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12th Sep 2019
After six years at the helm Stuart Vevers at Coach has established signatures his followers know they can depend on. Ingredients that, come winter — when one is in search of a snappy coat, or a fuzzy abbreviated jacket to bundle up in — or summer — when the hankering for a whisper-thin ultra-feminine dress announces itself — they can turn to whip fast. The ingredients are always there, but this time, for spring/ summer ’20, Vevers switched the recipe.
The biker, of the Perfecto variety, was replaced by scrunchy leather bombers in Pop Art primaries, sneakers, sandals and kitten heels were pragmatically unadorned and dresses were woman-on-the-up, rather than girl-gazing-at-the-horizon of the prairie variety. Vevers was tracking a path straight to the verve of 1980s New York, and communicating a fearlessness that bolstered the footsteps of the young, free and going places (a reminder in the lyrics of the show’s soundtrack: The Human League’s Things That Dreams Are Made Of: “New York, ice cream, TV, travel, good times”).
Hardwearing denim and khaki utility jackets will travel well, as will silk blouses and drop-waist day dresses in black or white. Leather skirts and pants, and a lively print that was a collaboration with the estate of Pop artist Richard Bernstein featuring Rob Lowe, Barbara Streisand and Michael J. Fox has the good times covered. Vevers told Vogue pre-show that he was grounding this collection, and with less flounce and trinkets there was a directness that signals Vevers is looking with fresh eyes as we enter the ‘20s.
That also means he’s casting another look at the heritage of the 1941-founded American label. Bags were pulled from the archive and refreshed. There the turn lock by Coach’s first ever designer Bonnie Cashin, here her tongue bag, downsized and in a peppy azure. This followed a New York fashion week launch of Coach Originals, a pop-up celebrating reworks of archival styles where guests could have pieces restored by hand, rent bags or buy an actual vintage style.
Set on the High Line’s newest section, the Spur and Coach Passage, the restoration of which Coach was a benefactor, the space was designed for interacting with one another, for taking a break, for talking, gathering, living real life. The collection then, wearable, liveable, was in its element. What used to supply goods via rail that kept New York sustained and then languished as an overgrown industrial relic until 1999, has become a triumph of preservation in New York City, given new life. Although with a little less history, the same could be said of Vever’s Coach.
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