Ignore the Maybach. Stick Around for the Coffee-Dyed Shirts
There’s something funny about quiet clothes displayed next to loud luxury. The irony is not lost on Archie designer Mark Smith Clark, whose graceful garments made their New York Fashion Week debut quite literally in the shadow of a Maybach sedan suspended overhead.
“The dichotomy was very obvious,” Clark says. “When I accepted the presentation, I was like, ‘Okay, the clothing is very natural and understated, and the presentation will feel very glossy.’ We decided to bring it back down to earth.”
Even in the middle of the Men’s Day scrum hosted within a Mercedes showroom — Mercedes is a longtime NYFW sponsor — Archie’s clothing was excellent enough to hold its own. Clark’s delicate Terry Riley soundtrack may have been drowned in the din, but he carved out room in the bustling space with a clever showpiece reflective of the humanity that grounds his designs.
Clad in an earth-toned Archie wardrobe, fisherman sandals and all, models guided a handmade wooden carousel in an endless cycle both metaphorical and literal.
“We really wanted to get into [this] circular motif of habits and creative practice,” Clark says. “Sometimes [designing] collections [feels] very nonlinear, and you have to go back to go forward. You swirl around the same idea for multiple seasons before you feel comfortable with what you're doing.”
Plus, he points out, the wheeling models gave viewers a 360-degree view of garments in motion. Since 2017 or so, Clark has cut generously proportioned parkas, work shirts, and denim trousers from fabrics sourced by an expert’s eye. They look lovely in photos but make much more sense when they’re moving.
For the Spring/Summer 2026 season, Archie offers natural clothes informed by a natural color palette. “The more you look, the more interesting details you’ll find,” Clark says. “Maybe at first, it looks like a shirt or pair of jeans, but then you get into the wash, the texture, or the stitching, and you recognize the oddities and idiosyncrasies that make it a very comfortable, sentimental piece.”
The beauty of the presentation was in how the slow, gentle movements pushed observers to appreciate to appreciate the washi-linen shirts dyed with coffee and inky Japanese kakishibu; the jackets made of salt-shrunk nylon; the stovepipe jeans cut from 14-ounce undyed denim milled in Japan and silicon-washed in New Jersey.
Maybach or not, Archie’s clothes are rooted in routine and reality. These are any-season garments worthy of becoming generational hand-me-downs, not least because the act of handing down reflects the familial lineage that connects it all (Archie is named for Clark’s grandfather). But also because they’re just so assuredly good that they even look at home surrounded by floor-to-ceiling windows and marble floors.
“We all want things that are extremely, endlessly wearable,” Clark says. “There is some Rubicon that you cross where what you’re doing has value, but that has to start with who’s making it. You can really tell when people really deeply care about what they’re making, and that translates into good clothes.”
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