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Coachtopia launched in April with a line of bags made from material waste, which quickly sold out of its limited run. Now, the Gen Z-geared sub-brand from Coach is back. This time, two of the brand’s new bags were created by New York’s Parsons School of Design students Angel Pan, who graduated in May, and Vivian Luo, a senior.
“The vision for Coachtopia was always to invent new ways of designing and creating with circularity in mind from the start — but it’s also about completely rethinking the relationship between brand and consumer,” says Joon Silverstein, SVP of global marketing, creative and sustainability and head of Coachtopia. The plan from the beginning was to collaborate with Gen Z, she says. “We know this generation feels the challenges and burdens of climate change most acutely — Coachtopia is inspired by them and the better future we are working to create together.”
The emerging designers were two of 15 students selected as scholar recipients of the Coach Dream It Real x CFDA Design Scholarship Award, an award introduced ahead of Coachtopia’s April launch. In line with Coach’s Dream It Real programme, which offers scholarships and mentorships under The Coach Foundation, the goal of the award is to help historically underrepresented and marginalised students access resources to succeed in fashion. The students received a grant for the 2022/2023 school year, in addition to mentorship from Coach employees who specialise in circular design innovation, and participation in a circular design challenge.
Gen Z designers need to be involved in Coachtopia’s problem-solving, Silverstein says, because they have a unique perspective on climate change. Having been exposed to news of climate disasters from birth, Gen Z are the most concerned about climate change, according to a recent research poll from thinktank Pew. More than one-third (37 per cent) of Gen Zers say addressing global climate change is a top concern to them personally (followed by 33 per cent of millennials).
The challenge involved using Coach scrap material to create new products that were then judged by Coach creative director Stuart Vevers, Silverstein and the Coachtopia design committee. The winning designs were produced, to be released today as part of the next Coachtopia drop.
“Angel and Vivian’s designs stood out because it was clear they had taken Coachtopia’s mission of designing with waste to heart, thinking not only of how to design with waste from the start, but how their pieces might be disassembled or passed on later,” Vevers says of the winners. “They also captured the colourful optimism of Coachtopia perfectly — I loved, too, how they paid tribute to the archival language of Coach.”
The challenge for Coachtopia is to juggle its mission to develop sustainable practices with producing new products. Its impact will only be substantial if these practices are expanded to the rest of the company, and not just contained to one collection. To this end, the sub-brand was founded as a startup within Coach that enables the team to work with more agility, Silverstein says. The goal is to test-and-learn how to build a circular fashion system, including experimentation with new materials and designs. Coachtopia drops are dependent on constraints such as scrap availability, which means that, by design, some product runs will be more limited than others.
Coachtopia needs to be a “lab for ideas”, which includes community investment, Silverstein says. This includes the Coachtopia Catalyst Fund: 1 per cent of Coachtopia revenue is donated to the work of Gen Z climate leaders. “As our Coachtopia community grows, we will continue to support Gen Z through scholarships like our programme with the CFDA and ongoing collaborations with emerging creatives.”
These new student-designed bags are an indicator of what’s to come, Coach’s Vevers says: “The [competition] day was really inspiring — it was great to see the work of our scholars here at the beginning of their design journey, and to think about the future of fashion they will be creating.”
Correction: Joon Silverstein s title is SVP, not VP as previously stated.
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