COACH - The Menswear Jewel Hidden In Plain Sight…But You’ll Still Have to Dig

That is the COACH Hitch backpack. If you didn’t realize COACH made such good-looking accessories, you will soon…(Image source: Andrew Neel on Unsplash).

Main image credit: Andrew Neel on Unsplash.

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The clothing industry is vast, encompassing everything from shitty fast-fashion to “haute-couture” (which, I’m with you, can also sometimes be shitty, but you get what I’m saying here). Within that spectrum there are niches, sub-niches, even sub-sub-niches, and one of the great debates, which has only grown louder since the advent of social media, is which of these constitute “style” and which constitute “fashion”.

Perhaps appropriately, Coco Chanel is credited with a quote often used in this debate: “Fashion is ephemeral, but style is eternal”. This sounds straightforward enough until you remember that in 2022, post-lockdowns, post-office, and in a world that was driven by social media and hyper-individuality well before COVID-19, very little is “eternal” and when it comes to clothing there really are no hard-and-fast rules…

Sort of.

Whereas an issue of GQ from the early 2010s looks really - and I mean REALLY - different from what’s currently on newsstands, I think we can all agree that environment still dictates clothing and regulates how much you can play within the style-fashion continuum (you can get away with a Louis Vuitton briefcase at an office or professional get-together, but you might get some looks wearing a BAPE Camo Down jacket or Shark Hoodie).

This was the cover of GQ in August 2012 (Image source: www.gq.com)…

…and this is the July 2022 cover of GQ. Helluva difference, no (Image source: www.tomandlorenzo.com)?

Ok, so a good looking suit in 2012 will still look good in 2022, and it’s comforting to realize that in such turbulent times, at least that hasn’t changed. Of course, seemingly everything else has, including the awareness around climate change and the acknowledgement that the clothing industry is a major climate offender.

This reality has certainly affected how I make my purchase decisions. My first stop when I’m looking for something is always a second-hand or “grey” market place such as eBay, or Grailed, or Jomashop. This not only allows me to buy items sustainably but also to accommodate my strong aversion for anything resembling the experience of the current buying paradigm. I hate the thought of having to stand in line for a drop, and in fact I take immense pleasure in unearthing those things that basically go ignored but are nevertheless beautiful and lust-worthy.

That pleasure has only grown the more I’ve evolved in my style journey, simply because the more I know, the more I know what to look for. So, perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that a recent wallet purchase sent me down a rabbit hole that - for now - doesn’t seem to have an end in sight.

The numbers don’t lie, this isn’t a #menswear company…

COACH.

Maybe it’s the store you go into with your wife or girlfriend because she wants to look around, or because you’re picking up something from her holiday wish-list, but that’s about it.

To be honest with you it’s been about a decade since I seriously thought of them much either, and I don’t think I’m alone; I follow the style/fashion press very diligently, from the well-known publications down to obscure blogs and podcasts and I can’t recall the last time they were even mentioned in passing.

Now, I had a professor in business school who always said “don’t draw conclusions from the data point of “me””, and for sure I need to be careful trying to extrapolate COACH’s performance from the point of view of the admittedly very, very focused style and fashion communities. Indeed, if we take a look at the company’s latest financial results (generated by the parent company which is named Tapestry, Inc.), the opinion of such a relatively small group of buyers doesn’t seem to matter that much.

COACH is a company that is close to generating USD5 billion in revenue for fiscal-year 2022. To put that in perspective, Ralph Lauren cleared USD6 billion in its own recent fiscal year, which is more than COACH, sure, but given how much of a juggernaut Ralph Lauren is…

Is it that much more than COACH?

Things get interesting when we look at the Men’s category specifically. Again, for fiscal-year 2022, COACH projects nearly USD1 billion (yes, with a B) in sales. So, while COACH may not occupy much mind-share at the latest Pitti Uomo, clearly, there are male end-users are out there.

There’s a contradiction here though: if the brand can sell nearly a billion dollars worth of men’s goods, why don’t I hear about them, at all?

Here’s another question for you:

How many of those sales of Men’s goods are coming from men who are actually interested in the brand (customers), versus girlfriends and wives who are returning the favor for the bag they got them for their birthday (making the gift recipients “end-users” rather than “customers”)?

