Archival for women
Rare collaborations, secondary market grails, and collector runway pieces.
Archive fashion is a way of dressing built around clothes from designers' past collections, such as pieces made only for the runway and pieces that matter in a designer's history. Oversized cuts balance against tailored trousers in washed black, grey, and deep blue cotton or heavy wool. Deconstructed silhouettes pair cleanly with sculptural sterling silver jewellery, holding together through deliberate proportions rather than matching sets.
Collecting old runway pieces was once a small world of auctions, wealthy collectors and museums, until websites and apps made rare pieces easier to find. Jun Takahashi started Undercover while a student at Bunka Fashion College in Tokyo, where he also sang in a punk band, and its early clothes were punk inspired. Chrome Hearts began in a Los Angeles garage in the late eighties making leather jackets, and Supreme opened in New York in the mid nineties.
Hoodies, deconstructed outerwear and denim define the daily silhouette. Utopia in Toronto brings most of this wall, some of it pre owned, including Chrome Hearts hoodies and hats and Goyard totes. WDLT117 in Toronto brings Undercover jackets, blazers and bombers, most of them made in Japan. Outlined in Toronto adds Travis Scott.
