AN ENGLISHMAN IN NEW YORK
HE PUT MULBERRY ON THE FASHION MAP, MADE THE WORLD LUST AFTER LOEWE AND HAS TRANSFORMED COACH FROM A MID-MARKET ACCESSORIES BRAND INTO A COVETED FASHION HOUSE. Farrah Storr MEETS THE MAN WHO KNOWS EXACTLY WHAT WOMEN WANT
The man behind the It-bag phenomenon is bringing his Midas touch to Coach – ELLE meets creative director Stuart Vevers
”COOL IS AN EFFORTLESSNESS ABOUT HOW YOU BEHAVE. IT’S A BELIEF IN YOURSELF AND A CERTAIN AMOUNT of rebellion ”
THE STREET WHERE THE COOLEST MAN IN FASHION LIVES
doesn’t look particularly cool. It sits a block or so back from Central Park, far up on the city’s Upper West Side – a place neither remarkable for its location nor its architecture. It’s a family sort of place: fathers slope around with prams while mothers power walk in Lululemon leggings, yoga mats strapped to their backs like rifles. There is the occasional tourist, too, bound for the American Museum of Natural History or legendary deli and bagel shop Barney Greengrass; but mostly they’ve simply taken a wrong turn on their way to the park.
And yet this is where Stuart Vevers calls home. To be fair, his house, a handsome brownstone with a flight of wide stone steps, is the best on the block. Pretty net curtains hang in the doorway and, when you ring the bell, there is Stuart peeping out from behind them – a smiling feline face that beams with warmth.
‘Hello! Come in,’ he says, sweeping an arm out to guide me inside. Vevers is famously warm. Ask around and you’ll hear the same thing: ‘Stuart? He’s so lovely! He’s such fun! He’s just a really decent guy.’ But if nice guys finish last, he is here to tell a different story. Since 2O13, Vevers has been the executive creative director of Coach – the accessories label beloved by Americans since 1941. For years, everyone from box-fresh college graduates to career-mountaineering women had a Coach bag in their wardrobe. Mothers bought their daughters Coach handbags; their daughters bought their daughters Coach handbags; their daughters bought… well, you get the idea. Which meant that, over the decades, a Coach handbag began to stand for more than a sign of American good taste. It became a sign to the world that you were on your way.
And then it all went a bit wrong. Not just for Coach, but for every bag that wasn’t an It bag: an accessory so laden with swagger and status that the lovely, mild-mannered bags that came before them didn’t stand a chance. If a Coach bag told the world you were on your way, the It bag declared you had arrived.
It’s ironic that the man responsible for It-bag phenomena (Vevers designed the Emmy at Mulberry, the Giselle at Luella, updated the Amazona at Loewe and is creating a storm with the Tabby at Coach) was drafted in to do a ‘transformation’ job at the US leather goods company. It’s not that Coach was failing, you are to understand; quite the opposite. When Vevers came in, it was still the big-gun job in the US (Coach has over 96O standalone stores across the globe and there are rumours his is one of the best paid design jobs in the country). It’s just the brand wasn’t part of the conversation. And Tapestry, the company that owns Coach (as well as Kate Spade and Stuart Weitzman) wanted it talked about again, across every platform and among every generation.
Which is miraculously what Vevers has achieved in the relatively short space of seven years. Since joining the brand in 2O13, he has made Coach a destination, a talking point, a brand that celebrities hope to get ‘the call’ from. He has given it attitude, ballast and, most of all, a strong identity that consumers can relate to. Look at the brand’s catwalk shows (introduced by Vevers from SS16) and you’ll see the Coach customer laid bare: a contemporary individual who embodies a unique American spirit. A sartorial pioneer, a little bit louche, a little bohemian and deeply cool. The Coach woman is the grown-up version of the chic girl you hoped to never get on your student exchange programme.
The word ‘cool’ comes up a lot when discussing Vevers. One imagines this is both hugely complimentary but also problematic. After all, how can anyone claim ownership of something so elusive? Still, he’s clearly intrigued by it. He tells me he once hired a professor who specialises in the study of ‘American cool’ to help him with some bits at Coach. And his own personal credentials are certainly hip – he is married to fashion illustrator Benjamin Seidler and counts designers Gabriela Hearst, the Rodarte sisters and super stylist Katie Grand as friends. His home, too, is a paean to lowkey cool. There is a lot of dark wood, an arts and craft-style staircase and art books stacked neatly on the shelf.