I don’t have the data to answer that, but if you go by what the brand is saying it does seem that the former category is important: the company states clearly that one of its fiscal-year 2022 goals is to grow the Men’s category by increasing brand awareness.

The right-most pillar of COACH’s fiscal-year 2022 growth strategies shows that the company wants to focus on the men’s market (Source: Tapestry, Inc. investor presentation).

That’s a tall order because presently, not only is every. single brand. bombarding you with ads to try to do the exact same thing, but also because my feeling is that the men making up that desired, additional clientele absolutely do know COACH, but associate it very strongly with being a brand for women (company data absolutely proves them right, with women’s handbags and accessories accounting for 72% of revenues as of fiscal year 2021).

This seems to be reflected in the store layouts, with the front windows not doing much (in my opinion) to overcome the perception that COACH is a brand heavily focused on women, and Men’s goods then placed towards the backs or sides of stores. I invite you to see for yourselves via the store-browsing videos posted on the “Coach Craze” YouTube channel; I’ve posted one such video below.

The COACH Craze YouTube channel is an informative stop if you want to see what’s happening at COACH but can’t make it to one of the brand’s boutiques.

I don’t want to go off on a huge tangent regarding the company’s strategy, for two reasons:

1. I don’t know its inner workings, which leads me to the second reason

2. I very likely do NOT fall into the target demographic that COACH is counting on to grow its Men’s business. I am an older Millennial who came of style-age during the #menswear era, so for me to try and tell COACH what to do based on my tastes (as opposed to the ample data I’m sure the company has) would be the epitome of that “me” data point my business school professor kept lecturing my classes about.

With that said, my impression of COACH’s current offerings for men is that they appear…

Confused.

Is COACH “hype”? It’s certainly trying to be.

On the Men’s section of the COACH website, I see a very small handful of absolutely gorgeous items like the Hitch backpack that features in the top picture, and the rest is made up of what I’d call very “maximalist” goods, heavily branded and with bright colors.

I hear the 2000’s are back in vogue with Gen Z, and I believe it when I look at this Men’s tote (Image source: French COACH website).

Again, I’m not the target demographic for this, and maximalism generally is something Gen-Z does like, which in turn has driven the last few years of highly maximalist streetwear. But, even if you do assume that this is what COACH is going for, the execution just seems “off”.

The last few years of hype-fueled maximalism have manifested themselves in streetwear and accessories via outrageously logo-covered pieces; the more in-your-face the pieces, the more expensive they were likely to be, and the more you would be able to “flex” on the proles who couldn’t afford to turn themselves into a billboard.

Below is a notorious illustration of this trend:

If you think the price for that hoodie is absurd, check out the aftermarket prices for the Louis Vuitton x Supreme duffle bag and Malle Courrier trunk…(Image source: The Uknown Vlogs YouTube channel).

This screen-cap is taken from the excellent “Unknown Vlogs” series, where the host Kofi stops people in the street and asks them to break down their outfit…and its cost. Here, the subject breaks down his outfit, which includes a hoodie from the SEISMIC Louis Vuitton x Supreme collaboration (click the picture to view the whole video).

Given this trend of “more logos = better”, it makes sense that a trend feeding the hype has been that of the “collab”, a partnership between several (usually two, but occasionally more) brands to create a limited series of goods. After all, if a HUGE brand logo is good, then two HUGE brand logos must be double-the-fun, right?

The playbook from the brands’ point of view is straightforward:

1. Create a design that is unique to the collaboration, even if it deviates only slightly from the “standard” brands’ offerings’ (see the Virgil Abloh “3% Rule”)

2. Build awareness on social media

3. Hope you build the fan-bases of each product into a frenzy, thus ensuring a quick sell-out (this is extremely frustrating from a consumers’ point of view, but from a brand’s perspective anything less than the website crashing on launch can be seen as the failure of the collaboration)

Originally, these collaborations were truly eventful, but now? It’s just the way the industry works, because, well, collabs (but not all) have a history of success. To be more specific, brands pursue these collaborations for very strategic reasons:

1. Growing their respective customer bases: Collabs allow brands to tap into each others’ respective clienteles. Luxury brands that were seen as stuffy and perhaps even hostile to streetwear not long ago have lately been some of the most active collab participants, allowing them to build ties to a younger customer-base that will hopefully stick with them throughout their lifetimes.

