Rarely a day goes by without another archive sale being advertised on my Instagram feed. Sure, this is partly to do with the boom in vintage shopping and resale we’ve seen of late, with collectors auctioning off their most treasured pieces and fashion insiders doing a closet detox. But there’s also been a subtle rebrand of the traditional end-of-season sale, too, with brands piggy-backing on the popularity of archival fashion.
Photo: Alanoud Alghamdi. Vogue Arabia, November 2022
“Some designer sales are truly selling archives, while others are selling current seasons,” says Mara Hoffman, who recently held an archive sale – in the truest sense of the term – with Vestiaire Collective, after deciding to close her eponymous brand of 24 years. “It’s important to me that I take responsibility for the inventory that I have, and do everything in my power to keep the things I have made out of landfills.” Bonus: it’s also given customers “the chance to own something that they missed before, or possibly couldn’t afford when it was first offered”.
In some ways, the ubiquity of the archive sale – sometimes branded as a sample sale – is a reflection of the challenging retail landscape right now, particularly for young designers (many of whom were left in debt following the shuttering of Matches earlier this year). But the shift is also a reflection of the changing ways in which we shop: most of us aren’t thinking seasonally anymore, and are instead investing in pieces that will stand the test of time.
Of course, for the likes of Conner Ives, whose signature upcycled styles can be found across all his collections, it makes complete sense to be thinking of his designs in the context of an archive – particularly as he’s literally transforming vintage pieces into highly covetable designs. “We use the term archive sale as a reaction to the breakneck speed that our industry operates at,” the designer explains. “I see the…
