Voo Archive Invites: Baraboux

Words
Isabel Barletta
Photography
Baraboux

Voo Archive Invites brings external voices into the Archive, giving space to projects whose perspective expands our own.

Voo Archive Invites: Baraboux

From September 3rd to November 1st, those pieces come from Baraboux, a London-based vintage platform by Sarah Faisal. Named after her mother’s former fashion business, Baraboux began as a personal archive and has grown into a store with a clear point of view. The selection is concentrated on the years between the mid-1990s and early 2000s, a period that still defines much of how fashion is read today. Within this frame, Baraboux brings together designers like Maison Margiela, Tom Ford–era Gucci, and YSL, alongside garments carrying more personal histories, including ones from Sarah’s own family. Their lightbox photography has become a signature way of presenting clothes, showing them stripped back and direct.

Baraboux arrives here at a moment of transition: its London showroom is closing, and a rebrand is on the way. The pop-up in Berlin offers a glimpse of that shift, a closing chapter meeting our own archive in Kreuzberg.

In the following conversation, Sarah shares how Baraboux came to life, what excites her about bringing it to Berlin, and why vintage today is as much about cultural memory as it is about style.

Voo: When did fashion first feel like your own path, not just the family story? How did that lead to Baraboux?

Sarah Faisal: Fashion always felt like my own path, even as a young child. It was always a work that fascinated me and having the privilege of growing up surrounded by women with good taste just enriched that. At the end of the day Baraboux is a reflection of my taste so that just became the name to go along with it.

V: When you add a piece to the archive, do you care more about its backstory or how it feels now?
S: Adding a piece to the archive is less about either of those things, I view it as a gallery so I’m looking at the piece as a whole, what it is/who its by/who wore it/what it looks like and ultimately if it belongs with everything else.


V: What excites you about bringing Baraboux outside London?
S: We have always existed as our own thing, not location based London just happens to be our current home. We’ve dabbled in Paris and New York so bringing it to Berlin felt like a good natural next step. Its always fun to see how different a customer is in each city.

“Fashion always felt like my own path, even as a young child. It was always a work that fascinated me and having the privilege of growing up surrounded by women with good taste just enriched that.”

V: When someone walks into this space, what do you want them to feel first?
S: Honestly, I just want to let the clothes speak for themselves. Usually in our own showroom you get a bigger reflection of our taste but I like that in this instance they are taken out of that environment.


V: A pop up is here and gone. What should stay with people once it’s over?
S: Hopefully, some really great outfits.


V: Vintage is both a response to overproduction and a form of exclusivity. How do you see that tension?
S: I view what I do as a way of preserving the beauty and history of the clothes, but given the exclusivity it isn’t exactly the answer to overproduction but it is a way to hopefully allow people to understand that the pieces are more than just something to throw on and take off and outside of the practical element there is a history to it.

V: Is it harder today to surprise an increasingly educated audience?
S: There is always more to learn and be discovered, I am always learning myself. That’s the beauty of history.


V: The vintage market is growing fast. Do you feel the competition among archives and collectors in London and beyond?
S: I don’t see it as competition, we all operate adjacent to each other.

V: Which piece are you most proud to have in the archive, and why?
S: It changes day to day, but today I’m grateful to have found by grandmothers 25th anniversary dress from YSL Haute Couture.


V: Do you have a list of specific pieces you are still hunting for?
S: The nature of what I do is hunting, and I also have add which means it’s hard to be focused on one thing for very long. The moment I’m fixated on one thing, I’m in another black hole I never thought to fall down.

V: You’re moving to a new space in London and rebranding. What stays with you, and what needs to change?
S: The only thing coming with us is the clothes, so stay tuned to see the rest.


V: In a time when everything lives online, what does it mean to hold a physical archive?
S: Access, it means people have the opportunity to come and see. We don’t expect everyone to buy, some of my favorite people that come in are those that just want to see the clothes.


V: Which designers working now do you believe will become tomorrow’s archive?
S: Technically all of them. It just depends on your taste.

The pieces are available in-store only and can be discovered at Voo Archive.

Wednesday to Saturday

12:00pm–6:00pm

Oranienstraße 181, 10999 Berlin