2. Growing their influence: The case of Louis Vuitton x Supreme is particular because each brand was absolutely massive at the time the collaboration dropped. Occasionally, there is an “imbalance” between the influence of one of the brands, so they can “piggyback” off of the larger partner. Off the top of my head, I think the Ralph Lauren x Palace collaboration is a good example of this, since Palace was well-known in streetwear circles but of course Ralph Lauren is a juggernaut. The former benefited from a huge boost in exposure while the latter gained some streetwear credibility by partnering with what I would still call a niche brand (side note: Ralph Lauren already did already have tenuous, tangential streetwear credentials, check out the excellent Complex documentary Horse Power: Hip Hop’s Impact on Polo Ralph Lauren to find out more).

This sounds great in theory, but in practice if you think the equation is as straightforward as “partner 1 + partner 2 = profits”, think again. Not all collaborations are equally capable of breaking the internet, and this now brings me to my views on the current state of COACH’s Men’s offerings.

Hype first has to be bestowed on you before you can create it.

I’ve been a little lazy with the term “Men’s” products so far, so for now I just want to focus on COACH’s bread-and-butter: accessories (they also offer ready-to-wear items which I will absolutely cover in a later article, but I’m leaving that aside to keep things streamlined). What I’ve covered so far is that:

1. COACH is going with the maximalism trend by heavily branding a lot of its Men’s products

2. In keeping with the maximalism trend, COACH participates in collaborations

Ok, so has this worked?

As I’ve already said, neither do I have access to the company’s internal data, nor do I want to assign my own personal tastes to the company’s strategy, since they are likely targeting men who are very much not me (younger, live in other parts of the world, etc).

Nevertheless, I think I can offer a few thoughts based on what I know from well over a decade of being deeply invested in the clothing industry.

Maximalism, with logos everywhere, only works if you have the brand cachet to back it up. Louis Vuitton has no problem selling Men’s goods in its signature logo canvas, because, well, it’s Louis Vuitton.

I’m not sure COACH can do this.

Yes, the Signature motif was huge for them with women in the early 2000s (and I suppose it must continue to sell now, given how predominantly it still appears in Women’s products), but how much success have they had/will they have leaning on this to grow their Men’s offerings? To sell highly branded products you must first have a highly covetable brand, which leads me to…

The collabs, which have been - to me - lukewarm at best and just plain odd at worst. COACH has had Disney and Star Wars lines, but these feel more like licensed merchandise, and going forward, are those really enough to sustain the type of growth in menswear they are looking for? Are there really that many menswear fans of either property out there who haven’t yet bought in to the brand?

I did find it very interesting to find out that COACH has a history with BAPE, the Japanese streetwear pioneer. BAPE, or “A Bathing Ape” is well-known in streetwear circles, and on paper this partnership should have been more of a big deal than it seemed to have been. Again, I don’t have the data on this (maybe it sold very well) and I’m not the target demographic, but how did I only find out about this while doing research for this article?

The Signature COACH motif mixed with BAPE’s iconic shark hoodie. It should be fire, right? And yet (Image source: BAPE via www.complex.com)…

This is an image directly from the French COACH website, and there is still one bag left! The price on StockX for this item is not that much higher than retail either; could it be that this collaboration fell flat (Image source: French Coach website)?

BAPE also, maybe coincidentally but maybe not, collaborated with another storied leather-goods house, Montblanc. I did notice this partnership when it was announced, but as far as I could tell it did not set the fashion world on fire either, though to be fair I do have a vague memory that the pieces I sort of, kind of liked the look of (again, not the target audience…) moved somewhat quickly.

Putting my impressions of these two BAPE collabs together (I’d love to see the data behind these to see how close or far off I am) leads me to formulate two hypotheses:

1. BAPE is not actually as sure a thing as assumed to generate a connection with the streetwear demographic, or at the very least…

2. The company’s clout is not enough to overcome some lack of enthusiasm that this target demographic may have for COACH - or indeed Montblanc as well - perhaps viewing it as a maker of “nice” things, but nothing more.

This gets me to what are, as far as I can tell, the most prominent, heavily-pushed collaborations, if you can call them that, with recognized, but late, artists: Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat and most recently, Tom Wesselmann.

A Rogue crossbody bag from the new COACH x Tom Wesselmann collection. I suppose this is a catchy enough design, but is it enough to grow COACH’s Men’s consumer-base substantially (Image source: French COACH website)?

