Fashion has officially become infatuated with the idea of archives. It’s wildly ubiquitous; now as common as a pair of jeans or an old leather belt stashed in the back of your closet. From people on TikTok marveling over their personal collections and labeling items down to the minute details of exact season and runway look number, to designers themselves diligently hunting down their own work in the secondhand market,
it surpasses clothing and garments that are simply vintage, and is more specifically linked to extremely rare runway pieces. In the world of archive fashion, everyone is a collector—but even the world’s top designers can’t get their hands on all their goods.Earlier this year, Anna Sui came across a gray crushed velvet and fur-trimmed halter dress from her fall 1998 collection for sale on Poshmark and immediately DMed Casey Jackson, the blogger behind Seek the Finds, who posted it. “Hi this is Anna Sui. I saw you sold this already but I was wondering if it would be possible for me to buy it instead? We don’t have this sample and it would mean a lot for me to have it in my archive,” she wrote.
The conversation went viral on Twitter. Just a few months later, for her resort 2023 collection, she reissued the infamous dress. “It’s strange; I never really looked back, because we were always so busy,” Sui says. “You never have time to really reflect. A lot of the clothes went from the showroom right into storage or garment bags. We never looked at them again.”
Celebrities, too, are opting for rare pieces straight from the archives, with stylist Law Roach leading the way. See: the excess and opulence of the Kardashian family at Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker’s wedding in ’90s Dolce & Gabbana, or Bella Hadid wearing Versace’s 1987 and 2001 archives on the Cannes red carpet. Here, vintage fashion is undoubtedly the new luxury, not to mention the ultimate status symbol—it’s wearable art you’re almost guaranteed that no one else will be wearing, since it’s usually one of one, with few stylists in the industry even having the know-how or pull to dig into a brand’s closely guarded oeuvre.
