Who would’ve thought three years ago, before Stuart Vevers’s arrival at Coach, that we would be gathered at Pier 94 on a blustery winter night to watch the label’s Pre-Fall show? In a short amount of time, Vevers has worked magic at this American heritage brand: designing shearling coats and jackets that have spawned all sorts of copies and conceiving a T. rex mascot, Rexy, that you see all over town—on bus stop ads and dangling as charms from editors’ handbags. Last month, a new 20,000-square-foot Coach flagship opened its doors on Fifth Avenue. Not a bad way to cap off the company’s 75th year in business, but tonight was the real celebration.
As an Englishman, Vevers has a deep well of curiosity and affection for America. That, and a savvy way of repackaging it. Boiled down to their essences, his collections are about playfully practical bags and shoes, and, by extension, item-y leather-driven outerwear, with clever statement knits and toss-them-on dresses to sweeten the mix. But each time, he finds a new approach. One season it’s cowboy boot–wearing prairie girls, the next it’s Elvis-loving biker babes. Pre-Fall was his most eclectic mash-up so far, starting with the fact that he put both women’s and men’s collections on the runway. “Uniting the collections got us thinking about togetherness and optimism,” Vevers said. “That inspired the clothes, the set, the casting. It’s diverse; it reflects real life.”
There were girl and boy versions of biker jackets, varsity jackets, nostalgic shearlings, and M-65 parkas, nearly all of them bearing embroidered patches. “Give a Damn” read one, a slogan lifted from New York Mayor John Lindsay and the New York Urban Coalition circa 1968 that feels particularly apt circa now. In a bittersweet bit of synchronicity, with astronaut John Glenn’s death earlier today, Vevers put NASA logos on sweatshirts and space shuttle intarsias on sweaters, an elaboration of the Apollo sweater from his first Coach outing for Fall 2014. Vevers caught the fever for the statement tee early on via his collaboration with that artist Gary Baseman. That phenomenon played out here in sequined embroideries of The Stooges’s logo and ice cream cones not just on T-shirts, but leather jackets, too. Everybody wants to announce their identity on their clothes these days. Vevers is giving his customers all sorts of options, but he’s being a contrarian about it. You rarely, if ever, see a Coach logo. At least I didn’t spot one.
The show culminated with the 75-person (a coincidence, the PR insists) Young People's Chorus of New York City and their rendition of the Alicia Keys hit “Empire State of Mind.” Then it was time to toss one back and post an Instagram. Like the collection itself, the photogenic party space was a loving, slightly batty ode to Americana: 1970s gas guzzlers, roadside neon, and a “motel” straight out of Stranger Things. Hey, it’s not a melting pot; it’s a mosaic.
