touchstone. And Vevers’s clothes today looked, simply, cool.
Cool jackets, cool sweaters, a cool bunch of the brand’s signature reversed shearling coats—“our version of fur”— whose fuzzy-wuzzy dandelion-fluff volume emphatically punctuated the show. Vevers asserts those sell out as soon as they hit the floor. They were great, like the rest of these clothes, although they weren’t going to move the goalposts of the fashion business.Neither should they aspire to. Accessible luxury is the game Coach is in, but, for Vevers, accessibility isn’t just financial but aesthetic. His Coach clothes are dumb—but dumb cleverly done. References everyone can understand, in clothes everyone can get, both ideologically and on their backs. The designer batted at the gargantuan down coat, inflated toGhostbustersStay Puft Marshmallow Man proportions, and said, laughing: “I do see people dressed like this in NYC!” I’ve been there in February for Fashion Week, so I agree. If there’s any justice in the world, this collection means Vevers will see plenty more customers come fall—and they’ll be bearing the Coach label.
9 January 2016
We knew Stuart Vevers’s new take onCoachwas going to be a hit when a public relations exec we know reported seeing the metallic silver, kitten-heeled loafers from his Fall collection for the label and making a special trip to the brand’s Soho store to preorder them. This is a woman who shops high-end designer and, as a European, has no warm and fuzzy feelings about her first Coach bag in the ’80s. If Vevers can bag an unlikely customer like her, he’s really onto something.The Englishman’s success so far comes down to a couple of things: an understanding and appreciation for Coach’s all-American, no-nonsense roots and an item-driven approach that has generated several must-have pieces beyond Fall’s silvery shoes; see the shearling-lined combat boots and the oversize shearling coats from his Fall ’14 debut for starters. His first Pre-Fall collection for the brand looks to have no shortage of new It items, either, key among them one leopard-print faux-fur peacoat with pom-pom buttons and a whole slew of shearling jackets and vests. Beyond the excellent outerwear, the Western shirts with multicolor piping are bound to be popular as are the micro-floral-printed frocks that looked like gothier versions of the dresses he put on the runway for Spring.We’d be remiss not to discuss the bags. There were many different styles on offer, but this reporter, who does happen to have warm and fuzzy feelings about her first Coach bag, liked a shoulder bag with the heritage turn lock best.
8 December 2015
Stuart Veverswalks to work atCoachalong the High Line every day, lucky thing. The aerial park, with its grasses and fig trees and urban butterflies, tracks across the west side of Manhattan as one of the most joyously human examples of industrial repurposing in our times. The new Coach offices are under construction near the end of the High Line at 30th Street, as it happens, and it was adjacent to that location, on a perfectly sunny September afternoon, that the company invited the press, buyers, and celebrities to step along the old railway tracks and into a temporary grass-planted space to see the first big runway show Coach has staged for New York Fashion Week.As it also happens, 2016 marks the 75th anniversary of Coach, “So,” said Vevers, “it felt like a good moment to show we have confidence.” The values of Coach have always been purely American and pragmatic, a company proud to fulfill everyday needs. But in the 21st century, Vevers is one of those designers who questions how, and whether, that democratic ideal in fashion is reaching young people at attainable prices, and in ways that will excite them. His answer was to think about “a magpie girl who goes on road trips, picking up Western things, but also might steal from her granny’s closet on the Upper East Side.”If so, granny was a bit of a ’70s bohemian, because this girl’s dresses were all made from micro-floral multicolored patchworks, though they were definitely a lot shorter than they were at Woodstock, and with an easily relatable pull-on-and-go attitude about them. Still, Vevers is not someone who will go off on narrative raptures about fictional muses. Refreshingly, he’s a down-to-earth product designer who is good at thinking about such things as what a functional cut-down cowboy boot should look like for a customer’s money: i.e., comfortable, with a lot of collaged fun thrown into the bargain. “I don’t think I’ve ever put a heel on the runway at Coach,” he said, laughing. “I just want to make it feel light in spirit and bring some joy to it, and maybe a sense of the American outdoors.”It worked. Coach is, of course, a great American bag company—and there were plenty of respectfully traditional saddle-leather hobo shapes reprised in the show—but it also needs to convert a new generation to its faith. And, oddly, on the High Line today it felt as if Stuart Vevers, an Englishman abroad, is the person who might be able to see exactly how to do that.
