American Graffiti

With the success of Coach 1941 ready-to-wear, a new fragrance, and a book on the brand’s 75 years, STUART VEVERS has a lot to celebrate.

- Nick Axelrod

THERE’S A HILARIOUS episode of Sex and the City in which Carrie convinces Samantha to join her on a trip to San Francisco—the joke is that she wants to go by train. Their “adjoining first-class deluxe sleeper berths” are more like dank closets, with a shower head over the toilet. The only edible menu option is a club sandwich. Which is why it’s amusing to consider British-born Stuart Vevers, executive creative director of the 75-year-old leather-goods company Coach, on a similar cross country expedition. And yet, as I type this sentence, Vevers is at the Arrow Motel in Espanola, New Mexico, on his seventh annual Amtrak summer extravaganza.

“When I was living in Spain [designing for Loewe], on my summer vacations I came to the States and took really long train journeys,” says Vevers, who in mid 2013 left both Madrid and the LVMH owned house, taking the creative reins at Coach in New York later that year. “I’d end up in places I don’t think you’d normally go.” He’d wander on and off different routes, taking photographs and culling inspiration from quotidian Americana: abandoned gas stations, dusty ’70s motels, knickknack shops, WPA era tableaux. “When I joined Coach, I realized I’d basically been researching my first collection for years.”