Fashion Cheat Sheet: You Don't Know the New Designer of Mulberry Yet But You Do Know His Designs Well

Joe Zee

·Editor in Chief

Updated November 30, 2014 at 11:44 PM

Photo Courtesy Mulberry

The fashion industry likes to play the game of musical chairs every six months or so, where designers (Creative Directors, as they are called) would leave one fashion house for another, triggering a domino effect of rotating talent in the industry. Most of the time, they’re names that are well-known in the inner circles. Just recently, we saw Peter Copping, the designer behind Nina Ricci, take over the reins at Oscar de la Renta while Guillaume Henry, who was helming a smaller French label, Carven, took over for Copping. And just the year before, the more high profile name, Nicholas Ghesquière, took over for Marc Jacobs at Louis Vuitton.

Confused yet?

Well, here’s one more. And it’s a name you’ve never heard of, but you know his designs very well.

Mulberry, the iconic British leather goods company, has been designer-less for the past 18 months. But not for long, because it was just announced that Johnny Coca will be taking over in 2015.

Who’s that you ask?

Here is a breakdown of what you do know, need to know, and will know about this designer very soon.

1) YOU ALREADY LOVE HIS STUFF AND DIDN’T EVEN KNOW IT. He has been the head design director for leather goods and accessories at Celine where he championed the IT bags for the last few seasons. And you know those IT bags I’m talking about – the most famous one, called the Winged Bag and more recently, the Trapeze Bag, which are both carried by celebrities like Reese Witherspoon and Emma Roberts and sell for upwards of $2,000. But the real test (cue Miranda Priestly here) is you know that you’ve made it in the design world, when you’ve also been knocked off by Forever 21, who, this season, didn’t even bother to change the Trapeze name for their bag when they produced it and sold it for less than $30. Also, Coca is the guy that kicked off the return of the Birkenstock (in his case, the Furkenstock) and the reinvented Vans and Keds trend. If that wasn’t enough, he brought back the one earring trend all the girls have been sporting since last fall.

2) HE’S GOT GLOBAL CRED. He’s multicultural. He’s Spanish (born in Seville), studied and worked in Paris (he majored in art, architecture and design at the École des Beaux-Arts and École Boulle in Paris and then worked at Louis Vuitton before coming to Celine) and teaches in London (tutors at Central St. Martins).

3) YOU HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL FALL OF 2015 TO GET YOUR HANDS ON HIS STUFF. Coca won’t be starting in his new role until July, but it will definitely be interesting to see what Coca’s own vision will be as he has worked so closely with Celine’s Design Director, Phoebe Philo, to define his current accessories atheistic. More interestingly, though, he will be in that small league of designers that went from not designing clothes to a fashion house with a ready-to-wear collection. But then gaging the success of Frida Giannini at Gucci, Maria Grazia Chiuri, and Pier Paolo Piccioli at Valentino, where the designers also started with accessories, Coca’s future looks promising. Plus, he’s easy on the eyes, which always helps in the fashion world.

Some of Johnny Coca’s Greatest Hits: