Before we get to Stuart Vevers’s very—very—good resort collection for Coach (or winter, in the brand parlance) here’s something he shared at the preview about where it all started. As a kid, he and his brother would go to theater shows in his native Carlisle in the U.K. where his grandparents would not only perform, but also be decked out in costumes of his granny’s design and making. The Vevers kids would get dressed up too, like, for instance, wearing sailor suits when one year the show’s theme was South Pacific. Years later, his grandmother would help Vevers make clothing to go out in, helping him sew the likes of PVC trousers so he could shake a tail feather.
Flash forward some decades later and this latest Coach collection speaks to those formative years of his. It has a spirit of almost childlike naivete spliced with his usual unerring sense of what feels right for now. Vevers has mixed up, without much if any regard to gender, sparkly tulle tutus, washed and worn sweatshirts emblazoned with the visage of Disney hound Pluto, and cheery Peter Pan-collared sweaters which grandma could have knitted, with weathered and worn biker and aviator leathers, capes in tiger stripe fake fur or bejewelled chiffon, and yet more of the upcycled patch-worked jeans which have become a Coach thing, this time in soft black washed denim. “It’s a celebration of the joy of dressing up,” Vevers said, “and it’s what led me to use these personal references to my past. There’s a bit of fantasy to it all too—I see that with the way my kids will get dressed up when they’re playing—but here that’s grounded with this tougher idea of Americana.”
What all of this brings together, even the collection’s leather bunny ears, crowns, and swords (his kids are going to have a field day when they get their mitts on them) is the warm familiar glow of familial nostalgia, and an unerring sense of the moment that is, in essence, what his Coach is about. It’s also refreshingly uncynical, which might be its greatest attribute, when it’s all too easy to be cynical about so much that’s going on, particularly—especially—in fashion. (This joyful, life-affirming collection even warmed the heart of this old cynic.)
The bags this season are all archival Bonnie Cashin; another idea of returning to family, albeit his Coach one. “A lot of these,” said Vevers, “won’t have been seen since the ’60s.” They’re smaller, neater, almost doll-like, in their proportions and style, than usual, though they still come festooned with the adorable geegaws in the new Coach tradition. (Where once hung NY taxi cabs and Statues of Liberty there are holiday tree baubles and fuzzy Rudolph the red nosed reindeers.) The shoes, meanwhile, are either soft, colorful beaded moccasins—he didn’t cite a reference for those, but fess up, Stuart, cause I know a Bananarama reference when I see one—or glorious mid-century sparkly party pumps in Wizard of Oz red or Warhol Factory silver.
In fact, Andy Warhol’s presence can also be seen in the natty way that Vevers has mixed in delightfully awkward fashion, blazers, button-downs and ties in a clash of checks and plaids. Vevers won’t be wearing anything like that when he goes to London later this month to receive his O.B.E. honor at Buckingham Palace. His husband Ben and their twins will be there, as will Vevers’s parents. They’ll be rightly proud of him, and no doubt just as proud as his grandparents would have been of him back when he was getting dressed up all those years ago.
