There was a strong shift at Coach this season.
“During my time at Coach, it’s always really important to push forward and to try new things. My big obsession through my whole career has been the next generation, so always listening, discovering, thinking about that. There is a sense of us wanting to do something different in the collection, and also in the way we present – maybe it just felt right for the times as well,” Stuart Vevers said of the fall collection’s Monday afternoon show, held once again at the Park Avenue Armory.
Except this time, the cinematic set was thrown out the window and replaced with two single front rows of guests (including the likes of Lil Nas X, Ice Spice, Camila Mendes, Zoey Deutch and more) lining the venue’s long hallway. The gathering deliberately spoke to Vevers’ approach to the collection, which emphasized a melding of the brand’s signature American codes with craft defined in the context of sustainability.
Building blocks of the collection naturally stemmed from leather into an expansion of the brand’s “love-worn” hand-distressed knit dressing (as well as denim) with longer, leaner silhouettes, such as supple leather cropped jackets with midi skirts or floor-length, body-hugging striped turtleneck dresses. The looks were tinged with harder ’90s grunge and ’70s punk sensibilities and styled with gender-fluid appeal, while playful candy-colored handbags (in heart, star, dog bone, apple and other shapes) and Superman, Rexy and Mickey Mouse knit graphics addressed Y2K nostalgia.
“There’s a sense of elevation, but it’s still grounded in something that feels youthful,” Vevers said. “In recent seasons I’ve really been using the runway as a place to explore that whole world of sustainability. For me, that’s a focus that has been looking at waste, circularity and new ways to create materials.”
In that vein, he sent out four sensual, raw-cut silk chiffon slips in hues derived from natural botanical dyes (mint from mulberry leaves; iron gray from black walnut log wood and iron), which nicely contrasted his fluffy utilitarian shearling jackets. Some of the latter were flecked with crystals, others with metallic coatings, shearling-wrapped hardware (as seen from an inside-out men’s aviator) or with hand-finished techniques on pre-worn styles. The Coach (Re)Loved conversation continued with patchworked leatherwear crafted from discarded scraps while sneakers were partially crafted from repurposed Coach bags.
Fall clearly was the start of a broader chapter for Coach — one that looked especially good.