Treasure hunter
Stuart Vevers’s natural optimism is clear in his approach to preserving Coach’s rich heritage, the designer enthusiastically weaving threads from the past into his own creations.
“WE HAVE THIS INCREDIBLE HERITAGE, BUT WE’RE ALSO THE NEW KID ON THE BLOCK”
The Coach sneakers on Stuart Vevers’s feet are brandnew, save for a few stains from the night before, when he wore them at Coach’s pre-fall show, a celebratory debut. “Box-fresh! I love a white sneaker,” he says enthusiastically with a smile. Vevers is effervescently enthusiastic. He loves Selena Gomez, of whom he had just seen a photograph wearing Coach for the first time. “Thrilled! She’s an amazing woman.” (A few days after the interview, Coach confirmed that Gomez has signed on for a collaboration.) He loves space, which inf luenced his latest pre-fall collection. He loves artist Karen Kilimnik, whose work he has purchased recently. He loves vintage shopping, he loves New York, the Beastie Boys, the breaking down of traditions, and he loves his job at Coach. “I love everything about my job!”
The feeling is mutual; Coach, and fashion, love Vevers right back. Only three and a half years into his creative directorship at the American leathergoods label, his appointment has revitalised it. Heritage is weighty, but under Vevers’s touch it isn’t a brief to tick off, but rather something that enriches his designs. Leathers used for baseball mitts were rediscovered by Vevers and are now used in apparel such as varsity jackets that have become part of Coach’s lexicon today. It harks back to the work of Bonnie Cashin, Coach’s designer during the 1960s, who took the mundane and reinvented it for fashion, like using industrial hardware in accessories and clothing, and designing a handbag inspired by an ordinary paper shopping bag.
His regular vintage shopping jaunts have taken him across Japan and the United States, with Santa Fe a recent favourite, but Vevers doesn’t replicate the past as much as take it apart and zero in on just a whiff of its essence. “We try them on, see proportions, see the look and then redesign everything and recreate everything,” he tells Vogue in his midtown-west New York office. “There’s a strong design filter. I still sketch a lot and I encourage everyone in the design team to sketch a lot, because sketching is an important part of the creative process.”
For pre-fall, he looked to space. The NASA logo appeared on jumpers and embroidered patches of rockets and planetary systems appeared on suede biker jackets and messenger bags. Space has been a recurring motif for Vevers at Coach, with his first collection featuring an Apollo 11 sweater. “There’s something about the possibility and optimism, and the nostalgia in it for me,” he says of his fascination with the American space program. “I find it very charming, and the American symbolism of it, too.”
If there is a singular thread that links Vevers’s collections for Coach, it is the expectation that each season will select and highlight a feature of Americana. The pre-fall show the night before recreated a suburban parking lot in a New York city pier show space using gravel and concrete-lodged trees, with street lights to delineate the seating and runway. The finale had a New York children’s choir sing the now canonical Empire State of Mind by Jay-Z and Alicia Keys, Vevers’s idea. Post-show, the backdrop motel lit up and turned into a fully functioning bar, the flashing neon lights adding to the overdose of senses – a bit of Vegas, a bit of New York, a bit of American suburbia. The rich panoply of Americana is on offer at Coach, layered with the British designer’s conscious sense of irony on top.
Slogans like “I believe” and “Give a damn” appeared on apparel and accessories, putting in context a shaky political period of Vevers’s adopted home country. On politics, he is anticipating a fallout, whatever it may be. “Yesterday, to me, was a great day to celebrate togetherness,” he says, noting the children’s choir. “One of the things I love about fashion is that it reflects the times. I think we’re yet to see how it will reflect.”
What fashion is sure to be reflecting, especially at Coach, is the high-low aesthetic that Vevers is such a fan of. The Karen Kilimnik artwork is one of his more recent additions to his beginner’s art collection of more than 15 pieces. I point out it’s a solid start as a burgeoning collector. “They didn’t necessarily cost a lot,” he says cheerfully. Likewise at Coach, prices are kept on the friendlier side. “What’s interesting to me right now is that the rules are breaking down, the rules of gender, the rule that luxury has to be formal, that it has to be an investment. I love today that a sweatshirt, a sneaker or a playful backpack can be luxury,” he enthuses. “One of the reasons I wanted to become part of Coach is because there was something that felt right for our times.”
And even though Coach marked its 75th anniversary last year, its absence of long-held history like its European counterparts has made it all the more intriguing to him, as someone who was schooled in the studios of Spanish house Loewe and Britain’s Mulberry. “I kind of like that tension that we have this incredible heritage, but we’re also the new kid on the block in the traditional leathergoods world, so we can offer something different,” he says. “Coach has a different approach to luxury. It is warmer, friendlier and inclusive, which feels modern to me. Fashion could have more of that.” Fashion, and the world in general, should take note.