Vevers is 46 now, though he looks remarkably younger. He has a quiet, watchful face, like a character from a medieval painting, only more beautiful. When we meet he wears the uniform of the fashionably unencumbered: just an expensive-looking black jumper, a shirt and jeans. It is somewhat of a trademark look for Vevers – simple, effortless. I ask whether he considers himself to be cool, even though he’s on the gentle turn towards 5O. ‘I think it’s really hard to consider yourself cool,’ he laughs. ‘I think there are certain things I’m drawn to that I think are associated with that word.’ He pauses for a moment.
‘I suppose I’ve always been fascinated by counter culture and youth culture. My interpretation is that [cool] is a certain effortlessness about how you behave. It’s a sort of belief in yourself and I think also a certain amount of rebellion.’
Self belief and a certain amount of rebellion are what Vevers has running through his blood. He grew up in the north of England; not in the bustle of Manchester or the 199Os club-cool of Leeds but first in Doncaster, later in Carlisle. His father was a painter and decorator while his mother still works as a cleaner. ‘My parents gave me my work ethic,’ he says, his accent still solidly northern with its flat vowels and sing-song quality.
‘When I decided I wanted to do fashion my dad was really against it,’ he remembers. ‘Both my parents left school at 15,
although my dad went back [to night school] because he had missed out on an education but wanted to do something for his family and himself. He instilled in me his kind of regret that he hadn’t had the opportunity. In fact, I believe his story was that he didn’t go to grammar school because his parents couldn’t afford the uniform…’ he trails off.
Vevers’ interest in fashion came in two waves. First, a grandmother who made costumes for an amateur dramatics society then, later, an interest in the 199Os northern clubbing scene. ‘I learned about fashion through nightclubs,’ he says matter-of-factly. ‘I was tall from a young age, so I could get into nightclubs from about 15.’ It was on the dancefloors of clubs such as Manchester’s The Haçienda that he first remembers experimenting with fashion. He recalls wearing an outfit inspired by Rifat Ozbek’s SS9O collection, ‘I was head-to-toe white: a hoodie, white jeans, Timberland boots – well, Timberland-type boots probably…’ Another time, he enlisted the help of his grandmother to help him make a pair of PVC jeans for a night out. ’That’s when I started to learn about fashion. That’s when it clicked: Oh, there’s an industry, there’s a world out there, and then I was like, That’s what I want to do. That’s where I want to go.’
He moved to London to study fashion design at the University of Westminster. On the eve of graduation, students were told that the college had been approached by Calvin Klein to put forward suitable candidates for a role in the brand’s womenswear division. Vevers was not one of those candidates. ‘And it makes complete sense,’ he says now. ‘My style, my college work… was not that aesthetic.’ But he was undeterred. ‘I persuaded a friend who had been selected to tell me where the interview was and I just turned up and knocked on the door.’
What happened next would change the course of his life. The woman conducting the interview was head of womenswear at Calvin Klein. Vevers asked her to look at his work and give him some advice. She took his portfolio, flicked through it and agreed with his college: his work was not right for Calvin Klein. Instead, she told him she was going to put him up for something in a different department: accessories. She asked Vevers to do a project. He stayed up for almost 48 hours doing it. A week later, he was offered the job. ‘So I never actually met anyone from that department,’ he laughs. ‘I was just hired based on that project.’
By his own admission, he was ’pushy’, which is completely counter to the smiley though subtly reserved man sat in front of me. He says his apparent confidence back then came from a place of ‘fear’.
‘I do credit my father, in a way, for pushing me, because he was like, “This is a waste of time, where is this going to lead?” I think it gave me a kick to be like, OK, I’ve got to prove him wrong. This has to work. So it’s probably how I got my break, through being really persistent and probably annoying.’
