Coach: It’s morning in New York

Few designers have their cultural antenna more in sync with the zeitgeist than Stuart Vevers, whose latest collection for Coach cleverly captured the fashion youthquake taking place in New York.

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His full-on silhouette of elephantine pants and the snuggest of jackets, waistcoats and jerkins completed by a sartorial twist amounted to a very cool take on today’s street fashion.
 
Business may be tricky for many brands, but kids in Lower Manhattan have never been more obsessed with looking and dressing with hip attitude. All one has to do is carouse the cafés in Dimes Square, or catch up with the gallants and groovers on Howard Street – a mini mecca of contemporary dandyism. A new generation whose style very deliberately challenges the status quo.

The key word here is ‘repurposed’, from elongated, patched up jeans; pants cut in mixed panels of faded denim or Coach monogram; or heavily eroded leather jackets.
 
It being Coach, pretty well every passage included a bag – from some great bucket-like totes with hefty straps, to moon shape clutches, to a series of credit card holders hanging from neck chains. The clothes looked lived – in but lovingly so. Plus, you could see that the models loved the picks and wanted to leave the venue in their looks. 

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The cast was perfect – courtesy of casting agent Ashley Brokaw – a marvellous array of youthful hope and pride. The very sort of cool insiders that every adolescent dreams they will turn into if they move to New York.  
 
“The whole idea came from a New York morning. I find them very special – light, bright, fresh and full of the optimism of moving forward,” explained British-born Vevers, in the backstage on Monday, the penultimate day of the six-day New York Fashion Week.
 
“I wanted heritage and nostalgia, but not in a heavy way,” smiled Stuart, who also riffed on other parts of his adopted country he had visited.
 
Showing sheath dresses photoshopped with a print of Monument Valley, grunge black T-shirts reading Seattle and tops that featured Sante Fe fairground. 
 
Staged in a giant warehouse on the East River, the set glorified New York. A series of massive sepia photos of classic doorways, neo-classical villas and cut stone buildings printed onto 40-foot-high canvas hangings.
 
Under Vevers, Coach has grown into a cult brand. So, even though the show took place in the most easterly point on the island of Manhattan and past a giant road building project hundreds of fans, a few PETA activists thronged around outside the show.

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The color scheme was muted, faded and worn creams, browns, beiges and indigo blues. The music an emotional mix of Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” with lush orchestral strings.
 
In a busy moment for the brand, Coach announced this week that its chairman emeritus Lew Frankfort would be releasing his memoirs entitled, rather wickedly, “Bag Man”. Billed as “The Story Behind The Improbable Rise of Coach”, Frankfort will be happily signed copies on October 8 at a soirée in Hudson Yards. Another example of how Coach has seeped into the very history of New York, and America.
 
Vevers feted the collection and the latest issue of Perfect magazine with a party with the world’s coolest stylist Katie Grand. A packed party just off Union Square inside Café Zaffri, an uber happening Levantine restaurant with coffered ceilings and embroidered walls.
 
Not a bad place to celebrate his latest collection, quite possibly the best he has ever designed for Coach.