A BRIGHT FUTURE

Stuart Vevers, Britain’s most commercially successful designer, has revitalised traditional brands all over Europe with his bold aesthetic, modelled here by his friend Dree Hemingway. Now the executive creative director at Coach, he draws on his global ex

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, Stuart Vevers was a semi-anonymous face behind the scenes of European luxury. In an era that fetishises handbags, he’d become the accessories designer of choice for any high-end house looking to revitalise its offering; from Bottega Veneta to Mulberry, Louis Vuitton to Loewe, his CV was a homage to exquisite craftsmanship and expensive understatement. During a career spanning more than two decades, he spent just three years in the UK; for the rest of the time, it was the ateliers of Paris or the factories of the Veneto or the leather workshops of Madrid, places where patient, meticulous artisans would turn his vision into a £3,000 bag that had its own name. It was, he agrees, ‘a lovely life’.

But then, in September 2013, Vevers gave up everything to become executive creative director at Coach, a New York-based leather brand with an impressive heritage, but that had become, over time, adrift in a difficult mid-market. This was a surprising move. Though something of an institution in America – founded in 1941, still seen as both functional and aspirational – Coach barely registered across the Atlantic and was miles away from the refined elitism Vevers was used to. But this, it turns out, was the selling point: ‘I felt a shift happening in my own aesthetic before I came here,’ he says. ‘I heard friends comment one too many times, “Oh that’s beautiful, but I could never afford it”, and there was something so disheartening about that. You can’t get away from the fact that sometimes exclusivity just means excluding.’

It’s a cold, bright afternoon in late December at the shiny Coach HQ in midtown Manhattan, and 43-year-old Vevers, whose working days are now measured out in carefully scheduled, hour-long slots, has just concluded a team walk-through of the pre-fall 17 collection he showed last night at a star-studded event that also celebrated Coach’s 75th anniversary. If he had time to pause for a moment as he moves through the glass-walled tower towards his 14th-floor office overlooking the Hudson – which he doesn’t – he would be able to see in the distance the Statue of Liberty raising her torch to welcome the weary immigrant masses. ‘I may be here to challenge some of the old rules of luxury,’ he says, ‘but I still want people to dream. I romanticise the everyday. I think, as a foreigner, that’s easier.’

Born in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, Vevers retains his Northern accent and still has an appealingly pragmatic British sensibility: he studied fashion at the University of Westminster after seeing one of its graduates, Christopher Bailey, interviewed on BBC One’s The Clothes Show, and though he now creates merchandise for a brand with a £3.4 billion turnover and more than 1,000 stores (making him our most commercially successful designer), he remains thoughtful, unassuming, witty and warm. ‘I enjoy the fact that Coach is inviting,’ he says. ‘My motto is “Work hard and be nice to people” – that sits well with the values of this company.’

Dressed neatly if simply in jeans and a sweater, unfailingly polite and seemingly unflappable (‘Pressure is what gets me up in the morning,’ he says with a smile), Vevers is an unlikely radical. But when he joined Coach, it was with the aim of achieving a total turnaround: in six seasons, he has introduced ready-to-wear for both men and women, while inventing a new sensibility for the label that is young, irreverent and instantly likeable. It has achieved, for the first time, a global relevance – and, of course, several smashhit bags with evocative names such as Swagger and Rogue, hanging with charms in the shape of Rexy, the new dinosaur house mascot. ‘My process here is very different,’ he says. ‘Now, desire comes from attitude. That old idea of perfection holds little interest for me today. We don’t do tailoring. We don’t do briefcases. We have no formality. Every dress has to fit with the ease of a T-shirt. Every bag needs to make you cooler when you put it on. I feel free as a designer – it’s genuinely liberating. What I create is grounded in the actuality of what people want to wear.’

Vevers has achieved all this by tapping into an outsider’s vision of America, celebrating youth culture with all its glorious idealism and hopes for rebellion. In the five years before he came to Coach, he happened to take holidays across the country on Amtrak: ‘Embarrassingly, I can’t drive,’ he says. ‘So I did the whole road-trip thing by train, exploring coast to coast, enjoying that spirit of adventure – and inadvertently researching for my job here.’ His shows for Coach are a celebration of classic US symbolism – studded leather biker jackets and floral-sprigged prairie dresses, patch-emblazoned sweatshirts and shearling coats, all transformed into something with, as he describes it, ‘loads of attitude’ – while his front row is encouragingly diverse, from 13-year-old Millie Bobby Brown to 45-year-old Winona Ryder. ‘The Coach woman isn’t necessarily young,’ he says. ‘This is not a fantasy jet-set brand; it’s about real life.’ If proof were needed, the Rogue bag – a pleasingly modern tote that can be carried or worn over the shoulder, costing around £800 – has already sold more than 20,000 units since its launch last March. That’s a cool £16 million of turnover. ‘I have an instinct for product,’ he says. ‘When you know, you know. It doesn’t happen very often, though – I mean, you’d love to have that every season!’

While he’s working on the next hit, Vevers has managed to recreate his ‘lovely life’ – he lives with his illustrator husband Benjamin Seidler in a brownstone, and walks to work each morning over the Chelsea High Line. Holidays are spent at his 1908 Arts and Crafts house in the Lake District. ‘It’s pure escapism,’ he says. ‘In the middle of three wooded acres, on the top of a mountain. A windy road to get there. Deer, badgers, rabbits, squirrels. Big open fires. I love it. Unfortunately, I bought it before I knew I was moving to America, so I don’t get to go very often.’

It seems a sacrifice worth making, given how well this English expat has assimilated into both America and an American institution. At the finale of that pre-fall 17 show the night before, in a city still shaken from the previous month’s election results, Vevers offered up the Young People’s Chorus of New York City, who took to the darkened catwalk carrying lanterns, singing their own sweet version of Jay Z’s ‘Empire State of Mind’. ‘This city, the spiritual home of Coach, embraces individuality and celebrates togetherness,’ Vevers said afterwards. ‘It welcomes outsiders, like me, and these values are more important today than ever.’