15 September 2015
Call it a fanny pack (U.S.), call it a bum bag (U.K.), or call it a hip pack (Coach show notes). Whatever your dialect, one thing's for certain—only Batman has ever made belt-borne personal storage look unequivocally cool. This afternoon, though, Stuart Vevers grasped that nettle with gusto. "I just couldn't resist it," he said afterward. And if not now, when? For this was Coach's first men's runway show—a moment for Vevers to let rip his imagined brand architecture for this cleanish slate at the leather goods behemoth. Neatly, the designer encapsulated that as "Kennedy boys meet Beach Boys meet Beastie Boys." And even though there were girls on that skate-park runway, too, wearing sized-down simulacra destined for sale at Opening Ceremony, you could see what he meant.Coach men's bold new unorthodoxy was most strongly expressed in the often fluoro, rarely faded abstract print (vaguely reminiscent of indigenous Australian art) that shouted on bowling shirts, macs, bags, and Vans-like sneakers. Big cat prints—tiger and leopard—in plum, navy, and gold seemed almost tame by comparison but gave good snarl when they popped from parka hoods. Those skate sneakers were arresting but were out-oomphed by a series of trippy-print pool slides (some strapped with shearling) that didn't need Bryan Boy in the room to make you think "Bryan Boy."Beneath all this mashed-up kapow! lurked an undertow of concerted slouch. Haphazardly patched leather Harringtons and parkas had been worked hard to look so soft. The all-important bags—hip packs apart—tended to temper punchy color with unfussy functionality. This runway run-out offered a coherent, commercial, powerfully defined yet unpretentious vision of accessible millennial luxury. Although it couldn't rehabilitate the fanny pack.
13 June 2015
Stuart Vevers has spent the last five summers crisscrossing the U.S. on Amtrak trains. He's got a bit of the amateur anthropologist about him and no shortage of an expat's enthusiasm, shown in the way he picks up little treasures and ephemera and reinterprets them for Coach.Today's set was an elevated train track surrounded on two sides by a painting of snow-covered hills: Brooklyn meets the Great Plains. That city-country concept extended to the clothes. The key piece was a black leather biker spliced with an un-dyed shearling sheepherder coat, equal parts cool and sturdy. But there were at least a dozen more jackets that had the winter-weary crowd buzzing, from pixelated plaid barn coats to straight-up Perfectos with "Wanted" or "Nomad" written in script across the back. Outerwear is a natural extension for this American leather goods brand, and Vevers, who hails most recently from Loewe, aSpanishleather goods brand, is doing a bang-up job of it. The coats stomped out on shearling-lined lace-up moto boots. Practical, but not so much so that they didn't stoke desire.Finding that balance outside of outerwear and accessories is a bit more challenging. Vevers gave it a go with dresses that combined sweatshirt material with silk bandanna patches and prairie prints. The collection's other enticement was its attitude. Skull sweaters, found-object necklaces, and cross-body saddle bags that spelled out "Lucky" skewed young, but you don't have to be in the first blush of youth to have a rebellious streak. The black leather jackets covered with pins had all-ages appeal.
12 February 2015
When he was just a lad in Yorkshire, Stuart Vevers decorated his teenage bedroom with aMy Own Private Idahoposter. A few years on—via stints at Bottega Veneta, Mulberry, and Loewe—his talent has teleported him to New York to become the creative director of Coach. For the house's debut men's ready-to-wear collection, Vevers indulged that teenage cinephile with compelling results. In what was billed as a presentation but was really a show, the shadows of Keanu, River, and all the other young Americans Vevers once watched flickered through the luxe-without-fuss outerwear that starred above a supporting counterpoint of charcoal trousers. Many of the standout pieces were shearling, with some layered over leather homages to the type II Levis jacket worn so serenely, if menacingly, by Martin Sheen inBadlands.Even when sheepskin is as high quality as it was here, it's bulky, unyielding stuff—yet the imprint of the Perfecto and the M65 was drawn with love and delicacy. Plenty of inside-out collar and pocket detail provided texture and eye-snag. Ovine overload was averted thanks to a cutaway into varsity and donkey jackets, as well as parkas touched with a camo print that echoed Vevers' last women's collection. That camo rustled on the panels of limited-edition totes too. Still, it was sheep that made for the keepers here, all the way down to Vevers' furry-tongued sneakers. Metal feather charms, leather dog tags, and T-shirts with everything added what Vevers called "almost a thrift feel," but that was a stylist's touch. What was indisputably impressive was how many of the main-event outerwear pieces looked so properly robust and ready to stand up to a life of hard, improving wear. "A lot of the materials we used are very sturdy," said Vevers: "I like pieces that feel like there is a lot of life to them. And there is something about being in New York City that reinforces that—people there engage in fashion, but it's got to work too." This collection certainly did.
