@gauthierborsarello/Charles Negre
Gauthier Borsarello’s private Paris showroom is ground zero for one-of-a-kind inspiration.
There’s a romantic notion—spread throughout popular culture by the likes of Project Runway—that fashion begins with a blank sheet of paper, a pen, and a designer with a singular vision. But few designers actually start from scratch. Many work off of existing garments. And ever since Gauthier Borsarello opened his private vintage showroom in Paris three years ago, more and more designs have begun in his presence.
Borsarello is half treasure hunter, half artistic director. Unlike what you’d find in run-of-the-mill secondhand shops filled with musty racks, his massive collection of workwear, military garb, and Americana is not for sale to the general public. Scores of fashion insiders from around the world come to him in search of references and inspirational vibes. As a rule, he only collects pieces that are truly one of a kind. “If it’s just rare and expensive, it’s not interesting to me,” he says. “I want it to be special visually, like modified or repaired by the previous owner. I want it to be strong.”
Borsarello, a former classical musician and vintage specialist for RRL, imports nearly all his wares from the U.S. “I love American stuff,” he says. “They don’t have a lot of history, so when they created clothing—at least in the 20th century—they were always looking not behind but forward. They were always improving and moving on.” He spares no expense in his search for garments that his clients know only he can find. He recently purchased an old Abercrombie & Fitch corduroy patchwork safari jacket, famously worn by Johnny Depp in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, on eBay for more than the price of a bespoke Italian suit. “I’m not in the business where I need to make a [retail] margin,” Borsarello says. “I just need to own the best.”
Many designers continue to be intensely secretive about their rarefied sources of inspiration, but the next generation of social-media-savvy fashion superstars have made waves in the industry by pulling back the curtain on their creative processes. Borsarello sees a sameness in the open-source era. “I think the information is moving way too fast today. The inspiration is too spread out—everybody can see the same thing everywhere,” he says. “The best designers, the geniuses, wouldn’t talk about it. They wouldn’t post it on Instagram. Saint Laurent went to Tangier a lot, but he wouldn’t do a story about it.” Borsarello, of course, posts quite a few of his own gems on Instagram. But he saves his most special rarities for the people who visit his showroom. To him, fashion’s sin in 2018 is not that designers are cribbing from existing works—it’s that they aren’t drawing on the right stuff, the needles in the haystack of fashion’s long, cluttered history.
Borsarello is doing his part to create the new product he wants to see in the world. For one, he’s the style director of Holiday Boileau, the apparel arm of Holiday magazine, which runs the easy aesthetic of French minimalism through Borsarello’s exacting design and production specifications. (His showroom is directly beneath the Holiday store in the 16th Arrondissement.) He also relaunched the 83-year-old menswear label Kidur, which used to be owned by a French factory that makes shirts for Saint Laurent and Balenciaga. His clothing will be produced and sold directly to consumers—a small piece of Borsarello’s world you can actually buy. “I don’t like costume,” he says. “My goal is to bring vintage into modernity.”
Check out our “Vintage Clothes & New Watches” portfolio, styled with clothing from Gauthier’s collection, right here.
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