Saturday, July 25, 2026

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By Leah Dolan

Welcome to the latest edition of Big Style, a portal to a world where clothing meets culture. This week, CNN Style reporter Leah Dolan went down the rabbit hole of scrappy vintage clothes and found the inspiration behind your favorite designer’s next collection. Have thoughts, questions or feedback? Reach us here: bigstyle@newsletters.cnn.com 

Mentioned in this issue: sick ponies, kinky trench coats, glittering mesh jumpsuits, Chanel’s toe-sandals, Paul Mescal’s kilt, a new theory of importance and a gruesome Western thriller.

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A HIDDEN FASHION LAIR

Three gaudily dressed mannequins walk into a historic horse hospital. (Courtesy of Contemporary Wardrobe)

Once upon a time, a 230-year-old stable in central London housed the sick ponies of 18th- and 19th-century cab drivers, but today it’s bursting with racks of fabulous clothes. A pretty great setting to ponder whether our feverish attachment to fashion is futile or life-affirming, I thought as I made my way across London to the quaint borough of Bloomsbury earlier this month. In the end, it’s both.

This transformed stable is a rabbit warren filled with suits, leather jackets, fur coats and more. I saw a scrappy 1940s three-piece suit made using swatches from a tailor’s cutting room floor, a bottle-cap waistcoat from the 1980s and a kinky trench coat from Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren’s Seditionaries collection. They are all part of the fashion archive of the late costume designer Roger K. Burton, who outfitted cult classics like “Quadrophenia” (1979) and “Hackers” (1995). The archive, known as Contemporary Wardrobe, relaunched this spring after a lengthy refurb.

To be clear, this is not your typical temperature-controlled, high-concept archive. “Roger wasn’t about white gloves,” one of the in-house archivists, Sophia Christofis, told me. Many of the 20,000 pieces within still regularly get a taste of the outside world. Some are rented out time and time again for magazine editorials — like the Velvet Underground vest Timothée Chalamet wore in his first British Vogue cover shoot in 2022, or a Vivienne Westwood kilt borrowed for a GQ shoot with Paul Mescal in 2024.

The archive has over 20,000 items that are regularly loaned out for films, magazine shoots and music videos. (Courtesy of Contemporary Wardrobe)

Others become authentic costumes for films and are on loan for months at a time. Sam Mendes’ mammoth four-part Beatles biopic apparently cleaned the archive out of ‘60s Mod suits. “In a museum collection, if they acquire something it won’t be worn again,” said Liberty McAnena, another archivist at Contemporary Wardrobe. Here, the story of the clothes is “not finished,” she said. Drawing upon the archive while he was alive, the only stipulation Burton, who died last summer, had was that everything always came back to him. No purchases.

The collection is unusual for another reason. Most people would probably define “important fashion” as something related to the industry: A shoe from Alexander McQueen’s final collection, or a runway sample from Tom Ford’s hyper-coveted tenure at Gucci. (Those Matthieu Blazy toe-exposing Chanel sandals are going to be pride of place in the fashion archives of 2080!) But Burton thought differently about what’s worth hanging on to, what’s worth preserving. An ex-Mod and fanatical clothes hoarder, he collected pieces worn by regular people on a regular basis. That favorite T-shirt you couldn’t take off at 15 years old in the ‘70s. The jacket your sister wore when horse riding as a kid. One incredible collection of embellished sequined shirts and glittering mesh jumpsuits worthy of a pop starlet’s stadium tour came from a restaurant owner in London named Michael Ho Chong. “He was not someone famous, just a guy in the ‘60s and ‘70s who dressed very, very fab and had clothes made for him,” said Christofis. It’s a fascinating scenic route through UK culture from the 1940s up to around 2010, told exclusively via the beloved clothes of its bright young things.

The word on the street at the archive’s relaunch party in April was that quite a few of the big European designers are apparent fans of this hidden library of clothes. One rack, I heard from a PR rep, had just been sent on request to Valentino’s design team. Rumor has it the team at Celine, currently under the direction of wonderboy Michael Rider, have also popped in recently to take a look around.

This patchwork three-piece suit made from tailoring scraps is such a rarity, "the V&A really wanted this," Christofis said. (Courtesy of Contemporary Wardrobe)

One of Michael Ho Chong's fabulously embellished shirts. His clothing collection is a dopamine-inducing highlight of the archive. (Courtesy of Contemporary Wardrobe)

Even the best and brightest minds of our time occasionally need a little bolt of inspiration. Writers frozen in front of the blinking cursor go back to read, artists go to a gallery, and some designers, or their teams at least, come to Contemporary Wardrobe. Their website lists JW Anderson, Chloé, Burberry, Stella McCartney, Dries Van Noten, Tom Ford, Maison Margiela and even cult favorite Phoebe Philo as clients. What these teams pick up, though, is kept more under wraps. All I’m told about Philo’s picks is that they are “quite pared back.” Any particular era? Menswear over womenswear? “I don’t know how much we can reveal that,” said Christofis. “They don’t want to reveal their sources,” said McAnena.

Surely they’ve sent off a piece to a big luxury house in the spring and five months later spotted a revised version on the September runways? “This jacket here,” Christofis says, pointing to a 1950s sequin-spangled dinner jacket with glittering red roses on the front and a music note on the back. “It’s a really popular piece, it goes out a lot.” If Maison Margiela’s Fall-Winter 2022 haute couture show is one close to your heart, you might recognize it. 

I HOPE YOU'RE READING THIS AT A BEACH

Live footage from my girls trip. (Photo12/Fine Art Photographs/Alamy Stock Photo)

Because I will be! I’m taking a week off and heading to Sicily, so I’m deep in the groove of packing and planning.

Already in my bag is a half-read copy of Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian,” one of the gnarliest Westerns ever written, and in the to-be-read pile is “Pen15” co-creator Anna Konkle’s debut memoir, “The Sane One”, which came out in May.
Before I go, I’m looking for the perfect pair of shorts that are cool (physically) and cool (spiritually). In the shortlist are these adjustable waist Brooke Callahan cotton poplin options in a zesty green, or these 100% silk taffeta ones from Chelsea Mak in a princessy pink.
These days I rarely shop in London and instead often wait until I’m on the continent to drop the cash. I’m hoping this trip I will walk away with a tan, a lower cortisol level and some ENORMOUS tacky beaded earrings bought from a small, untraceable stall. On the mood board are these and these.

Maybe this week you acquired a new artefact for your own historical clothing archive — a.k.a., your actual wardrobe — to which I say, bellissima.

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