9 January 2015
Cartoon characters crawling across sweaters and decorating leather bags. Parkas made from pastel synthetic fur fluff. Shower slides and platform clogs. Stuart Vevers isn't holding anything back in his repositioning of Coach. On the runway, at least, this is not the classic, all-American brand that your mother and your grandmother knew. Revisiting the archives was a route that Vevers, installed as creative director last year, could've chosen, but so far that doesn't seem to be his plan. Yes, he's looking at American iconography (see: the gas station set and the photos of the Texas Panhandle lining the runway). And he's a keen observer of the country's iconic youth cultures—he mentioned music, surfing, and skating backstage. But he sees those things with an expat's eyes. Vevers, who is British, is bringing his London vibe to Coach; it's youthful, playful, a bit twisted.As shifts go, the one Vevers is attempting is fairly seismic, and for us old-timers who carried Coach bags in the positively staid shades of navy, burgundy, and brown in the (gasp) 1980s, it might take a bit of getting used to. That's OK, we're probably not the intended audience. The kids? Bags with studs that look like they've been painted over with nail polish should prove fairly irresistible to them. Same goes for Gary Baseman's comic book creatures, which appear not just on sweaters but also on outerwear, T-shirts, and bags. And ditto the leopard-spot peacoats and candy-colored leather miniskirts. As befits a collection aimed at the hearts of teens and twentysomethings, the look was seriously leggy. Ankle-scraping flares looked particularly great. Vevers said he did some informal internal polling when he was designing the collection. "The young people in the office didn't have the same hang-ups or references I did at 40 [years old] about flares, and that appealed to me: that Coach could speak to a generation that doesn't have all these automatic references." If Instagram is anything to go by—it lit up after this morning's show—Vevers has definitely got their attention now.
4 September 2014
This could be a big week for contemporary brands and the women who shop them. Luella Bartley and Katie Hillier will show their long-awaited first collection for Marc by Marc Jacobs on Tuesday. And today, the British designer Stuart Vevers made a confident debut for Coach at the American leather goods house's first-ever ready-to-wear presentation. When Vevers, who previously helmed the LVMH-owned Loewe label, was tapped to replace Reed Krakoff last year, insiders wondered about the need for a clothing line from Coach. Could Vevers make it relevant?He could and he did. Editors walked away raving about the collection, not least of all because of the accessibility factor. Vevers' coats and jackets will top out at around $3,000—an opening price for a shearling from a European luxury brand—and most will retail for much less than that.Vevers approached his new project by asking himself what makes Coach unique in the fashion world. Its Americanness was the answer he kept on coming back to. So he gave good ol' U.S. of A. classics like the jean jacket and firemen's coats fashionable tweaks, putting a removable shearling collar on the former and cutting the latter in rugged leather with suede accents and heavy-duty brass closures. Outerwear was the star of the show—the oversize red-and-black houndstooth pieces in particular—but Vevers has a sense of humor that should play well to the young customers he needs to be wooing. The Apollo sweater was a dead ringer for the pullover little Danny Torrance wore inThe Shining. Quirky beauties like Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek apparently resonated with him, as did the work of Joel Sternfeld. A late 1970s suburban scene from Sternfeld's book of photographsAmerican Prospectsformed the show's backdrop.On the accessories front, in contrast, it was the young women Vevers encounters on the streets of his adopted hometown of New York City that gave him his starting point. Shearling-lined, rubber-soled wedge boots and pebbled-leather cross-body bags drove home his message about function and utility. Vevers' Coach has good prospects.
6 February 2014