In Paris, Underwear Can Be Art (EXCLUSIVE)
It’s not every day you walk into a Paris Fashion Week showroom and are met with boxer shorts, a humble undergarment most’d consider too basic for such a big occasion. What’s even weirder is for those briefs to also hang on the wall inside a gold frame, but that was the scene inside The Society Archive’s Spring/Summer 2027 presentation.
The New York vintage fashion archive, which also acts as a self-described “irreverent luxury” brand, brought all of its signature subversiveness to the (swelteringly hot) French capital, cutting through the pretentiousness surrounding menswear’s biggest meet-up.
Boxer shorts, a new category for the 6-year-old company, weren’t only on the walls but scattered across tables and hanging from pegs alongside a mix of new-season goods and curated vintage finds from the brand’s huge Manhattan vintage showroom.
Baseball caps and graphic tees are The Society Archive’s bread and butter, demonstrated by the new-season range of tie-dyed baby tees, a pre-distressed logo-wielding T-shirt literally hanging on by its last threads, and one particularly provocative design where a pink puff-print against a red base reads, “eat more bush.”
You don’t get this kind of suggestive and subversive design from the bigger brands, and that’s the point.
The Society Archive has carved out a fun niche for itself as both a lighthearted provocateur and a seriously impressive vintage collection.
“[The Society Archive] canonizes an era where cool, quality clothing was accessible while still managing to make you feel part of [it],” Cody Parks, an art director and graphic designer, told Highsnobiety when we met the team behind the brand. “In a sense, the practice is anti-industry — defying trend at a time when the cycle is spinning faster than ever.” That certainly feels true here, as The Society Archive’s tongue-in-cheek perspective feels distinct from basically anything else at fashion week.
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