A few notes on clothes, time, and the things we choose to hold on to.
For a long time my job was to keep up. Every season brought a new set of shows, a new set of names, a new set of things we were told to want. I wrote about all of it, and at some point I noticed that I remembered almost none of it.
What I did remember were clothes that had already lived somewhere. A coat bought from a woman who had worn it for fifteen winters. A sweater with a mended elbow that no one else would have noticed. Pieces that had outlasted the trend they were born into and become something quieter: simply good.
Fashion likes to talk about newness as if it were a value. It isn't. It is a speed. And speed is the one thing a well-made garment doesn't need.
Keeping things is not nostalgia. It is a kind of attention. You notice how wool softens after years of wear, how leather takes the shape of the hand that carries it, how a well-cut shoulder still sits right long after the label has stopped being fashionable. You start to see clothes not as content, but as objects with a past and, if you are lucky, a long future.
This is what RARE. is about. Not a shop full of things, but a small edit of pieces that deserve to be kept. Each one has been worn before. Each one carries some trace of it. I photograph those traces instead of hiding them, because they are part of the story, and because buying well starts with seeing clearly.
If there is a rule here, it is a simple one: fewer things, chosen better, kept longer. The rest is just noise.