Coach is getting even more serious about sustainability.
Following the successful launch of its (Re)Loved recycling program in spring 2021, the fashion brand is unveiling its first new circular subbrand — Coachtopia.
The collection of bags, accessories, ready-to-wear and footwear is made with recycled, repurposed and renewable materials and launches Thursday.
“Two years ago, we said, we do a lot of amazing things in sustainability, but we’re not getting credit for it,” said Todd Kahn, chief executive officer of Coach. So the decision was made to “showcase what we can do.”
What that translated into is a “truly sustainable subbrand” that can ultimately be used as a laboratory to create best practices that can be applied to the larger Coach brand as well. “This is the future of fashion,” he said.
Although Kahn wouldn’t provide a projected volume figure for Coachtopia, he said: “We have aspirations for it to be very big over time. This is not a vanity project, but a very important subbrand.”
Although Coach has dabbled in sustainability before, what’s different about this collection is that it turns the traditional product creation process upside down, and uses materials that would otherwise go to waste to build an entirely new line.
The leathers used in the Coachtopia products, for example, are either generated from production waste or recycled, using at least 50 percent leather scraps from tanneries. Bag straps and hardware are created from 70 percent-plus recycled resin and 100 percent recycled polyester is used for canvas totes.
For hoodies and T-shirts, the subbrand uses 94 percent-plus recycled cotton, and the denim is created from repurposed deadstock. And for the shoes, the webbing is created from 100 percent recycled polyester and the soles are from renewable sugarcane EVA.
Highlights of the launch collection include Ergo and Wavy Dinky shoulder bags in patchwork, woven, appliquéd and sequined styles.
“We’re focused on using waste, like production scraps, as raw materials. We had to rethink the entire system,” said Joon Silverstein, senior vice president of global marketing, creative and sustainability at Coach, and head of Coachtopia.
“We know that to transform our impacts, we need to fundamentally shift mindsets — from seeing opportunity in waste, to designing backward, to taking a more open-source approach to creativity,” she added. “We’ve built Coachtopia as an entirely new world within Coach — an agile start-up with a mission to reimagine the end-to-end system.”
Silverstein said Coach has been working on the collection for one-and-a-half years as part of its commitment to reach net-zero global emissions by 2050.
Two years ago, Coach was roundly criticized when its practice of slashing and then discarding unsold merchandise was discovered and unveiled by an influencer on TikTok.
Since that time, Coach has doubled down on its efforts to be more sustainable.
The brand offers restored, vintage, up-crafted and remade products within its long-running Repair Workshop and (Re)Loved program. Since its launch, Coach (Re)Loved has given a second life to more than 20,000 products, the company said.
The Coachtopia collection takes these efforts to a new level. The company used the learnings — and challenges — it experienced with these other programs and applied them to the creation of Coachtopia.
Kahn said because the launch is relatively small by Coach standards, there is a “certain preciousness to the product.” But like other Coach offerings, it is “well-manufactured and beautiful,” he said.
“We were inspired by our shared desire to do better for the planet by inventing new circular ways of dreaming, designing and creating,” said Coach creative director Stuart Vevers.
Vevers said Coachtopia is “a bigger, bolder step forward in realizing our vision for sustainability,” adding that the line challenges the design team “to ‘design in reverse,’ with the end goal of circularity top-of-mind, in collaboration with the next generation and their optimistic vision for tomorrow,” Vevers added.
Coachtopia will be sold on the company’s e-commerce sites in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. beginning Thursday.
In the U.K. it will be exclusive to Selfridges for a week and have a pop-up in the Wonder Room. The Coachtopia pop-up is part of the store’s new Worn Again initiative.
On April 28, the collection will launch at the Coach store in Spitalfields, east London, followed by the Coach flagships on Fifth Avenue in New York, and in Chicago, Los Angeles and Miami in May. The rollout will continue over the next three months, and the brand will expand to Asia as well later this year.
Another first for Coach is that the company is working with a group of Gen Z individuals — from climate activists, designers and upcyclers to journalists, filmmakers, entrepreneurs and fashion enthusiasts — to share its perspectives on circular fashion help in the creation of Coachtopia.
“We’re building [Coachtopia] not just for our consumers, but with them, inviting a growing community of hundreds of Gen Z individuals to join us on our Slack channel, collaborate with us on products, take center stage in our content and campaigns — and reimagine our future together,” Silverstein said.
The brand’s first collaboration is with graphic designer and illustrator Sabrina Lau. She will also appear in the brand’s launch campaign along with 10 other members of the Gen Z group. They will be featured in both still photos and a film shot by Adrien Lagier.
Additionally, each product in the collection is embedded with an NFC tag to provide information on the product’s “journey as it is repaired, restored, reused and reimagined over multiple lives,” the company said.
The labels are 100 percent recycled polyester and the packaging is made from at least 75 percent recycled materials, printed with renewable Algae Ink.
Once purchased and used, Coachtopia products can be traded in at any Coach retail store in exchange for a credit that will be calculated according to the product’s original price and current condition.
Although the work is exponentially more intricate, the price points of the products are lower than that of traditional Coach products, Silverstein said. That includes T-shirts for $75 to $95; a card case for $65; a Wavy wallet bag for $115; crossbody bags for $195 to $295; a patchwork Ergo bag for $350; a long-sleeve shirt for $115; a tote for $195; a hoodie for $195, and sandals for $155.
Because the collection is targeted primarily at younger people, it was important that the products remain accessible, Silverstein said.
Kahn said the lower pricing was “a conscious choice,” and as the line grows, the company will “work on greater margin” in the future. “We know consumers believe in sustainability, but their willingness to pay up is limited and we want to make it accessible to a large number of consumers.”
Although it is just launching, Coachtopia is already having an impact on how products will be designed in the future. “We’re rethinking construction, knowing that we’ll have to take the product apart,” Silverstein said. That translates into removable screw-back hardware, detachable handles and straps, binding or seam-out constructions and the use of mono-materials.
Silverstein pointed to the fact that more than 85 percent of materials used in the fashion industry either end up incinerated, or in landfills. The creation of new materials accounts for at least 38 percent of the industry’s greenhouse gas emissions.
To further its commitment, Coach also awarded scholarships to 15 students passionate about making fashion more circular, and invited them to participate in the Coachtopia Waste Contest in which they develop creative uses for Coach leather scraps.
Silverstein has big expectations for Coachtopia and believes it can one day become a major brand for the company. “We’re launching small, but we have big ambitions,” she said. “And we consider April 20 as just the beginning of the journey.”
