Material Wealth 2
European Secondhand Stores, Rkivecity, and the Best Boots Helmut Ever Designed
First off, an event announcement: friend of ARCHIVE.pdf rkivecity is hosting a popup at the Kartik Research store this weekend, May 2-4. For those unfamiliar, rkivecity is a textile recycling program based in New Dehli and Mumbai, whose designs are fully garment-to-garment. Amid a wave of designers proposing this kind of upcycling, rkivecity stands out for their diligence and lack of corner cutting. The brand collaborated with Kartik Research on the brand’s A/W ‘26 runway, but this popup will feature the launch of some new collaborative pieces. It’s a different approach to secondhand than this newsletter normally proposes – where we are about reviving specific garments, they are reusing and repurposing more anonymous ones – but the goals of sustainability and material value are the same.
Last week, London store La Nausee held a popup at the New York store &Sons. La Nausee is one of my favorite stores online – they’re well-researched, well-curated, and well-styled – and though the popup ended Monday, I think an event like this bears some note because these international popups are really valuable. While the US is a major fashion market, we often forget that we exist in a weird position relative to the hegemony of the European fashion system, and so much of the physical evidence of that fashion system exists in Europe. Sites like Vinted that are region-locked to Europe make accessing that material difficult for those of us in the States, so events like this, that bring a trove of A+ garments across the pond, help to break down that barrier to access.
This week also launched the Spring sale for another of my favorite European resale stores, Backyardarchive. BYA is the premier dealer for old Haider Ackermann at this point, a market which has been… in a weird place. Following the quiet shuttering of his eponymous label the secondhand interest in Haider was virtually nonexistent, but with the clothes held largely by sellers who would not budge on prices, so the market just locked up. I expected to see more of an increase in interest after his first few highly-lauded collections for Tom Ford, but it has not really materialized, though I have seen some early signs that it is coming now. But in the meantime, the discounts on this sale are pretty extensive, and things are selling fast, so this might be a good time to get in on Haider before it starts to get expensive again.
Onto the listings:
