A Bright Future

Stuart Vevers, Britain’s most commercially successful designer, has revitalised traditional brands all over Europe with his bold aesthetic, modelled here by his friend Dree Hemingway. Now the executive creative director at Coach, he draws on his global experience to rewrite the rules of luxury fashion.

- Avril Mair

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, Stuart Vevers was a semi anonymous face behind the scenes of European luxury. In an era that fetishises handbags, he’d become the accessories designer of choice for any high-end house looking to revitalise its offering; from Bottega Veneta to Mulberry, Louis Vuitton to LOEWE, his CV was a homage to exquisite craftsmanship and expensive understatement. During a career spanning more than two decades, he spent just three years in the UK; for the rest of the time, it was the ateliers of Paris or the factories of the Veneto or the leather workshops of Madrid, places where patient, meticulous artisans would turn his vision into a three thousand pound bag that had its own name. It was, he agrees, “a lovely life”.

But then, in September 2013, Vevers gave up everything to become executive creative director at Coach, a New York-based leather brand with an impressive heritage, but that had become, over time, adrift in a difficult mid-market. This was a surprising move.

Though something of an institution in America—founded in 1941, still seen as both functional and aspirational—Coach barely registered across the Atlantic and was miles away from the refined elitism Vevers was used to. But this, it turns out, was the selling point: “I felt a shift happening in my own aesthetic before I came here,” he says. “I heard friends comment one too many times, ‘Oh that’s beautiful,’ but I could never afford it, and there was something so disheartening about that. You can’t get away from the fact that sometimes exclusivity just means excluding.”