I don’t to take away from any of these artists’ influence (Keith Haring’s art showed up EVERYWHERE in the early 90s, and even before I found out who he was, seeing his drawings made me feel heavy nostalgia), but I have to ask:

Why?

I would love to see the data set that convinced the COACH team to pursue this series of collaborations, because I can’t make sense of it. First I’m quite surprised each artist’s respective estate signed off on this, and second I just don’t see how this is supposed to broaden COACH’s appeal, among men specifically but also among women. If anything these artist collections strike me as very, very niche!

The interesting thing about the two strategic goals I mentioned previously which underlie collaborations is that the partners don’t have to make sense at first but one or both does have to bring successive heat to the relationship for it to work. Think of it this way: one is the spark, the other is the tinder, and the two create fire.

Of course, the Louis Vuitton x Supreme collection is the most obvious example, but here’s another good one: Gucci x The North Face. On one hand the only thing these two brands have in common is that they make clothing, but on the other hand these two companies are iconic and highly popular. The end-result is like putting salty and sweet together: at first it sounds weird but as soon as that Payday bar hits your mouth it’s like it made sense all along.

Can we really say the same thing about COACH’s recent artist collections?

Which side of these collabs actually brings the heat to the equation?

And what is the common thread between the two that would make a whole that is more than the sum of its parts?

The only connection I could find to the brand, and this is tenuous, is that all of them somehow had a connection to New York during their lifetimes, which is of course where COACH was founded.

It’s a long shot, but if in fact I’m right about this, it is absolutely the foundation for a) how I would personally orient the product offerings going forward, and b) how you can mine the company’s archives and current offerings to pick up some truly beautiful and timeless pieces.

For COACH’s Men’s products, could looking back be the way forward?

It’s a basic point of corporate strategy (and life, I suppose), that to be successful, you should identify the things you do really, really well, and then…

Just do more of them.

It sounds so basic, but it doesn’t take long to understand both why that advice makes sense, and what COACH has that makes it stand out from its competitors:

1. Decades of heritage

2. Roots in perhaps the most iconic and evocative city in the United States, New York

3. The glove-tanned leather which first made it famous and which, I’m not kidding you, is up there with Hermès in terms of how the leather looks and feels, it really is that good

4. A back-catalog of iconic designs

5. Prices which are on the whole far more approachable than those of the well-known luxury houses, and quality that meets or exceeds that of those brands (again, that glove-tanned leather, wow…)

As far as I know, playing up “Made In Detroit” has worked for Shinola (without COACH’s heritage!), and then you get to the collaboration possibilities. In fact, you don’t have to think too hard to imagine those, because some incredible things have already happened.

Earlier I wrote that collaborations can generate a lot of heat if two popular, but different, brands (Gucci x The North Face) come together.

What happens when two brands with overlapping, excellent qualities get together?

What happens if the goal is just to combine the best of both and come up with something special?

In this case, the potential for hype and to grow your audience is smaller (perhaps because the companies already have somewhat overlapping customer bases) but you set the stage for some truly beautiful things.

COACH has so many elements going for it that it isn’t surprising they would have some truly stunning collabs in their archives, but you do occasionally have to go back - dig, as I said in the title - to find them.

Readers, I present you first with COACH x Schott NYC:

Image of a Schott Perfecto from the COACH x Schott NYC collaboration; sort of takes your breath away a little bit, doesn’t it (Image source: COACH website).

To me, this is an absolutely perfect example of a synergistic collaboration: two storied New York companies, both with their core expertise in leather, coming together to create magic. Here, you have the iconic Schott Perfecto silhouette made with what I presume is glove-tanned leather to create something that must smell and feel just…amazing (this is different from the COACH x Schott NYC shearling collection, to which I linked just above this picture, that looks decadent also).

Here is another collaboration, from way back in 2013, to which I’m quite partial because COACH partnered with another storied brand, but this time the French maker of maritime clothing, Saint James:

This is another fantastic collaboration between two companies, iconic in their respective countries of birth. J’adore! (Image source: www.mode-en-france.com)

What I love about this is that there’s nothing forced at all. Rule #1 when you cook is: take high quality ingredients and don’t mess them up, which is exactly what both brands have done here in the menswear space; this is a prime example of two companies coming together to create something beautiful. On one hand you have COACH bringing a classic silhouette and its leather expertise, and on the other you have Saint James bringing its nautical touch.

