If you didn’t know better, you couldn’t be blamed for thinking Stuart Vevers had suddenly turned punk on America. His spring/summer 17 collection for Coach, shown on the backdrop of a car cemetery to the riotous girl rock of Bleached’s “Keep On Keepin’ On,” had all the classic elements of anti-establishment fashion. Like the punks of England, who re-appropriated the British uniform of conventionality — tartan, tweed, tailoring — Vevers went right for the prairie dresses and varsity jackets of the conservative American Midwest, subverting these most sacred symbols of conformist USA with his sexy see-through ways and enough studs and leather frills to give the Bible Belt a biblical breakdown. Even Elvis Presley — once a provocateur, now an institution for those healthy American values the right-wing like to go on about — couldn’t escape the cheeky Vevers treatment, appearing on tops as the ultimate symbol of the Americana the designer has been tackling so brilliantly since he joined Coach.
This Brit, however, isn’t one for a political statement, although backstage he didn’t deny that the current situation in America — the reality of Donald Trump — had impacted his work. “Of course it does, but I’ve got an outsider’s optimism. I look at the best of what America is. It’s freedom, openness —that’s how I start. I’m an outsider so it’s a very different take on it. Everything we do is a reflection of our times.” He’d taken a train to Santa Fe for inspiration, and found a desert version of those liberal New York values Ted Cruz slammed during the East Coast stages of the Republican primary election Trump — a New Yorker without New York values — would eventually win. “It was like New York in the desert, a mash-up of cultures,” Vevers reflected. In that sense his collection was a little bit punk, something that’s been missing from this New York Fashion Week where — with the exception of Opening Ceremony — designers weirdly haven’t been speaking out against what’s going on their country the way you’d expect a bunch liberal, creative New Yorkers to.
Punk, of course, is a British thing and its aesthetics came natural to Vevers, even if that wasn’t how he referred to his collection. “She’s a tough, cool girl. I wanted to have lots of attitude, but I think there’s a lot of femininity and lightness as well. I think the Coach girl always has that tension,” he said. “She’s customizing her shoes and her jacket, cutting it up. It’s kind of a homespun feeling. I like that naivety of construction within the dresses. Coach should never feel formal, it should have an effortlessness about it. It should be like t-shirts — you just throw them on.” Nothing could be more American than that idea — in this country casual is creed — but seen through Vevers’ eccentric British lens it just got so much better. On the front row, the cast of Stranger Things — Winona Ryder and Millie Bobby Brown — where Vevers could easily get a job in the wardrobe department, certainly looked like they approved.
Credits
Text Anders Christian Madsen