History

As you may remember from your high school geometry class, Plato established that only a small number of shapes are considered “perfect.”

Curiously, this “perfect” set does not include the silhouettes of Vintage Coach® bags. Evidently, Plato did not foresee these impending impeccable creations.

Or, more likely perhaps, Plato’s definition of “perfect” has absolutely nothing to do with handbags.

Nevertheless, Vintage Coach® bags are quite close to “perfect” in an intuitive sense of the word. Their practicality and elegance shield them from lapsing into obsolescence. In fact, like wine, they can become even more desirable with age. Any signs of wear naturally blend into the supple leather, thereby enhancing the bag’s robust, lustrous exterior.

Given their desirability, Vintage Coach® bags invite a plethora of inauthentic look-a-likes – or to put it bluntly – “fakes.”

The manufacturing of fake Coach® bags began long before today’s ubiquitous “copy-and-paste”-like appropriation of designer styles. So, it is entirely possible to acquire a fake Vintage Coach® bag that is authentically Vintage, but not authentically Coach®.

In fact, old manufacturers of fake Coach® bags were generally much more meticulous and thorough in replicating nitty-gritty details compared to the manufacturers of fake designer bags today. Therefore, your usual repertoire of tricks for confirming the authenticity of a too-good-to-be-true morsel at your local thrift shop may mislead you when you have a Vintage, superficially Coach®, bag in your hands.

That being said, fake Vintage Coach® bags are still, well, fake. That is, even if they do appear convincingly “real,” fake Vintage Coach® bags were intentionally manufactured in the cheapest way possible with the cheapest materials possible because their manufacturers’ goal is to profit not from the quality of their products, but from the deceptive exploitation of Coach®’s excellent reputation.

So, the telltale signs of fake Vintage Coach® bags are not as superficial or cosmetic as those endemic to today’s fake designer bags. Instead, determining the authenticity of a Vintage Coach® requires close inspection of some finer details.

Unfortunately, Coach® itself does not offer any official comprehensive guide for how to identify signs of authenticity. This absence is not surprising if you consider that the wrong person could easily capitalize on a “cookbook” to create convincing fakes. But the lack of any authorized information solicits a wealth of self-accredited and inconsistent advice concerning the real vs. fake debate – much of which circulates throughout the Internet. You have probably heard once or twice throughout your young adulthood that the Internet generally is not a failsafe vault of truth.

So, the best way to become skilled at determining the authenticity of a bag is to spend a lot of quality time with a lot of Vintage Coach® bags. However, studying merchandise in thrift stores is probably less of a priority to you than studying a textbook or two at the library.

But you can have your bag and put your textbook in it too. Less figuratively speaking, I am happy to provide you with the closest thing to a scholarly article about Vintage Coach® bags – which could be viable library material. In accordance with standard scientific procedure, I have collected and analyzed all of the data. That is, I have handled and examined hundreds of Vintage Coach® bags and also run into my fair share of fakes. Here I present a concise summary of my results that can inform your own thrift store exploits just as a Google Scholar search would guide your term paper research.

Vintage Coach® bags boast a number of distinguishing characteristics, including: the quality of the bag’s stitching, leather, (brass or nickel) hardware, and zippers. But these features are all subjective. I sometimes choose to identify an imposter upon these criteria – but only because I have closely examined more Vintage Coach® bags than would be necessary to carry the contents of my apartment. Generally, these more subjective features are much more difficult to rely upon as indicators of authenticity because there is so much variation.

But do not fret as though your calculator’s batteries just died during an exam that states clearly, “USE OF CALCULATOR SUGGESTED.” I’m about to give you the equivalent of my spare calculator. You can even keep it.

That is, I will delineate the clear, quantitative features unique to authentic Vintage Coach® bags. These two important features are the bag’s serial number and the Coach® “creed.” The Coach® creed is a short paragraph with specific wording that is stamped into the leather inside an unlined bag or stamped on to a leather patch that has been stitched into the lining of a lined bag. This consistent feature is used to identify a Coach® product. The appearance of Coach® creeds and serial numbers does vary, but in a predictable, chronologically correlated way. In fact, you can roughly determine the decade during which a particular Vintage Coach® bag was manufactured by observing particular characteristics of its creed and serial number.

Read my Guide for information.