Callen Archive Will Make You Crave The Fashion Of The 2010s All Over Again

To you or I, look 29 from Prada women’s Fall 2011—a furry sequined drop-waisted coat—is just that: the twenty-ninth exit of a show which saw Miuccia Prada sublimely mix 1920s flappers and 1960s go-go mods. To Cal McNeil—the founder of Callen Archive—however, this will always be look one: the very first thing he bought, back in March 2023, for his now-ever-expanding collection of vintage, which spans from around 2010 to 2015.

McNeil has been teasing his archive via Instagram for some time now, but he’s planning to finally reveal it—and celebrate it—at Ava at the Public Hotel in New York on September 4th, displaying one third of his assiduously amassed 107 pieces of clothing, comprising 65 full looks and 27 partial ones from 23 brands spanning 40 collections. There’s Marc Jacobs (including pieces from his time at Louis Vuitton); Rodarte; Altuzarra (McNeil interned with Joseph Altuzarra early in his career); Jil Sander circa Raf Simons; Chanel by Karl Lagerfeld; Alexander McQueen; Versus when designed by Christopher Kane (“I’m a massive fan of his,” he says); Comme des Garçons (writer Katharine K. Zarrella generously gifted him her own purple sequin dress from the groundbreaking two-dimensional collection of Fall 2012); and, of course, Prada, Prada, and yet more Prada (as well as a recently sourced smattering of Miu Miu). McNeil now has half of that Fall 2011 collection from Mrs. Prada. The idea of the event, he said the other day, is to “share the vision, which is exciting—not everyone gets to access these pieces or learn the historical significance of them.” Long-term, he’s thinking about how his collection could be used for educational or cultural initiatives, research, and experiences.

Callen Archive is a great reminder that the best vintage fashion collections are borne out of going back to your formative years, when fashion started to lodge in your brain—in McNeil’s case, at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Clair—and chasing personal obsessions. (Maybe they’re one and the same thing.) Through his day job as Director, Program Strategies at the Council of Fashion Designers of America, where he advises designers on manufacturing in the US, he is of course exposed to clothes on a daily basis—as he is when he looks at the 160,000 images his phone, with an awful lot of those fashion-related. Yet founding the archive has allowed McNeil—like any collector, really—to do that most magical thing: Embark on a trip with a sense of exactly where you’re headed, without necessarily knowing where you’ll stop on the way there.

Stella McCartney, spring 2011 ready-to-wear

Photo: Graham Photography Inc./ Courtesy of Callen Archive

Stella McCartney, spring 2011 ready-to-wear

Monica Feudi / GoRunway.com

McNeil learned the rewards—and the trials and tribulations—of collecting at a very young age: there was a Beanie Babies phase, and a Barbie Spice Girls moment. But it was the five years from 2010 to 2015 which shaped him. “They were really critical for my growth,” McNeil said. “Graduating college, leaving the midwest, starting my career and really understanding what all that meant for my future—that’s when I started to think about how I should save some of these looks I couldn’t afford then.” He took all of his Tumblr scrolling, his college-era work for a local Wisconsin paper, his watching of live-streamed shows (when that was in its relative infancy—thank you, Christopher Bailey and Burberry), his scouring of street style images from Tommy Ton and The Sartorialist, and his immediate post-graduation work life at Style.com (gone, but never forgotten). And so began the hunt.

Marc Jacobs, fall 2011 ready-to-wear

Monica Feudi / Feudiguaineri.com; video: InDigital Media

Louis Vuitton, spring 2012 ready-to-wear

Yannis Vlamos / GoRunway.com

Stella McCartney, spring 2012 ready-to-wear

Yannis Vlamos / GoRunway.com