September 25, 2025 |
Adrian Appiolaza is a student of great design. For his day job as the creative director of Moschino, the 53-year-old cleverly finds ways to transfer the tongue-in-cheek design codes of the brand’s founder, Franco Moschino, into clothes that breathe modernity. At home, he runs 20 Age Archive with his partner Ryan Benacer.
It’s a rental service of more than 5,000 vintage pieces ranging from Maison Margiela to Jean Paul Gaultier, a collection that Appiolaza began piecing together in the early 2000s. “The archive is thriving,” he says on a Zoom call from their place in Paris. “From being my hobby to what it is today, it’s crazy to see the transformation.”
Like so many great fashion tales, Appiolaza’s collection began with Comme des Garçons and Yohji Yamamoto. “My obsession with those two brands started back in ’87 when I found an issue of The Face that was two years old in a second-hand store,” he says. Growing up in Buenos Aires, it was the first time he had laid eyes on the work of the Japanese fashion titans. “After not knowing anything about what fashion looked like outside of Argentina, that’s when my curiosity was opened.”
from left: dress and skirt by YOHJI YAMAMOTO AW14, shoes by COMME DES GARCONS SS14; dress by COMME DES GARCONS AW17, hat by FUMITO GANRYU AW16, sunglasses by YOHJI YAMAMOTO, shoes by MAISON MARGIELA X REEBOOK
It was this curiosity, alongside a love for Madchester bands like The Stone Roses and an infatuation with the rockabilly scene, that would lead him to London in the early 1990s, aged 21. Handing out flyers at Heaven nightclub and dancing in gay bars to make money, he would learn about Central Saint Martins through smoking-area convos with club kids. He used any savings he could scrape together to put together a portfolio that got him a place at the revered art school.
After working at Alexander McQueen alongside his studies, gigs at Miguel Adrover and Chloé, under Phoebe Philo, followed. “It was the very early years of eBay, we’re talking, like, 2003, and I’d be using the site to research for design inspiration,” he says. “I saw things that I’d dreamed of owning a few years before, so I started buying things I could wear. I was buying men’s, women’s, everything that I could find.”
By 2010, Appiolaza had amassed a tower of boxes stuffed with vintage finds, which he decided to separate into brands and seasons. “I had pieces from Comme des Garçons from several collections, which made me think I’d like to have one look per collection from Rei Kawakubo, so the search started.” A fan of Martin Margiela from his uni days, he spent more than a decade scavenging for pieces from the designer’s earliest collections, like a dress from AW93 that the elusive Belgian had made from a patchwork of 1940s frocks he found in a flea market in Paris. “I managed to find two of them,” he says.
from left: coat by BALENCIAGA AW06, shorts by MOSCHINO SS26; coat by ISSEY MIYAKE AW04, hat by MOSCHINO AW24, duck prop by MOSCHINO
Appiolaza hadn’t considered his collection of vintage clothing an archive until a friend encouraged him to try launching a rental service with his rare finds (conjoined by now with the collection of Benacer, whom he met in 2016, a fellow fashion fanboy with an impressive Gaultier catalogue). However, plans to open a showroom for his pieces were instantly derailed by the Covid outbreak, forcing the pair to put their rare togs back into storage. “I thought, well, this is over, but Ryan was given this bible of contacts for stylists and photographers through a friend at a PR agency in Paris.” They put together a newsletter of everything they had to rent and sent it out. “From then on, it just exploded.” A peak in interest surrounding archiving during the pandemic led to a series of magazine articles on the new fashion treasure trove, which quickly became a full-time business for the pair.
Up until a month prior to us speaking, Appiolaza and Benacer had kept the majority of their archive in three storage units close to their flat but have since moved to a commercial space where brands and stylists can come and explore their collection in full. When he was still permanently living in Paris – Appiolaza was Loewe’s ready-to-wear design director for a decade under Jonathan Anderson – he was across all aspects of the archive, from talking to clients to selecting potential rentals. Today, Benacer is in charge of 90 per cent of the logistics: since the pandemic, looking after the archive has been his full-time job.
Splitting his time now between Milan and Paris, Appiolaza is involved in research and buying. Once a week, when they’re together at home in Paris, they’ll unbox their most recent finds. “This is one of the most exciting parts. If I’m not in Paris, then he waits for me to arrive so we can see the pieces together for the first time – it’s like Christmas!” Before our call, they’d been fangirling over a big coat with a ruffled skirt they’d purchased from Nicolas Ghesquière’s AW06 collection for Balenciaga. “It still remains my favourite collection from Nicolas. [I had] to find this coat, I needed to have it,” he says.
from left: jacket (on top) by MARTIN MARGIELA AW00, jacket (underneath) and trousers by XXL, jewellery by HANNAH MARTIN, boots by MARTIN MARGIELA AW01; shirt by MOSCHINO SS94, skirt by COMME DES GARCONS SS13, 1930s blazers by MOSCHINO
Since they began renting their collection, the pair have set out to enrich the archive beyond their personal favourites. “Yohji, Comme, Margiela, Gaultier, those are the ones we have the most of in terms of complete looks and complete seasons, which is originally what I wanted to achieve with the archive,” he says. “But working with stylists, we also understand trends have their needs. Now we are also purchasing things that are more for the spirit of the garment, rather than the brand.” For instance, they’ve been buying a lot by French designer Chantal Thomass, whose lingerie designs from the 1980s and ’90s feel attuned to the body-baring fashions that are popular today.
