Coachtopia
Luxury brands lead fashion. Designers divine trend cycles, and fashion shows are their crystal ball, exhibition, and manifesto all in one. As we enter a more eco-conscious consumer market, luxury brands, too, direct sustainability efforts. In some ways, luxury brands have always done this: artisan craftsmanship coupled with limited goods lends this industry to be less harmful environmentally when compared to fast fashion brands. But Coach has gone a step forward in their environmental efforts by launching Coachtopia.
Coachtopia, which launched on April 20, 2023, is the next step in Coach’s sustainability initiatives. It appeals to younger consumers both in ecological values and design. The name itself evokes Utopia, an idealized society aiming for remedies to civilization’s shortcomings. Their philosophy, as stated on their website, is to “reimagine waste as a valuable raw material and work backward, crafting our products from recycled, repurposed, or renewable materials and designing them to live multiple lives with clear pathways for takeback, reuse, or recycling.” Function leads to form. Many of their styles depend on Upcrafted Leather, their term referring to leather scraps from the production of standard Coach Bags. This gives Coachtopia goods their unique checkered patterns with varying textures and colors. Waste materials are found up and down their production line, from repurposed deadstock to recycled cardboard in their shipping boxes. The brand seems on track to become a leader in sustainability. Yet, they have claims on their website that are currently unverified. Allegedly, their Wavy Dinky bag “has a 71% lower carbon footprint than a similar bag made in conventional materials,” but, unfortunately, they have no links or evidence to provide more information on this claim. Additionally, they state on their Impacts page that, when compared to virgin materials, a restored product can have a carbon footprint up to 76% less. This is based on research by students of Columbia’s Master of Science in Sustainability Management, but they fail to provide explicit documentation for this research. This, alongside quality issues with Coachtopia’s products, has led to greenwashing concerns.
According to the United Nations, greenwashing is the act wherein a company misleads the public into believing it is doing more to protect the environment than it is. TikTok user Tanner Leatherstein, a leather craftsman with 20 years of experience, invokes this term when dissecting a Coachtopia Ergo Bag for a video. He criticizes the quality, comparing the craftsmanship to Ikea particle board. And watching the video, it’s fair to see why: made of thin materials and leather dust, the bag is a step down compared to the quality of standard Coach bags, new or vintage. The demonstration brings doubt to the longevity of these bags, calling into question Coachtopia’s philosophy. And when a standard-size Ergo bag runs between $250-$350 USD, don’t you want it to last? Both of these can be true at once. Coachtopia is making a concerted effort, it seems, to circularize fashion while still falling way short of expectations. For one, any leather product can last you years: According to Bosca, a leather goods company, “[m]any premium leather crafters even guarantee their work to last for decades, even up to 100 years,” and leather can be restored with good TLC. Content creator Yooon_ie, among so many others, rescues vintage Coach bags and gives them a second life. Coach itself has been introducing rescue initiatives like this prior to Coachtopia. Coach (Re)Loved allows consumers to shop restored or repurposed leather goods. Coachtopia, too, is not completely without cited sources. It bases its efforts on the McKinsey & Company’s “Fashion on Climate” report, which itself cites research provided by the EU, UN, and institutions like Oxford University. Coachtopia is also explicitly partnered with ten independent nonprofits in order to lead environmental efforts in and outside the fashion industry. But it would be a disservice to sustainability to not criticize Coachtopia’s gaps in quality and information. Poor quality products can lead to overspending and overconsumption on the part of customers because they do not last. The McKinsey report states on page 9 that 20% of climate abatement (slowing climate change) depends on consumers alone, a comparable amount to brands’ needed efforts. So, well-made products are a must, with information provided on the process of how they were made. Coachtopia deserves praises for its efforts to create a more sustainable and circular fashion world, as both a leading luxury brand and as the heir to a brand whose products last for decades. Hopefully, as the brand grows, they can address criticisms like these in order to provide a better product, both for the consumer and the planet.
We encourage our Raandoom readers to continue their research into sustainability efforts put forth by Coachtopia and other brands.
