Stuart Vevers is in a partying mood.
The creative director of Coach leaned into the brand’s milestone 85th anniversary celebration for his fall collection, infusing it with a wide range of festive influences intended to evoke an upbeat spirit.
“I didn’t want to do a retrospective. I didn’t want to do something too reverential to the archive. I felt the best way to honor 85 years was actually to look forward,” he said during a preview at the brand’s Hudson Yards headquarters.
So while the runway show and the bash that followed Wednesday night at Basketball City morphed into a true fashion industry blowout party, the collection was focused more on Vevers’ joyful take on dressing up.
As he wrote in the show notes: “Anniversaries always make me think of the reasons we celebrate. They celebrate a life lived together and all the ways that life leaves its mark. I think of silk and satin, pastel cake, a train falling from a bias-cut dress, a touch of sparkle, a haze of flowers, silver and gold, pearlescent light and a treasured tuxedo.”
Party essentials such as confetti, sequins and glitter also found their way into the collection. Trompe l’oeil sequins and glitter were prevalent throughout the offering on overprinted pastel tops and lamé dresses. And a tote was adorned with polka dots reminiscent of exaggerated shards of confetti.
The clothes themselves played with the tension between getting dressed and getting undone. Tailoring came elongated and deliberately softened, trousers slouched and pooled, skirts fell languidly toward the floor and jackets were tied around waists as if discarded midway through the night. Vevers worked largely in washed black, gray, tobacco and khaki before introducing hazy pastels, tarnished metallics and sequins. Leather was flipped inside out, linings exposed and familiar constructions disrupted, giving even polished pieces a sense of previous life.
There was a fair amount of tailoring in the offering, but the pieces were made from soft jersey fabrics that Vevers described as feeling “like a loved sweatshirt.”
By the final stretch, long shimmering dresses and metallic surfaces supplied the glamour, but it was glamour with its hair slightly mussed — less arrival at the party than evidence of having stayed.
As always, Coach bags were front and center, and included a burnished, collapsible tote with a turn lock; the brand’s signature Tabby offered in a variety of models including patchworks, and a Brooklyn bag turned inside out with dangling features that would be carried inside a normal bag such as newspapers and keys, all crafted from leather.
The show began with guests being seated in comfortable couches munching olives, mixed nuts and breadsticks, and ended with a youth string orchestra from the Bronx playing “Love in the Message” by MSFB, a fitting embrace for the latest chapter in Vevers’ love story for the Coach brand.