At the Coach dinner on Thursday night at the New York Public Library, a friend asked me if I thought that brands would still be staging fashion shows in 30 years. Yes, I said, if the world doesn’t blow up before that: Fashion always finds an excuse.
His question, though, was reasonable. We all know runway shows are no longer a tool of the trade. Coach’s sales are now something like 90 percent direct: buyers don’t buy it, editors are obliged to cover the brand largely because it’s a name people know and because it’s an advertiser. For Coach, the biggest brand in the Tapestry portfolio, the show—a display of oversized leather blazers and pointy-toe jelly flats embossed all over with Cs, with J.Lo in the front row—is a customer acquisition cost.
