It was men’s fashion week in Paris, and the Archivist Store was as busy as Gare du Nord. That is, if the train depot were frequented solely by people who could tell a mere North Face jacket from a North Face Purple Label one.
Inside, a boutique owner from New York stood at the counter buying a stack of dog-eared issues of i-D magazine from the 1990s. A stylist, also from New York, popped out of the dressing room to tell his friend that he just had to have this pair of faded black trousers. A couple of visitors from Japan stopped by, one of whom had a pop-up at the Archivist for her own vintage shop last year. It was a success. She warmly greeted the store’s owner, Sami Taider.
“Fashion week is the busiest time of the year,” Mr. Taider said, taking a break for an interview at a corner bistro. “But when you have a business like this, it’s important to have people coming every day.”
Since opening its doors in December 2022, the Archivist Store, with its uncluttered, white-walled interior, has become the Paris men’s resale mecca. If you ask a certain breed of shopper — someone who collects ’90s Issey Miyake sweaters or who can tell the age of a Stussy tee by its label — it’s the best vintage store in the city, if not the world. (It is probably the only vintage store reselling Stussy that the label’s reclusive founder, Shawn Stussy, has actually visited and posted about on Instagram.)
But why? It’s all in the mix. Vintage stores tend to have a parochial focus on one period or class of clothing — your Americana Levis specialists, your hole-ridden metal tee slingers or those aesthetes who sell only Christian Lacroix frocks from the late 1980s.
The Archivist Store is more catholic in its taste. The only litmus test for an item’s inclusion on the sales floor is that Mr. Taider has to appreciate the garment.
“Sometimes, people are too narrow-minded,” he said. “It’s important for us to be able to have items for everyone — every budget, but also every type of people, every gender.”
The north side of the shop holds a cache of aged designer goods from French, Italian and Japanese labels. On my last visit, I thumbed past a ribbed Hermès full-zip cardigan, several austere Yohji Yamamoto pleated trousers and a Dolce & Gabbana bomber with an absurd surplus of pockets.
Opposite this rack, the stock gets rangier: clusters of vintage Supreme T-shirts beside vintage Levi’s and Carhartt work pants, mountaineering-ready Montbell puffers with brick-thick American-made Camber hoodies and faded Stone Island jackets with four-figure price tags. (Prices are higher than Goodwill’s but far less than new at Bergdorf Goodman: $300 or so for those Yohji Yamamoto pants, around $650 for a Comme des Garçons overcoat from the ’90s, $200 for a hoodie and about half of that for a tee.)
“I don’t really focus that much on the brand,” said Mr. Taider, 36, a native of Toulouse who moved to Paris as a child. “It’s more about having good products in each category.”
Shopping at the Archivist makes clear that traditional boutiques do not capture how people, even people in fashion, actually dress. They may have the designer prizes but lack those trusty North Face windbreakers or Salomon beanies. At the same time, outdoorsy outfitters are not interested in selling a riotous, Rainbow Brite Issey Miyake sweater or even vintage military fatigues. The Archivist Store touches it all, and in doing so, mirrors the high-low, haute-paired-with-not way we dress today.
“We don’t want to talk to only hard-core designer people,” said Mr. Taider, himself dressed in a deep navy agnès b. sweater. He wants the Margiela collector but also the neighborhood locals who buy a Scottish-made beanie because they saw it in the window while walking their dog.
If the Archivist Store brings something novel to Paris, Mr. Taider will tell you that it’s an idea imported, at least partly, from Japan.
On a visit to Tokyo, he fell for that country’s labyrinth of resale shops that abide by the notion that a designer item does not become passé just because it’s a few seasons old. It may even become more desirable.
“It’s really great to have all those items that are selected, all in good condition and all well-organized,” Mr. Taider said. In 2018, he moved to Japan to immerse himself in those markets, studying tags, scrutinizing brand names and buying gear for what would become the Archivist Store.
A web shop came first, then a pop-up in the Paul Bert flea market and then, three years ago, a physical store in what was once in an art gallery, on quaint Rue Taylor in the tenth arrondissement.
Today, Mr. Taider has a staff of three: André, the store manager; Damien, an intern; and Mehdi Chabane, who helped him start the store and handles visuals and marketing. Nearly all items are available only in the store, some selling before Mr. Chabane can even photograph them.
The task of stocking the store is Mr. Taider’s alone. He does not use a network of sourcing contacts as some vintage sellers do. Instead, he trolls eBay, Mercari, Yahoo auctions and Japanese resale sites to find deals. He sharpened these digital digging skills as a streetwear-loving teenager, haggling for Supreme T-shirts and Alife gear on clothing forums before they were distributed in France.
Still, sifting through that many pages of pants and shoes is time-consuming, vision-blurring work. “I’m not sleeping much,” he said, adding that he was considering hiring someone to help him with sourcing.
Still, the goal of connecting someone with a piece they did not even know they needed kept him hunting. Not to mention, he often falls in love with his finds. Case in point: On my last visit, I bought a Comme des Garçons barn-style jacket from 1990 — it was only the second model in this style that Mr. Taider had ever come across. Selling it was like freeing a cherished pet.
“I’m never going to see it again,” he said. “When it’s gone, it’s gone.”
