Coach receives the third annual Innovation Award, presented by Amazon Fashion at the 2024 CFDA Fashion Awards.
Coachtopia spearheads Coach’s approach to sustainability, waste reduction, and the future of circular fashion.
The Innovation Award Presented By Amazon Fashion shines the spotlight on Coach’s trailblazing initiative, Coachtopia—an innovative, collaborative lab designed to fast-track the fashion industry’s shift toward a circular economy. Building on Coach’s rich heritage of craftsmanship and modern design, Coachtopia is a decisive step forward, spearheading the luxury brand’s approach to sustainability, waste reduction, and the future of circular fashion.
“Since Coach created Coachtopia, it has transformed the conscious fashion landscape by bringing innovation to circularity, waste and taste, connecting deeply with Gen Z customers and beyond,” SAID Steven Kolb, chief executive officer of the CFDA. “As a brand, Coach has continuously pushed the boundaries of creativity, blending its rich heritage with forward-thinking design. We congratulate Stuart Vevers and the team at Coach for their overall brand innovation and on Coachtopia, which is truly deserving of the Innovation Award presented by Amazon Fashion.”
Coachtopia recognises the pressing need to scale circular economy solutions to save people and the planet. In simple terms, an approach that aims to eliminate the fashion industry’s current linear model of ‘take-make-waste’. The excessive consumption associated with the throwaway, disposal nature of fashion has led to overproduction and subsequent waste, resulting in severe environmental problems. The pressing need to take responsibility falls upon fashion brands and designers, who must focus on creating clothes that are meant to last longer and be easily repairable, developing technologies that allow old textiles to be recycled efficiently.
Jenny Freshwater, Vice President of Amazon Fashion, added, “The Amazon Fashion Innovation Award recognizes visionaries who propel our industry forward, and we are excited to honor Coach’s legacy of craftsmanship and innovative design that has been instrumental in defining American style. Coach, under the creative direction of Stuart Vevers, exemplifies how a brand can bring its unique story and heritage to life, capturing the attention of a new generation of customers.”
The CFDA Fashion Awards, presented by Amazon Fashion, will take place on October 28th, 2024 at the American Museum of Natural History.
How Coachtopia is Advancing Circularity
Launched in April 2023, Coachtopia is a Coach sub-brand focused on circular craft and collaborative creativity. Coachtopia reimagines the product lifecycle from beginning to end, reducing the creation of new materials by crafting with waste and designing products that can be reimagined, remade and recycled multiple times.
“Circularity is about reimagining not just the product lifecycle, but the relationship between brand, planet, and consumer,” Joon Silverstein, SVP, Global Marketing, Creative and Sustainability at Coach and Head of Coachtopia, said in a statement. “That’s why we’ve created Coachtopia as both a discovery lab to pioneer circularity in fashion and a collaborative platform for change.”
With a mission to help advance a circular fashion system, Coachtopia is committed to reducing product destruction and its waste footprint, as well as increasing its capacity for product repair and responsible material sourcing. Harnessing more than eighty years of Coach leather expertise, Coachtopia crafts shoulder bags, cross-bodies, small leather goods, accessories and ready-to-wear, made almost entirely from upcycled materials.
A fine example is leather bags and accessories made from luxury leather production scraps left over after the luxury fashion brand’s bag patterns are cut from leather hides. It didn’t happen overnight; the design team experimented with craft techniques like patchwork, weaving, appliqué and scrap-binding to find ways to ‘upcraft’ scraps, zipper ends and other waste materials into artisanal styles.
“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,” Joon Silverstein shared in a press release. “We’re building it 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.”
As consumers become increasingly aware of the devastating effect of excess inventory and waste in Fashion, it’s imperative that fashion designers and brands get the sustainable memo. Sustainability stems from circularity and although working with upcrafted fabric turns the classic design process on its head, clever designing can make the products exclusive and valuable.
Ariana Greenblatt stars in Coachtopia campaign
Ariana Greenblatt stars in Coachtopia campaign
Famous for her Sasha in Barbie and young Ahsoka Tano in Ahsoka, New Yorker Ariana Greenblatt is passionate about fashion and sustainability, The young actress has partnered with Coachtopia as the star of the brand’s 2024 spring story.
She says, “I’m excited to be a part of something that’s better for our environment. What Coachtopia is doing is incredible—it’s doing its own thing and I think a lot of people are going to want to join it. But Coachtopia did it first. I’m just happy to be a part of it.”
Photographed by Kyrre Kristoffersen, the Coachtopia campaign with Ariana Greenblatt shows new styles and colors of Coachtopia’s popular silhouettes. The Loop Mini Puffy Tote is a convertible bag with a coordinated strap while the Coachtopia Loop Mini Backpack comes in a sleek, compact, design. Coachtopia’s drop also debuts new editions of the Ergo bag, which now comes in Croc-Embossed Coachtopia Leather made from at least 50 percent recycled leather fibers and Wavy Lava Upcrafted Leather.
Ariana Greenblatt tells Elle – “Not every brand is sustainable or they don’t do the work to better the environment which is unfortunate, but the brands that do focus on that, I have extreme respect for and that was the main driving point of what intrigued me with this campaign and what Coachtopia is doing.”
Jasmeen Dugal is Associate Editor at FashionABC, contributing her insights on fashion, technology, and sustainability. She brings with herself more than two decades of editorial experience, working for national newspapers and luxury magazines in India.
Jasmeen Dugal has worked with exchange4media as a senior writer contributing articles on the country’s advertising and marketing movements, and then with Condenast India as Net Editor where she helmed Vogue India’s official website in terms of design, layout and daily content. Besides this, she is also an entrepreneur running her own luxury portal, Explosivefashion, which highlights the latest in luxury fashion and hospitality.