This bag can serve to introduce one brand’s clients to the other’s, but maybe more significantly, this is a completely unisex offering! I would love to have this on a beach somewhere and I think my wife would too; while this is not what the designers had in mind in 2013 (presumably), the dialog is different in 2022 than 2013, and I suspect this type of gender-neutral product (combined with the right story-telling and marketing) could broaden the attention granted to COACH.

Speaking of bags, we now have what I consider the most beautiful of the collaborations (that I know of). I never had “grail” accessories in mind…

Until I saw the picture of this bag!

In fact as soon as I found out about this collaboration I instantly set an eBay alert.

Readers, here is the Warrior tote from the COACH x Billy Reid collection:

One of the most beautiful #menswear accessories I’ve ever laid my eyes on (Image source: www.gq.com).

This is another collaboration from 2013 so I admit that my bias for the #menswear era may be showing, but that said…

Is anyone NOT going to admit this bag is gorgeous?!

The rest of the collection is beautiful too, and though nothing is ever a sure thing, from the beginning this must have seemed as close to a sure thing as you can get: Billy Reid, highly talented, American designer of Men’s wear partnering with COACH, storied, American creator of beautiful accessories.

(If anyone has a lead on where I can buy one of these in good condition, my email address is contact@davidvaucher.com…)

It’s not just past collabs that are gorgeous, the back-catalog is lust-worthy as well…

I’ve spent a lot of time talking about collabs rather than COACH alone because I think these partnerships can do a lot to 1) test the assumptions a stand-alone brand may have about its strength and recognition and 2) test and telegraph its strategy before it rolls it out more broadly. The exercise I’ve undertaken in researching this article has made me appreciate more the things I loved about COACH - by itself - to start with, as well as think about some “Dream Teams” that I’d personally love to see:

• COACH x the New York Yankees, because do I really have to explain why?

• COACH x Filson, two iconic American companies partnering up together

• COACH x LLBean, also two icons of American style

• COACH x Todd Snyder, who incidentally created very well-received collections with LL Bean

• COACH x Victorinox, I saw the latter dropped a collaboration with Adidas as I was writing this list, so I thought the outcome of a COACH collab could be interesting

• COACH x Rowing Blazers, to catch the prep-with-a-twist wave that’s been happening recently

• COACH x Aimé Leon Dore, because partnering with one of today’s hottest brands, which also happens to have roots in New York, just makes sense

I know it sounds presumptuous to suggest a “roadmap” given that I have no affiliation with the company, but based on what I do know, here’s my summary (do take this with a grain of salt):

1. COACH can’t just manufacture hype - or indeed just demand - for itself in the Men’s space, first it has to start with the product and build momentum by creating highly covetable pieces

2. The brand has so, so many things going for it - the heritage, the back catalog, the glove-tanned leather - that it has a very, very solid foundation off of which to take those next steps

3. Once it has built up more of a reputation in the Men’s space for high quality goods, it can supercharge that momentum with a choice collaboration.

To me, this is the path that companies like Louis Vuitton and Gucci took: start as a fashion house known for making “nice” things, then slowly stoke the fire and then announce a targeted collab to light the match.

Anyways, this is all wishful thinking for the future. If you really don’t care at all about hype, you just want to own beautiful things and after reading all of this (thanks!), you’re now curious about picking up a few pieces of history, you don’t have to cross your fingers that you get a ding from eBay. In fact, there are TONS of options out there for you to find from COACH’s past collections, and even some from their current ones.

In other words, and to tie the knot with the beginning of this article: while I’m not convinced about COACH’s approach to “fashion”, this is a company that has proven over the decades that it has “style” covered, in spades, you just have to know what to look for and how to go about finding it.

To keep this piece from getting any longer I will cover all of that in a (near) future post, but for now I’ll whet your appetite with a few pictures of just a couple (among many!) of my latest COACH pick-ups.

Some minor corrections were made after this post was first published, specifically wording and a change to a leather reference.

This is how a COACH wallet looks next to a few other of my EDC items; just look at how gorgeous that leather is!

This briefcase looks beautiful, doesn’t it? Just wait until you see a close-up of the leather…

And here it is! The leather feels and smells amazing also, and in my next article I’ll bring up the quality of the hardware as well.