Coach is for the youth, but it’s the kind of statement you wouldn’t expect your parents to understand. T-shirts with scribbles, vintage denim caps, tiny satin bows, and plenty of bag charms on recession-sized carry-alls aren’t exactly the correct abstraction for anyone above their 20s. Yet, as it continues to sell out bags endorsed by actual fashion influencers with real influence like Bella Hadid, it’s clear that the brand isn’t interested in having an age-related existential crisis, as the Coach Spring 2025 runway would concur.
Any brand can insist they’re young: throw in a bunch of online references (brat summer much?) and add a few influencers into the mix and ta-da! You’re young. But in reality, this is very far from the truth. Therefore, what stands out with Coach is that it’s less of a pretence but an observation. They’re not deducing what people might be interested in with Pinterest boards, they’re looking at what’s happening on the streets. And easy for them, New York City comes abundantly full of such references.
This is also to say that Spring 2025 is the most honest description of what New York City Coach has done. For us, it took being in the city to understand what its nuances were, and how it has informed Stuart Vevers in his creative decisions. You’ll need a sense of irony to put an outfit together. If you’re wearing a jacket of a certain style, pair it with something that does not match. It’s about clashing things together, and not giving a care what others might think. One might even say that the I Heart NY T-shirts have been spotted more in the East Village (and on actual New Yorkers) than it has on tourists in Times Square recently. So when it appeared in the show, we knew that Coach — after all the years they’ve spent rebranding to be seen as young, fun and cool — has paid-off its dues.
Just as James Murphy sings thin and reedy in LCD Soundsystem’s titular ode to the city, “New York, you’re perfect. Please don’t change a thing.” We say, “Coach, please don’t change a thing.”
