In what was once a nun\u2019s bedroom, a long-sleeved, slate-blue Herm\u00e8s dress from the 1970s hangs beside a window. Made from a soft, delicate silk jersey, its scooped neckline reveals two minimalist tags. One identifies the famous luxury fashion house, the other reads: Made in France. On a rack on the opposite wall of the small room in Melbourne\u2019s Abbotsford Convent there are similarly beautiful vintage garments, predominantly from the 20th century. The labels read like a list of boutiques along Avenue des Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es in Paris: Prada, Christian Dior, Schiaparelli, Margiela, Kenzo and Valentino. But none of the clothes here are for sale: this is a garment library called This Era Archive.<\/p>\n
The private collection of fashion items, amassed over a decade of travel, is available for rent by designers and fashion students seeking inspiration. Its curator and owner, fashion designer Hannah Canham, has lived and worked across North America (in New York and Los Angeles) and Europe (in Madrid, Berlin, London and Paris) where designer archives are commonplace.<\/p>\n
She has been running the archive since 2018, but in 2024 she returned home to Melbourne with her treasure trove of approximately 1,000 pieces in tow. She reopened the archive for commercial use in March. While museum and educational institutions already house garment collections, This Era Archive is the first of its kind in Australia.<\/p>\n
In creating The Era Archive, Canham is partly driven by thrill of the hunt and unearthing a bargain. Photograph: Penny Stephens\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Australia it\u2019s new information for some designers,\u201d Canham says. \u201cWhereas working in Europe, this is part of their design process. They start each season by looking for inspiration, going to museums, reading old books and going to archives.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are two ideas at the heart of the project: that fashion is self-referential and cyclical; and that the best design needs to be touched to be properly understood.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think you can only evolve some ideas by studying a piece in person,\u201d says Canham. \u201cIt needs to be seen, it needs to be looked inside, it needs to be put on a model. It\u2019s the way it falls. It\u2019s not something you can just copy from a screen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Viewings are by appointment only. Unlike in Berlin and Madrid where Canham could house the entire archive, for the small space in Abbotsford, she selects just 100 pieces based on briefs provided by visiting designers. Everything else is warehoused a few suburbs away. Often, designers are accompanied by a fit model who tries each piece on. For those unable to visit the archive in person, a password-protected website details each piece, and items can be shipped interstate and internationally.<\/p>\n
Rentals start at one week and can be extended to several months, so a creative team can have the piece on hand for an entire season. Prices range from $100 to $600 a month.<\/p>\n
Clothes can be shipped interstate and internationally. Photograph: Penny Stephens\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
For the most part, Canham says everything is treated incredibly respectfully, although she never lends to stylists or for photoshoots \u2013 because they can \u201cend up being in the mud in the countryside and the intern\u2019s the one handling [the] clothes and putting them back on hangers. And they don\u2019t know, they think it was just picked up at a flea market.\u201d<\/p>\n
Canham personally handles minor repairs, cleaning and the careful storage, folding garments into boxes with acid-free paper. After they have been rented out, items are rested for a season.<\/p>\n
Canham is part of an illustrious cohort of designers from RMIT\u2019s fashion school who moved abroad after graduating. In 2014, she secured an internship at cult favourite luxury brand The Row in New York then went on to work as a freelance designer.<\/p>\n
Europe-based fellow RMIT alumni Talisa Trantino, who was most recently the head of jewellery and special projects at the luxury house Loewe, has been a client of the archive. \u201cResearch is one of the most integral parts of my role and archival pieces are such an inspiring part of that process,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s a more 3D way of working. [They] are really precious objects to study construction and fit on a body.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Canham was already collecting vintage pieces, relocating from New York to Madrid in 2018 allowed her to grow the archive and open it to borrowers, aided by proximity to luxury fashion houses and the breadth and depth of designer vintage in Europe\u2019s capital cities.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have the best flea market [in Madrid],\u201d says Canham. \u201cIt\u2019s huge and within it there are these permanent vintage stores that only open on Sundays. It sweeps this entire neighbourhood. I would go there every single Sunday for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Canham personally handles minor repairs, cleaning and the careful storage of garments. The price of rentals range from $100 to $600 a month. Photograph: Penny Stephens\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
Cheaper real estate helped too; her apartment in Madrid had enough room to house the clothes.<\/p>\n
It was there that Lesleigh Jermanus, the creative director of Al\u00e9mais, first visited the collection. \u201cIt was such a dreamscape of a space \u2013 racks of incredible vintage pieces, beautiful objects and references everywhere you looked,\u201d Jermanus says. \u201cHannah has such a well-trained eye for the unexpected \u2013 an unusual proportion, an interesting construction, a beautiful fabrication or a detail you might not notice at first.\u201d<\/p>\n
Standing in the middle of the room in Abbotsford, Canham holds up a khaki Christian Dior double-breasted dress with a wide, deep collar in a heavy silk. \u201cThis is a favourite of mine; that was a struggle not to keep myself. It has this trench detail on the back,\u201d she says, turning it around to reveal a storm flap.<\/p>\n
When she trawls markets or antique stores, she looks for these very specific features, \u201clike really lovely buttons or pleats. I am somebody that sort of zooms in for something very subtle,\u201d she says. Interesting construction is a passion too, as are designs from the 1930s to 1970s.<\/p>\n
The thrill of the hunt and unearthing a bargain are other drivers. \u201cI found an immaculate Cerruti shantung silk suit once in a really dusty antique store in Paris,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was just not priced correctly. And I was like, \u2018I need to get out of here as quickly as possible with this suit.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In what was once a nun\u2019s bedroom, a long-sleeved, slate-blue Herm\u00e8s dress from the 1970s hangs beside a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":881583,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,63,134],"class_list":["post-881582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=881582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/881583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=881582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=881582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=881582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}