Inside the cavernous Park Avenue Armory, Coach opened its SS23 show not with a pounding soundtrack and an instant stream of models but with a quiet moment of cinematic romance. Once the lights had dimmed and the crowd was silent, two models wandered hand-in-hand down the stage – built to resemble one of New York‘s iconic piers – before sitting and hanging their legs over the edge. Behind, other choreographed models began loitering in the distance, one holding a guitar, one holding a red balloon, another taking an elegant-looking afghan hound (impressively, making its second Coach runway appearance, apparently) for a walk.
This charming vignette of life on these piers was intended to give the ensuing show a sense of reality, and, backstage after the show, Coach’s British creative director Stuart Vevers described his desire to make the moment feel more special. “I was thinking, where do kids go? It’s like Rockaway Beach, Coney Island, Jones Beach, or the piers,” Stuart explained to a group huddled around him. “We really had a place in mind, and I wanted to bring it to life. We created this interpretation of an NYC pier, but I thought we needed to, rather than just the models, we should bring it to life with some of the stories that might have happened on a pier at some point in time.”
While the collection had elements of very traditional Coach, the inspiration and little details took many forms. The clothes emphasised circularity, more conscious consumption and a desire to do away with old modes of production. The patchwork-y moments came from vintage garments, “essentially at the end of their life, so we took them apart and put them back together,” Stuart explained passionately, before discussing Reloved, a growing Coach programme that repairs and customises bags, so they never become unused.
In the collection, varsity jumpers – ones inscribed with C-O-A-C-H that appeared one after the other on the runway – gave a classic feel, as did fisherman hand-knit sweaters, while the use of leather, more particularly the idea of leather in summer, Stuart noted, gave the collection its more sexy, subversive moments. Seeing the classic symbols of Americana often woven through the brand’s collections rendered alongside repurposed leather and denim is where old meets new. Fluidity, too, was crucial – and “that’s very much inspired by the next generation for me,” Stuart adds. Lil Nas X, a campaign star, brand ambassador and champion of subverting norms around gender and sexuality, closed the show in a leather waistcoat and shorts and jelly shoes, his first runway appearance.
Off the back of a recent interview with Coach’s CEO in Business of Fashion, in which he ushered in an era of “expressive luxury” rather than “accessible luxury”, ultimately Stuart is enthused about a new era of Coach, one that strives for the same values he’s always embodied. “For me, it’s in some ways, the business has evolved to the way I approach fashion,” he says. “My vision for the Coach guy and girl has always been about this self-expression.”
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All images courtesy of Spotlight