Les Archives, positioned in Paris’ sixth arrondissement, is a secondhand designer retailer rendered solely in millennial pink. This isn’t your typical Aladdin’s Cave vintage store, the place rails are stacked on prime of one another and clothes fill each nook. The blush-toned area is sparse, with a smattering of sneakers on a few wall-mounted cabinets, just a few magazines, and a pink copy of a Mario Bellini Camaleonda couch. Around 250 objects, give or take, hold evenly on clothes rails that line all sides of the store. “I like to keep the store well-spaced,” mentioned the proprietor and sole worker, 29-year previous Nicolette Contursi. “I don’t want it to feel overwhelming.”
It’s broadly understood that to store secondhand is to enter right into a treasure hunt, the place messiness is permitted and persistence is rewarded with bargains and distinctive objects. But as we speak, Les Archives represents one other sort of vintage clothes retailer that’s gaining traction — one the place a lot much less digging is required.
Contursi, a local Californian who moved to Paris ten years in the past to research fashion historical past and advertising, opened the doorways to her brick-and-mortar retailer in December 2023. She principally sells designer garments from the likes of Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, Prada, Gucci, Jean Paul Gaultier, Versace and extra, with every merchandise made between the quick window of 1980 and 1999, and costs starting from $160 to $5,000. “I only buy pieces that I love, that I would want to wear,” she mentioned. “I’m curating a collection that fits a certain aesthetic.” It means she hardly ever has any reserves in the retailer room. “I don’t have a backstock,” Contursi mentioned. “I really operate the business on what goes out gets replaced.”
Maria Francisca Machado, additionally 29, has taken the same strategy together with her secondhand clothes store in Lisbon, Portugal, which opened final summer time. “I want people to feel like this is a highly curated store,” she mentioned in a video interview. “Not like random things, like your grandma’s closet.” The retail area, conveniently titled Curated, is slick, silver and industrial. The until rests on an enormous polished chrome desk, and the garments — which aren’t designer, however chosen for his or her development high quality and use of pure fibers — hold on just a few rails of uncovered pipe.
There’s demand for it, too. In October 2025, Google searches for “curated vintage” reached an all-time high. The phrase has been tagged in additional than 550,000 posts on Instagram, whereas on TikTok the variety of movies with the #curatedvintage hashtag elevated by 50% in the previous yr. Ameli Lindgren, founding father of the London archival fashion retailer Nordic Poetry, specializing in designer runway items largely from 1990 to the early 2000s, says she has observed the shift firsthand. Lindgren opened this retailer in 2017 after shifting from one other location, however has been promoting luxurious vintage at markets and pop-up areas for years earlier than. “When I started off, it wasn’t very curated at all,” she mentioned of her enterprise. “Most people are doing it now because it’s easier for the consumer.”
On the entire, the used fashion market is experiencing a increase. According to a 2025 survey from the Boston Consulting Group and Vestiaire Collective, the development of the secondhand fashion and luxurious market is outpacing that of newly-made garments by as a lot as 3 times. Shopping vintage has change into a official manner to construct out one’s wardrobe, as shoppers more and more make choices primarily based on sustainability, affordability and private model. “If you go and buy a jacket at Zara, the next day you wear it you walk past five people that are wearing the same jacket,” mentioned Lindgren.
The picture that often beckons of a vintage retailer is one that’s fusty, cramped and dimly lit, crammed with clothes organized with out design or backstory. Both Machado and Contursi mentioned they wished their vintage outlets to really feel completely different to their conventional counterparts. For Machado, whose specialty is vintage garments made in the Nineties and early 2000s, the mission at Curated was “to show people that vintage can be contemporary” however “with good quality and fair prices,” she mentioned.
“I like it to feel like a modern day retail store,” agreed Contursi. “Everything is pristine. Nothing smells weird. There’s space on the racks. Everything’s dry cleaned.” Most of the clothes in Les Archives are given a listing tag, impressed by these utilized in museum storage. They element not simply the model, measurement, and materials but additionally the fashion home’s artistic director at the time, the assortment date, season and generally even the particular order during which the garment appeared on the runway. If Contursi can discover it, a picture of the merchandise, when it was first worn on the catwalk, is printed onto Polaroid movie and connected to the tag — a memento every buyer will get to maintain.
Contursi says she has transformed clients who had beforehand written off secondhand procuring — particularly ladies coming in with their daughters, who are actually extra doubtless to be the ones strolling away with a procuring bag. “I’ll notice the moms will sometimes leave with something and they’re like ‘Oh, I can do this,’” she mentioned. She believes “positioning” Les Archives extra like a luxurious boutique permits her to “tap into a whole other clientele.”
Lindgren’s clients are stylists, celebrities and influencers, who typically pop in, as Australian content material creator Zofia Krasicki did final month, forward of unique occasions like Paris Fashion Week or Sundance Film Festival. Krasicki, who spent round tens of hundreds of kilos at Nordic Poetry forward of a latest journey to Paris, mentioned it was Lingren’s “incredible selection” that stored her coming again, and the reality “it’s more like walking into a designer boutique than your average vintage store.”
Among one in every of Krasicki’s purchases was an Alexander McQueen jumpsuit, which Lindgren later mentioned was most likely too uncommon to promote. “I should have archived it, to be honest with you,” she mentioned. “But at the same time, if it goes to a good home, clothes need to be enjoyed.” The store’s high-profile clients embrace Charli XCX, Alexa Chung, Lily Allen and Alex Consani, whose extremely watchable dress-up periods in archival Vivienne Westwood, John Galliano and Dolce & Gabbana are filmed and posted straight to the retailer’s Instagram.
Supply is the greatest problem, all three vintage sellers say. “My pieces are museum-worthy,” mentioned Lindgren, who believes she has one in every of the largest collections of garments made by Gucci below the artistic course of Tom Ford. “I hand-pick every single item, which is extremely time consuming.” Lindgren is eager to archive extra of her uncommon items, however the prices of maintaining the enterprise means she is compelled to half with objects she’d slightly save.
Machado takes nice pains to inventory Curated in accordance to her imaginative and prescient, and refuses to show something she isn’t 110% certain about. If she regrets a purchase order, Machado says she’d slightly give it away without cost to mates than have it hanging in the store window, doubtlessly pushing aside her discerning clients — even when it means gaps on the rails. “I kind of stopped worrying about not having enough things,” she mentioned.
Contursi, who says she is consistently looking on-line for brand spanking new items in between serving clients, isn’t certain what the future holds for Les Archives. “I’m very interested to see what it’ll be like in 10 years from now,” she mentioned, noting that vintage is at present “very trendy,” with many entrepreneurs opening their very own resale stores. The costs of vintage objects, she added, “have gone up a lot.” Plus, what’s being produced by luxurious manufacturers as we speak probably won’t last long enough to be resold in 20 years time. “I have some designer pieces that I’ve even bought a couple of years ago,” mentioned Contursi. “And they’re not in nearly as good shape as, I don’t know, a pair of 1980s Saint Laurent trousers I have.”
Machado’s “less is more” strategy to her retailer runs deeper than simply how she arranges her inventory. If a buyer is indecisive about a purchase order, she’ll advise towards it. That would possibly run counter to her enterprise’ bottomline, however she’s extra occupied with serving to her clients store higher. “I actually advise people to think and be very thoughtful and intentional,” Machado mentioned. “I have this thing written on my counter, saying ‘Think first, buy second.’”