Coach pushes circular craft agenda with Coachtopia

Upcycled collections, made from materials that have been recycled, reused, or repurposed, is a great way to reduce waste and help the environment because less resources have been used in the production process. Keeping this in mind, New York-based luxury brand recently launched sub-brand ‘Coachtopia’, focused on circular craft and collaborative creativity. Launching in the United States, Canada and the UK, Coachtopia will expand to Asia later this year.

“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 80 years of Coach leather expertise, Coachtopia crafts  shoulder bags, cross-bodies, small leather goods and 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 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’ cutting room 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.