Coach Gives Secondhand Denim a Second Life With Bank & Vogue

Originally published on TriplePundit.com

Using secondhand materials has the potential to significantly reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of the fashion industry. The secondhand goods broker Bank & Vogue is demonstrating that's possible by working with big brands to create products out of upcycled fabrics, like Coach's new repurposed denim bag.

The fashion industry’s impact on the environment is not a secret. The industry is responsible for an estimated 2 to 8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and its annual carbon emissions are on track to increase to nearly 2.7 billion tons by the end of the decade, according to a United Nations Environment Program report. But using repurposed materials such as secondhand denim can significantly reduce emissions and other environmental impacts tied to fashion.

For example, a new partnership between the fashion holding company Tapestry and the secondhand goods broker Bank & Vogue looks to bring repurposed denim into the luxury category. The partners' first foray, a new take on Coach's iconic signature Soho Bag, reduced emissions by 80 percent and cut water consumption by 95 percent compared to conventional first-use denim, according to a life cycle assessment.

This project prolongs the life of jeans that are not fit for resale, said Steven Bethell, co-founder of Bank & Vogue. The goods broker purchases post-consumer denim from thrift stores and charities across North America, as well as directly from the public. But because of the way the repurposing process works, only 28 percent of all the denim collected can be sold as repurposed denim, according to the life cycle assessment. The other 72 percent are leftover cutting scraps known as “denim skeletons.” Those skeletons can still be reused once recycled into a textile that can replace virgin cotton. Doing so significantly reduces the environmental impact of the repurposing process by spreading the burdens of transportation and processing over more material.

“There are a lot of jeans that come through to Bank & Vogue that are not fit for resale, so it's those jeans that we then sorted into a range of colors,” Bethell said. “By sorting the material by shade and tone at scale, and then making that available to the design team, you can see that the bag has three or four colorways. I think that one of the amazing things about sorting post-consumer clothes, there's a real authenticity to the material.”

Bank & Vogue lowers the manufacturing carbon footprint of the Coach bags by shipping pre-cut pieces that are later assembled in Coach’s factory. “We are sending only exactly what the factory needs, which is really important because we already own the technology of how to recycle these skeletons, the stuff left over,” Bethell said. “I think this unlocks another solution towards a lower carbon footprint product.”

At the Tapestry factory, the manufacturing process was redesigned to accommodate repurposed materials. Tapestry has plenty of experience making sure newly ordered materials comply with the company’s quality standards, but making sure upcycled materials still meet those standards was a challenge that required a whole new system to assess the cut-to-assemble materials.

“We ended up creating a cross-functional checklist for using post-consumer materials, partnering with our compliance teams and folks across the business, to really use this as a pilot case study,” said Megan Dawson-Elli, product sustainability manager at Tapestry. “We look at materials based on style, performance, and impact to make sure they're helping us work towards our goals to create beautiful products and to create products that meet our targets from a Tapestry ESG perspective.”

The first repurposed denim Coach bag made in partnership with Bank & Vogue launched in Spring 2024. Since then, the brand released two more drops that completely sold out.

Bank & Vogue works with hundreds of suppliers and customers to give products seen as waste a new life, encouraging them to avoid landfills by making reuse a profitable option. Beyond the partnership with Coach, the broker works with brands to source and reuse a variety of other materials, including flannel, velvet and Hawaiian shirts, Bethell said. Some of its other projects include brands like Converse and Wrangler.

“We are excited to have other collaborations in the works that demonstrate that upcycling can not only be a path to a lower carbon production methodology, but these partnerships demonstrate that it can be done at scale,” Bethell said.

The Coach partnership confirms that industrial-scale sustainable fashion is possible, even if design teams have to rethink their processes to get there. That’s something Dawson-Elli wants everyone to know, emphasizing that curiosity is a key piece in a partnership like this.

“It was big for me to see the value in post-consumer materials, and that this is possible,” Dawson-Elli said. “This is not a small collection, this is something that has real units behind it. And having that mentality of being curious and challenging our linear systems — it can be tough, It takes time, it takes creative power to unlock — [but] it starts to feel like there are even more possibilities to think through.”