You're collecting history
Every garment sits somewhere on this line. The houses, the exits, the eras that decide what matters — and why a date on a label changes everything.
- 1981moment
Comme des Garçons & Yohji Yamamoto shock Paris
Comme des Garçons
Rei Kawakubo and Yohji bring black, distressed, asymmetric 'Hiroshima chic' to Paris — the avant-garde rupture that made the West rethink what clothes could be.
In the wardrobe: Camel wool V-neck cardigan → - 1986moment
The Antwerp Six storm London
Antwerp Six
Six Royal Academy graduates — Ann Demeulemeester, Dries Van Noten, Walter Van Beirendonck and co. — pile their collections into a van and crash London Fashion Week, putting Belgian avant-garde on the map for good.
- 1988founding
Maison Martin Margiela founded
Maison Martin Margiela
Martin Margiela opens his house in Paris — the blank white label held by four stitches, deconstruction, garments that ask you to look at how they're made. The anti-logo blueprint.
In the wardrobe: Black silk/wool cardigan → - 1990founding
Hiroshi Fujiwara founds GOODENOUGH
fragment design
Fujiwara's first apparel label and an Ura-Harajuku cornerstone — the seed of everything fragment, and a template for the whole Japanese streetwear scene.
- 1991moment
Dries Van Noten's Paris menswear debut
Dries Van Noten
A decade after graduating from Antwerp, Dries holds his first official Paris menswear show (SS92) — the commercial and critical arrival of the Antwerp Six's most enduring independent voice.
- 1993founding
Viktor & Rolf founded
Viktor & Rolf
Dutch conceptualists who treat the runway as an art installation — garments as sculpture, the concept made wearable in the tailoring.
In the wardrobe: Gray/black plaid wool trousers → - 1993moment
Marc Jacobs's 'Grunge' gets him fired
Perry Ellis
Silk flannel and thermal knits down the Perry Ellis runway. Critics revolted, Jacobs was fired — and fashion's axis tilted from uptown glamour to downtown reality. Now a grail collection.
- 1993founding
Nigo opens NOWHERE — BAPE is born
A Bathing Ape
Out of a tiny Ura-Harajuku store called NOWHERE, Nigo prints ~50 shirts a week — selling half, gifting the rest to tastemakers. The blueprint for the modern scarcity drop.
- 1994appointment
Tom Ford takes creative control of Gucci
Gucci
Ford turns a fading house into the decade's sleaze-luxe juggernaut — the velvet, the cut, the sex. The start of the era collectors now chase.
- 1994founding
Supreme opens — and gets a Vuitton cease-and-desist
Supreme
James Jebbia opens Supreme on Lafayette Street. Early monogram skate decks draw a cease-and-desist from Louis Vuitton — the two would officially collaborate decades later.
- 1995founding
Raf Simons debuts his menswear
Raf Simons
A Belgian industrial designer reframes menswear around youth and subculture — the silhouette and references that reshaped the next twenty years.
- 1995moment
McQueen's 'Highland Rape'
Alexander McQueen
The AW95 show that announced Lee McQueen — brutal, romantic, political tailoring that made his own label far more canonical than his later Givenchy years.
- 1996appointment
Galliano to Dior, McQueen to Givenchy
Dior
LVMH installs two British provocateurs at two French houses — the most theatrical, most-collected couture era of the modern age begins.
- 1997moment
Helmut Lang moves to New York
Helmut Lang
Lang relocates from Vienna and shows on the NY schedule — minimalism with an edge, technical fabrics, the bondage-strap language that everyone copied.
- 1998moment
Galliano's Dior couture opera
Dior
Spring 1998 couture at the Palais Garnier — Galliano turns the runway into theater. The high-water mark of fashion-as-performance before his scandalous exit.
- 1998moment
Helmut Lang's first digital runway
Helmut Lang
Decades before COVID pushed fashion online, Lang cancels his physical Fall 1998 show and distributes the collection via CD-ROM and the internet — a stark, techno-futurist statement of intent.
- 2000appointment
Hedi Slimane begins Dior Homme
Dior Homme
Slimane's skinny, rock-romantic silhouette rewrites men's tailoring — and reportedly sends Karl Lagerfeld on a famous diet to fit it.