Pushy and annoying may have been two parts of his formula, but the last part was pure, unadulterated talent. It transpired relatively quickly that Vevers could design bags that women not only loved, but fetishised. At one point he was designing accessories for Luella, Louis Vuitton (under Marc Jacobs) and Givenchy. He describes it as a ‘relentless’ period, a familiar refrain in the fashion world, but says, ‘I don’t think I ever learnt so much as I did during that time.’ And then came his big break: taking over as creative director of Mulberry in 2OO4. Mulberry wasn’t really on anyone’s radar at that
' I GOT MY BREAK IN THE fashion industry THROUGH BEING REALLY PERSISTENT AND PROBABLY ANNOYING"
point, but Vevers came in and blasted it with a sense of identity and – more importantly – edge. He created bags that were classic yet distinctive. They came with their own names, like a gaggle of naughty schoolgirls (the Emmy, the Brooke) and were slung over the shoulders of the world’s hippest celebrities: Alexa Chung, Kate Moss, Kate Bosworth. Suddenly a brand that had been a quiet, almost fusty wallflower came striding in with huge cojones. He won Accessories Designer of the Year at The British Fashion Awards in 2OO6 and, just as the brand was unfurling to the world, Vevers was tapped to head up Loewe.
It was another transformation job: a quiet, traditional house that was in need of some attention. It was a middle child in the LVMH family. What it required was a bit of love, a bit of bolstering… and some utterly brilliant bags and accessories. Vevers had been at Loewe for just over six years when he got the call from Coach. Given he’d spent most of his career in leather goods houses, he
knew the brand well. He was curious, particularly when he was told they were looking for a change of direction. Vevers says his curiosity changed to excitement when he started to embark on a project for Coach. That was the moment he began to imagine what the company could become.
When he thinks back to one of his first meetings with Coach, he says ‘transformation’ was one of the words used early on in their conversations. It was also one of the words he found most appealing. Change, he admits, is something he is drawn to. ‘I think it’s the challenge. You know, a lot of people have said, “Are you sure?” about these, what I’d call “opportunities”. When I left working for Marc Jacobs at Louis Vuitton to go to Mulberry, people were openly like, “Are you crazy?” But, for me, it was the challenge.’
Part of his project was to create a Coach ready-to-wear line. Coach was famous as an accessories brand, but to be put on the fashion map it needed clothes – and, most importantly, a character for consumers to connect with. The collection was first shown in New York in 2O16: a dizzying array of effortless prairie dresses, rubber-soled boots and shearling jackets. This was a muse who had walked straight out of a Terrence Malick film… and an Englishman’s imagination. Sometimes it takes an outsider to capture the best of a culture; someone who is untouched by cynicism and not afraid to flirt with archetypes. Vevers let the America of his childhood, as seen through films and books, roam free in his imagination. The result: a line that cemented Coach as a credible, current ready-to-wear label.
He recruited an intriguing band of celebrities, too, who were as individual as they were exciting. Black Panther star Michael B Jordan is one such figure, who is not only the face of the menswear line but has designed a line of unisex clothing for Coach. (He is also an integral part of Coach’s Dream It Real campaign, a charitable initiative that helps kids lock down their passions. Jordan is a ‘dream director’, which, wait for it, means he occasionally turns up to schools to speak along with fellow dream director Selena Gomez. JLo has also been brought into the fold, with impeccable timing. Before she ricocheted around the Superbowl stage and became the hottest thing since, well, JLo the first time around, Vevers signed her up to be a Coach ‘face’. There are others: Jemima Kirke, Yara Shahidi and Chloë Grace Moretz. They are real, ever-so-slightly off-kilter celebrities with dents and edge, glamour and – whisper it – cool.
How does he do it? How is he able to predict exactly what the zeitgeist needs before it has even noticed it needs it?
As I turn to leave, I ask him about his house. Why here? Vevers and Seidler previously lived in the West Village and Tribeca; both epicentres of buzz. They tell me Trish Goff found the house for them, and they fell in love with it. Trish Goff? As in Trish Goff from the 199Os second wave of supermodels? Yes! They both chuckle.
Later that day, I ask the concierge at my hotel about the tranche of the Upper West Side where Vevers lives. ‘Oh, there,’ she says. ‘That’s very up and coming.’ In other words: very cool indeed.
”HOW DOES HE DO IT? HOW IS HE ABLE TO PREDICT WHAT
the zeitgeist needs BEFORE IT HAS EVEN NOTICED IT NEEDS IT?”