For all the chatter about sustainability and “doing things differently” that the pandemic has brought about, who has actually changed? Stuart Vevers, for one. Over the past 15 months Vevers has not only masterminded the addictive Coach TV programming where stars like Jennifer Lopez, Megan Thee Stallion, Michael B. Jordan, and Bob The Drag Queen perform kitschy skits in Coach products, he’s also remodeled his design ethos. What started as an idea to incorporate archival pieces into new collections has become a new, full-time way of working. For resort 2022, Vevers overdyed leftover plaids from fall 2021 to create moody midi dresses trimmed in black lace. He also put a sizable amount of that fall collection on the runway in Shanghai, styled with new resort looks.
Over a Zoom call from his home in New York, he wondered what the point was of tethering successful products to a certain season. Now, his best Coach pieces commingle. The “sheep herder” shearling coats—his first hit at the label—return for resort in a plethora of styles and patterns. The brand’s intarsia sweaters are repeats of past successes, and the lug-soled boots in pastel hues are redos of the shape Kaia Gerber wore in the fall lookbook.
This kind of evolution works at Coach because Vevers’s references remain in the same all-American wheelhouse. He pulled up a moodboard of Olympic uniforms, skiers, and stills from Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven, new ideas that marry nicely with his previous work. He spoke of dressing for the future—hence the new tailored pieces and dressed-up evening coats—but he’s wise to know that a brighter tomorrow has to be built on the best bits of the past.