- 2000moment
Chalayan's coffee-table skirt
Hussein Chalayan
AW2000: a living-room set where chair covers become dresses and a coffee table telescopes into a wooden skirt. Fashion as kinetic art.
- 2001founding
Nudie Jeans founded
Nudie Jeans
Swedish raw-denim evangelists arrive at the peak of the mid-2000s denim-nerd boom — fades as a record of the wearer's life.
In the wardrobe: Slim Jim 31×32 whisker faded denim → - 2001moment
Raf Simons — 'Riot Riot Riot!'
Raf Simons
After a sabbatical, Raf returns with oversized, layered, distressed garments rejecting his own slim tailoring. The camo bomber from this show is now a $50,000+ grail.
- 2002acquisition
Margiela sells a majority stake to Diesel's OTB
Maison Martin Margiela
The ownership shift collectors mark as the line between 'Martin era' and after — the dividing date that defines what's most chased.
In the wardrobe: Black silk/wool cardigan → - 2002founding
Band of Outsiders founded
Band of Outsiders
Scott Sternberg's clever LA take on American prep-with-a-twist — perfect oxfords and oddball prints. A cult name, beloved by those who were there.
In the wardrobe: Grizzly bear print button-down →In the wardrobe: Pink short-sleeve oxford → - 2002collab
Nike HTM launches
fragment design
Hiroshi Fujiwara, Tinker Hatfield and Mark Parker start Nike's design skunkworks on a premium-leather Air Force 1. 'HTM' = their three first names — the blueprint for designer-led Nike collaboration.
- 2003moment
Undercover & Rick Owens land in Paris
Undercover
Jun Takahashi brings 'Scab'-era Undercover to Paris as Rick Owens debuts — the dark, conceptual menswear wave that defines a generation of collectors.
- 2003founding
fragment design formalized
fragment design
Fujiwara turns the double lightning bolt into a brand, agency and consultancy that never manufactures — it co-signs. Collaboration itself becomes the product.
- 2003moment
Undercover — 'Scab'
Undercover
Jun Takahashi's SS03 Paris collection — torn, stitched, crust-punk couture. A foundational text for archive collectors.
- 2004departure
Tom Ford exits Gucci and YSL
Gucci
Ford leaves the Gucci Group, closing the era. Everything before this date becomes the archive.
- 2005appointment
Raf Simons becomes creative director at Jil Sander
Jil Sander
Raf at Jil Sander — the peak of modern minimalism, the run that produced some of the most collected tailoring of the 2000s.
- 2005departure
Helmut Lang departs his own label
Helmut Lang
After Prada's takeover, Lang leaves the house bearing his name and walks away from fashion entirely — making the man's own pieces archive overnight.
- 2005moment
The Pigeon Dunk riot
Staple
Jeff Staple's Nike SB 'Pigeon' drops at Reed Space; the NYC crowd gets so large the NYPD escorts buyers out the back. The birth of modern sneaker hype.
- 2007departure
Hedi Slimane leaves Dior Homme
Dior Homme
Slimane exits after defining an era. His Dior Homme becomes one of the most hunted bodies of menswear in resale.
- 2007moment
Justice release †, the bloghouse peak
Surface to Air
Ed Banger, the cross, Paris electro — the cultural moment around which Surface to Air, Kitsuné, and Colette orbited.
- 2008collab
Justice × Surface to Air
Surface to Air
A ~150-piece limited run — leather jackets and denim carrying the Justice cross, sold at Colette and Barneys. The piece that named the monster.
- 2008appointment
Phoebe Philo joins Céline
Céline
Philo begins the run that becomes 'Old Céline' — quiet, intelligent minimalism that reshapes how a decade of women dressed.
- 2009departure
Martin Margiela leaves his house
Maison Martin Margiela
The most private man in fashion steps away for good. The Martin era is sealed — and its myth only grows.
In the wardrobe: Black silk/wool cardigan → - 2010moment
Helmut Lang shreds his archive
Helmut Lang
A fire damages Lang's stored archive; he shreds the survivors into sculpture. The surviving garments become instantly finite — and mythical.
- 2011departure
John Galliano exits Dior
Dior
The end of Galliano's couture-spectacle reign at Dior — closing one of fashion's most theatrical chapters.
