Are New Coach Bags As Good As Vintage Ones? We Investigated.

Historically, Coach bags were made to last a lifetime. “The concept was, buy a Coach bag and it’ll last forever,” Miles Cahn, former co-owner of Coach, once told The New Yorker. That promise starts with the leather.

When it comes to leather, there are two main factors of quality: the grade type and the tanning method. As a general rule, full-grain leather is the highest-quality leather, according to Haiko Schulz, the director at the research and testing organization FILK Freiberg Institute. Next is the type of tanning — vegetable, semi-vegetable, and chrome. Vegetable tanning is centuries old and uses natural astringents to stabilize the hide. Chrome tanning, the most common process today, is conducted with chromium salts and is generally considered to be faster and cheaper than vegetable tanning. Some brands, like Coach, also mix the two processes with what’s called semi-vegetable tanning.

In the catalogs I reviewed, most Coach handbags from the 1960s to the 1990s were made from glovetanned leather, a full-grain leather that was tanned with the brand’s “own formulation of special tanning extracts.” It was “beautiful to look at, sensational to feel, and yet it is as rugged as a Big League Baseball Mitt,” claimed a 1975 catalog. (Coach declined to comment on the ingredients found in its glovetanned leather formulation.)

The Coach styles I reviewed and tested from that time period had a thicker, more rugged, and supple feel that seemed to have little to no finish. The bags aged well, with a subtle patina and stretch marks that exemplified the brand’s original promises. A Roll Bag Spectator from the early 1990s, which I bought on eBay, had dense leather that was stretchy yet structured. After 30 years, it showed some patina, which David Mesquita, vice president and co-owner of the repair service Leather Spa, said was a signature quality of glovetanned leather. Older bags I tested from the 1960s also had a beefy leather that felt robust and strong; despite decades of use, they all showed little to no scratches or scuffs.

But Coach bags made today are a different story. Glovetanned leather is no longer the main material found in Coach bags. Some are made of crossgrain (which uses embossing to hide the natural imperfections of the skin) or calf leather, while others are made from nylon and jacquard. Some bags, such as the Mott Messenger Bag, are fully vegetable tanned, while others, like the Bleecker Bucket bag, are semi-vegetable tanned.

Traditional glovetanned leather bags are still made by Coach, such as the Juliet, the Trail, the Swing Zip, and the Hamptons Hobo, according to the company’s website. It’s also available in the Loved Leather colorway of the popular Brooklyn and Empire bags. So the material is still part of Coach’s DNA. It’s just not as widely available.

The bags I tested from the 2000s to 2020s had thinner material that was not as structured in comparison with the older bags. Both the Brooklyn and Bleecker bucket bags, which are made from natural grain leather (a blanket term that can mean full grain leather, according to Schulz) were lighter and showed damage more easily than the older bags. The Brooklyn bag easily scuffed at the corners, and the papery, thin material held on to wrinkles and folds easier than that of older bags. I visited a Coach store to see how the materials looked on not-so-used samples. The Brooklyn bag also looked rumpled at the store; a wine-colored sample of the Empire bag displayed at the store, which according to Coach’s website is made from the same material, was scratched throughout.

Even so, you can find both new (post-2000s) and vintage Coach bags that, despite their flaws, are arguably good-quality, especially for bags under $1,000. Mesquita said that, in his experience treating them at his leather repair shop, he has found that the materials in Coach bags are generally more durable than those of other luxury brands, including Chanel. But if you’re looking for the best bang for your buck (and have some time on your hands), you’ll probably want to go vintage.