What to Collect NOW, with Alexander Fury

A question I get asked a lot is: what should someone collect, right now? It’s an understandable query, consider I spend my life searching, often fruitlessly, certainly endlessly and entirely unapologetically, for fashions of the past. And it would be a lot easier if I’d bought that fashion first time around, when I could - if I’d stumped up the cash in winter 2004 for look 11 of Nicolas Ghesquière’s stellar tweed and shearling Balenciaga collection rather than spending nigh-on five years googling for it (I did find the jacket, incidentally, on Resee a year or so ago). 

I think a lot about what’s worth collecting today: because, as a fashion journalist, I’m ceaselessly looking for the new; and because, as a collector, I see it as part of my duty to be a witness to my time. If I wanted to mire myself entirely in nostalgia, I should go and work in a museum. I love fashion, and am embedded in it on a daily basis. I go to, roughly, 100 fashion shows each season, seeing things I loathe, but many many things I adore, and obsess over. And although I spend the vast majority on vintage as a collector, I primarily wear new clothes. And I practice what I preach, and try to support designers in my wardrobe - and my collection - that I support in print. Simply put, it’s a case of putting my money where my mouth is.

So, what’s worth buying? What’s the collectible, covetable vintage of tomorrow? For me, the best vintage is something that encapsulates a specific time - the apex of any particular period’s silhouette or style. For the seventies, I want Saint Laurent; my eighties belong to Claude Montana and Christian Lacroix. Then again, hindsight is everything - it’s tricky to look around the current crop of collections and designers and figure what’s going to stick in the collective craw in 20 years time. 

Look at designers whose work seems to be consistently setting trends, copied and referenced by others. The easiest is, perhaps, to look at “fashion moments” - items that feel ubiquitous, inescapable. Pierpaolo Piccioli’s 2022 ‘Pink PP’ collection was remarkable - I got a coat from that, and realised even the interior Valentino label has been recoloured in that shocking shade. It’s a fashion show that will be cemented in that house’s history. The same is true of the collaboration between Gucci and Balenciaga, a product of Alessandro Michele’s tenure at the former and, maybe, the apotheosis of the fashion fusions that have characterised the past half-decade (although I only got a bag). And on the flip-side, speaking of absolute singularity, Miuccia Prada’s recent Miu Miu collections - in particular, the ‘viral’ cropped sweater, button-down shirt and chopped-off chino skirt from Spring/Summer 2022 -  have resonated like no others. They even inspired Halloween costumes in 2021, infiltrating pop culture in a manner fashion rarely can. I bought one of those looks and put it in a box for posterity, because I know in a decade it will be the thing museums will be asking if I own. 

There are also those designers whose aesthetic conviction make them exceptional. Ghesquiere, naturally - his contract at Louis Vuitton has just been extended, and he has multiplied sales of their ready-to-wear fivefold over the past decade. His clothes will always be collectible. Demna’s clothes at Balenciaga are exceptional. Rick Owens, for me, is a name whose influence on the landscape of contemporary ready-to-wear has been profound. His vision is extreme, singular even, which can sometimes mask the fact that the Rick Owens washed and wrinkled leather biker is the Chanel jacket of our time - like those Chanel knock-offs that proliferated in the 1960s, Owens’ is a style endlessly copied that, nevertheless, is immediately and indelibly identified as his. Those are worth collecting to be worn - but equally, Owens’ seasonal shifts of silhouette and fabrication are museum pieces of the future. That John Galliano is a passion of mine is no news, and that obviously extends to his tenure at Maison Margiela. That’s something I buy to wear, but also for keeps - a trench coat for me, the tulle evening gown worn beneath it for the archive.

This also connects with the idea of how to collect modern pieces, with an eye on the future. Full outfits are better than bits and pieces (you’ll only be scrambling to find the other components in future), so I often buy pieces I intend to wear and then flesh them out with the additional components: I bought one of those ledge-shoulder Saint Laurent blazers by Anthony Vaccarello to wear, but I’m also getting the skirt, the slithery jersey vest with deep décolleté, the spindly heels.

Then again, maybe its best to ignore all the above and just go with your gut. More than anything else, buy what you love. That’s what you’ll be happy you’ve got twenty years later.