- 2012appointment
Hedi Slimane reinvents Saint Laurent
Saint Laurent
Slimane drops the 'Yves', returns to skinny rock'n'roll, and splits the fashion world — the most divisive, most copied run of the 2010s.
- 2012appointment
Raf Simons becomes creative director at Dior
Dior
After Jil Sander and Galliano's exit, Raf brings his minimalism to Dior couture — the bridge between two of the most collected design languages.
- 2012moment
Virgil Abloh's Pyrex Vision
Off-White
Before Off-White and Louis Vuitton, Virgil screen-prints 'PYREX 23' on deadstock Ralph Lauren flannels — a provocation about authorship, markup and luxury.
- 2014collab
fragment x Air Jordan 1
fragment design
The 'Black Toe' AJ1 with Royal blue and a lightning bolt on the heel (716371-040). The collab that proved Hiroshi could move the entire sneaker market.
- 2017collab
fragment x Louis Vuitton
fragment design
Under Kim Jones, fragment's AW2017 men's capsule (Monogram guitar case, plush teddy bear) brings streetwear's quietest power broker into luxury — following a 2016 Monogram Eclipse capsule.
- 2017moment
Colette closes
Colette
After 20 years as the center of the fashion universe — high fashion next to streetwear before anyone else — the Paris concept store closes, ending an era of curation.
- 2018departure
Phoebe Philo leaves Céline
Céline
The end of Old Céline — a decade of intelligent minimalism that built a near-religious collector following overnight.
- 2018collab
7 Moncler Fragment
fragment design
fragment becomes chapter 7 of the Moncler Genius program — four seasons of paint-splatter corduroy and matte down, plus a 2019 Pokémon 'Thunderbolt Project' offshoot.
- 2019founding
Denim Tears — the cotton wreath
Denim Tears
Tremaine Emory launches Denim Tears; the cotton-wreath motif isn't a logo but a conceptual project confronting 400 years of Black history in America.
- 2021collab
Travis Scott x fragment x Air Jordan 1
fragment design
The three-way 'triple' — Travis's reverse swoosh meets Hiroshi's lightning bolt on the AJ1 High and Low, with a full apparel capsule. Collab culture at its commercial peak.
- 2022departure
Raf Simons closes his label
Raf Simons
After 27 years, Raf announces on November 21 that SS2023 will be the final collection for his namesake label. Closure does to an archive what nothing else can — it seals it. Riot and Closer become finite overnight.
- 2022moment
The streetwear resale correction
Supreme
The pandemic hype bubble breaks. Sneaker resale peaks and slides through late 2022; Supreme revenue slips to $523M (from $562M) for the year to March 2023 as StockX share drifts toward Fear of God. The moment collectors and hype-buyers split.
- 2023founding
Phoebe Philo returns
Phoebe Philo
On October 30, after a five-year wait, Philo launches her own label — A1, direct-to-consumer, ~150 styles, deliberately scarce. The 'Old Céline' faithful get their designer back; whether they get the era back is the argument.
- 2023moment
The Tabi goes mainstream
Maison Margiela
A viral September story turns Margiela's split-toe boot from collector grail to fashion-week ubiquity — Depop searches up ~110%, Lyst up ~40%. The community's distinction between the Martin-era Tabi and current production hardens in response.
In the wardrobe: Black silk/wool cardigan → - 2024departure
Galliano exits Maison Margiela
Maison Margiela
Months after the ultra-viral SS2024 Artisanal show, John Galliano leaves the house he ran for a decade. The post-founder debate — did he extend Margiela's codes or overwrite them — closes a chapter.
In the wardrobe: Black silk/wool cardigan → - 2025moment
Margiela's auction record
Maison Margiela
On January 27, an SS1990 black-and-white wool suit hammers for €101,400 at the Maurice × Kerry Taylor Margiela sale — the early years cross fully into art-auction territory.
In the wardrobe: Black silk/wool cardigan → - 2025appointment
Glenn Martens named Margiela creative director
Maison Margiela
On January 29, Glenn Martens takes creative control of Maison Margiela — the deconstruction house handed to the designer who rebuilt Y/Project on exactly that language.
In the wardrobe: Black silk/wool cardigan →
The Lore Codex — curated fashion history, growing one entry at a time.