When Chris Bartick first sailed into Nantucket, it felt like more than just a trip—it felt like fate. The artist and founder of luxury fashion brand Respoke was drawn to the island by a feeling he couldn’t explain. “It was like the island was calling me before I understood why,” he says.
What he didn’t realize then was that he wasn’t just discovering a new destination—he was unknowingly returning to his ancestral home.
In 2019, years after that first visit, Bartick sailed back to Nantucket again—this time at the helm of his own boat, looking for a space to open a Respoke store. It was long after Respoke was established at 41 Straight Wharf, through genealogical research, that he discovered his direct connection to Tristram Coffin, one of the original English settlers who led the purchase of Nantucket in 1659 and is considered the island’s patriarch.
“I had no idea I was literally sailing back into my own history,” Bartick says. “When I learned about my family’s deep roots here, it all came full circle. As a designer offering art and fashion to Nantucket’s modern visitors and community, I see myself as a reimagined version of my Coffin ancestors—where they drew from the sea, I draw from the inherent artistry and stories of vintage scarves, reinventing the past into something newly purposeful.”
A Whaler’s Detour Becomes Destiny
The Coffin family legacy on Nantucket runs deep, especially through the sea. Tristram Coffin’s descendants became ship owners, captains, and mariners. One of them, Abraham Coffin, was born on Nantucket in 1750, the son of schoolmaster Benjamin Coffin, who was lost at sea between Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard.
During a whaling voyage in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Abraham and his cousin Davis were asked by their ship’s captain to falsely claim that whale oil acquired from another ship was their own in order to secure a higher bounty. As devout Quakers, they refused. The captain retaliated by putting them ashore on a remote stretch of the Gaspé Peninsula, where Abraham would eventually settle in a cove called L’Anse-aux-Cousins.
There, he met and married Hannah Ascah, a 16-year-old local girl and the daughter of Richard Ascah, a former British Army officer who had been granted land in the region after his service with the Royal Americans regiment. That unlikely exile led to the creation of the Canadian branch of the Coffin family.
Among Abraham and Hannah’s descendants was Rachel Jane Hackett, born in 1853 in Quebec. Her granddaughter, Alice Bartick—Chris Bartick’s grandmother—was raised by Rachel after her mother died when Alice was just four years old. The artistic spirit clearly ran through the generations: Rachel’s daughter Mary Philomene Barry, born in New Hampshire, was a visual artist, holding a doctorate from Boston College, whose legacy of creativity continues in Bartick’s multidisciplinary work today.
Where History and Design Intertwine
Bartick is best known as the founder of Respoke, the brand that transforms vintage designer scarves—think Hermès, Pucci, Ferragamo—into handcrafted espadrilles and other wearable art. At its heart, Respoke is a celebration of reinvention, individuality, and story.
“Respoke is about honoring what already exists and giving it new life,” Bartick explains. “It’s not just fashion—it’s memory, movement, identity.”
That philosophy resonates even more deeply now that Bartick knows his family’s story: one of adaptation, migration, and resilience. From Abraham’s principled stand to Alice’s reinvention after loss, the theme is clear—nothing is ever truly lost, only transformed.
The Island Was Always Calling
When Bartick learned that his ancestor Abraham Coffin appears on one of Nantucket’s oldest family trees—alongside relatives like Lucretia Coffin Mott and Martha Coffin Wright, both prominent suffragists with the Underground Railroad—it added yet another layer to his connection with the island.
“I didn’t know any of this when I first sailed in,” he says. “But I felt like I belonged here. That feeling came before the facts.”
Nantucket, once a distant dream, has become both a creative home and a personal anchor.
“Whether it’s an iconic vintage scarf turned into something new, or a forgotten family story rediscovered,” Bartick says, “it all reminds me that things don’t end—they evolve. And sometimes, they bring you right back to where you started.”
Respoke is open daily in-season at 41 Straight Wharf • Respoke.com
Cover photo: Chris, and his parents Ed and Michele Bartick at Respoke Nantucket. It is his father Ed’s ancestral lineage that is from the Coffin name.
