Stuart Vevers of Coach is the first creative director of an American fashion brand to receive full honors as an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. Vevers was included in the Birthday 2024 Honours List, approved by King Charles III.
“I’m honored to receive this award from King Charles,” said Vevers, recognized for Services to Fashion and UK/US Creative Relations, in a statement. “The connection between my home country, adopted country and creative pursuits brings everything I’ve worked for—and that is important in my life—together.”
Vevers, who is British, will receive the award at a later date at a Royal Investiture.
“Stuart’s creative leadership has been essential to Coach’s evolution as a brand and to who we are as a company,” said Coach chief executive officer and brand president Todd Kahn in a statement. “Importantly, this recognition also honors Stuart’s contributions to the fashion world at large and to culture as we know it, and we believe Stuart is just getting started. All of us at Coach are very proud of him today.”
Vevers, born in 1973 in Yorkshire and raised in the northern England, studied fashion design at London’s University of Westminster before taking on design roles at Calvin Klein, Bottega Veneta, Givenchy and Louis Vuitton. He was formerly overseeing creative direction at Mulberry and Loewe.
It was in 2013 that he was appointed creative director of Coach, the American leather goods brand founded in New York in 1941. During his time at Coach, Vevers introduced ready-to-wear for the first time for the company.
Among his honors, Vevers was named the British Fashion Council’s Accessory Designer of the Year in 2006; he was recognized with Accessory Designer of the Year by the Council of Fashion Designers of America in 2017, and he received the Hall of Fame Design Excellence Award for his design of the Coach Rogue Bag in 2021.
Vevers resides in New York City with his husband, Benjamin Seidler, and children River and Vivienne. They also have a home in Patterdale in the U.K.
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire was founded in 1917 with awards conferred by the British monarch on the advice of the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary.
