“If I find something cool, we get it. That’s my mentality right now,” says Baraboux founder Sarah Faisal. “As long as we can have it, I want it, and we will.”
Baraboux, the cult womenswear archive space in East London, is known for its brutalist showroom (which includes a column made of hair) and its rich collection of Tom Ford Gucci, Jean Paul Gaultier couture and archival Alexander McQueen. “I like to find things that other people don’t have,” she says. And she does: her collection is filled with rare, grailed items ranging from couture to one-off samples.
“The way I source is a little chaotic, it makes sense to nobody but me,” Faisal says. “There’s this fictional idealised person I see when I’m buying for. She doesn’t exist, she’s a mixture of every reference of pop culture I’ve ever consumed, ever. Think any movie set between the ‘90s and early 2000s, featuring some sort of fake Vogue in New York. Her. That’s who I see and who I want in the clothes.”
This vibe is so evident in Baraboux’s collection, with pieces worn by Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker’s character) in Sex and the City and avant-garde Helmut Lang shoes that have never been worn. She adds: “It’s better that she doesn’t exist because it allows people who come in here to be that person when they put the clothes on.”
Sarah started out on Baraboux’s concept during Covid, “I was grateful and blessed to be around the fashion world from a pretty young age,” she says, “I started doing this weird mix and match” of seeing items that she had previously spotted on celebrities or runways, and she started building up her own collection.
What is Baraboux sourcing these days? “It depends on the month, on my mood, what runway I’m diving into. As of right now, we’ve been sourcing a lot of McQueen. I went through a big Tom Ford Gucci phase; you can always tell by our Instagram where my head is at.”
The vintage shop has items for sale, but Baraboux mainly works as a rental space where you can hire from its permanent archive collection (which is currently around 200 pieces) – a sustainable option for event-wear or editorial styling. When we ask her what her biggest flex has been at Baraboux, Faisal starts listing: “Rosalía rented a Margiela dress, one of the horse dresses. Kendall and Kylie also buy from us. But our biggest flex, I would say, is Naomi Campbell. Naomi rented our SS99 Dior green dress and she wore it in Shanghai at a Moncler event. I don’t know if you’ve seen that clip of her that went viral where she was talking to Rihanna for the first time – she’s wearing our dress in that clip. I woke up and Naomi Campbell tagged us in her instagram story, and I was very thrown off by that, and then she followed us which I was equally thrown off by that.”
Baraboux’s collection is “just cool stuff that we find and want to hold on to.” One holy grail item is a pair of Helmut Lang SS04 D’Orsay horsehair and suede sandals: “They literally have never been worn, which makes them interesting but also means that they don’t stand on the ground properly, they’re distorted. I view these almost not as shoes but more as a little art piece in our collection.” A crazy piece and predecessor of the McQueen hoof boots, if you ask us.
The archive also owns a couple of pieces by Dominique Sirop, a French couturier whose items are quite rare to find. Sarah’s also got a hold of this one Jean Paul Gaultier couture denim piece with floor-length sleeves, “it’s my favourite piece and it’s slowly becoming a lot of our followers’ favourite piece as well,” she says, “I wouldn’t call it a top, it’s not a jacket, it’s kind of its own beauty. It’s one of our most grailed pieces.”
And some pieces that are close to her heart. “These two dresses are from 1996, one YSL and the other Christian Lacroix, it’s the dress that my mum wore for her engagement party and the dress that her sister wore for the same party. Both couture, and both probably not worn since ‘96 because the whole point of haute couture is that they were both made for specific people’s bodies – and since I’m not said people, I refuse to put them on. But I will also hold on to them forever because they’re so special to me.”
Watch our Into the archive: Baraboux video interview here
View on TikTok
You can check out Baraboux’s collection on IG and baraboux.com and visit the showroom space in London Fields via appointment
Featured images Danai Dana for Culted©
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