Up until five years ago, Appiolaza was sourcing a lot of vintage finds on Buyee, a Japanese e-commerce site similar to eBay, where it was easy to find Comme and Margiela gems. “But then, when buying vintage became such a thing, people on TikTok and Instagram started posting things from this platform and the prices started going up.”
The couple had to get craftier with their approach. “We go to where we find something vintage and then we get in touch with the seller, who will then be like, ‘I used to wear Margiela, so I have more pieces.’ Then you’re set up: do you know any people also into Margiela? Do you have any friends from that time? A girlfriend? ‘Oh yeah, my girlfriend, she may have some pieces.’ One person knew the manager of a multi-brand store in Torino [Turin] from the Nineties that had a lot of stuff, so we contacted them.”
from left: jacket and harness by COMME DES GARCONS AW14, leggings by BERNHARD WILLHELM, sunglasses by MOSCHINO SS25, shoe covers by COMME DES GARCONS SS14; jacket, dress and shirt by JUNYA WATANABE AW06, hat by LOEWE X WILLIAM DE MORGAN 2019, tights by COMME DES GARCONS HOMME PLUS 2015, boots by JPG X DR MARTENS
This inquisitiveness led him to land upon his holy grail: a waistcoat from Margiela’s AW89 collection made from porcelain pieces. “From studying at Saint Martins in the early 2000s until two years ago, this was something I thought would be impossible to find… I found two of them at the same time.” The first was sourced via a former colleague who used to work at Margiela and knew the head of the label’s Artisanal division, who owned one. The second was stumbled upon during an Instagram doomscrolling session. “I found this random lady from France and in the back of one of her photos I saw a mannequin wearing one of the vests. I made an offer, but she said for the moment she wanted to keep it. Three months later, she got back in touch. But it was at the same time I was buying the other one. I said to Ryan, ‘Shall we? It is an investment piece, these things gain in value and not many were made.’ So, we got both.”
“We don’t sell anything,” Appiolaza continues. “We buy to sell then we don’t sell it. It’s hard to get rid of anything.” He’s still on the hunt for anything he can get his hands on from Margiela’s debut collection (SS89), having secured an original tattoo top for €150 on Vinted so far.
Buying a showstopper Comme des Garçons look each season, he displays the architectural beauties on mannequins in the couple’s Paris pad, his own church of Comme, if you will, putting one into storage as another arrives in the post. Most of their shared menswear archive is kept at home. “It’s a bit like playing dress-up every day – leaving the house can sometimes take quite a while.”
from left: dress by COMME DES GARCONS AW19, shoulder piece (worn as headpiece) by COMME DES GARCONS AW15, bag by MOSCHINO 1993; shirt by MOSCHINO SS94, skirt by COMME DES GARCONS SS13, 1930s hat and blazers by MOSCHINO
On a normal day, Benacer is usually kitted out in Gaultier, with Appiolaza most likely in Margiela. For the bigger nights out, though, “when we’re invited to fashion shows, anything Kawakubo is always a go-to. It feels great to be able to have options and dress according to how I’m feeling. This is something I also apply to my way of creating for Moschino.” Even before joining the brand, he was collecting Franco Moschino’s treasures. “I was obsessed with all his waistcoats. I like the sense of fun that he had in making clothes.” Instinctively, his first collection for the house, AW24, mined Moschino signatures, including the cloud print and the smiley face.
“I learned so much about Franco when I went into the archive because it gave me the possibility to understand how he went from one collection to the next. Since I started working here, we’ve bought more and more things from Moschino for our archive. Ryan wears a lot of Franco’s clothing.”
Over the years, Appiolaza has managed to secure pieces he designed at previous jobs, which included stints at Miu Miu, Louis Vuitton and a return to Chloé under Clare Waight Keller. “Because I’m a person of a certain age and experience, I’m finding pieces that I designed on my first job, like from Alexander McQueen in spring 2000. Now my and Ryan’s new obsession is Louis Vuitton by Marc Jacobs. He’ll be like, ‘We should get this,’ and it’ll have been something I’ve designed. When you make something, at the time you don’t wanna see it anymore. Now I can fall in love with my old work.”
from left: suit by COMME DES GARCONS HOMME PLUS AW13, shoes by COMME DES GARCONS SS15; suit by COMME DES GARCONS HOMME PLUS SS06, shoes by COMME DES GARCONS SS15
His collecting habits don’t stop at clothes. The pair’s flat is kitted out with 20th-century vintage furniture, including ’70s light fixtures by Gaetano Sciolari and a Paul Evans brutalist table. A passion for vinyl was also ignited when Appiolaza was 11 – he found a box of wax in a bin, which led to him spending his teenage years looking for records from the ’50s through to the ’80s. Many afternoons during his London years were spent crate-digging in Notting Hill record exchanges. “I probably have a 5,000-to-10,000 vinyl collection,” he says, which he plays off a vintage hi-fi system in Paris. He’s already begun building his catalogue in Milan, too, his first two purchases being FKA twigs’s Eusexua and the Pet Shop Boys’ Discography: The Complete Singles Collection reissue.
The dream would be to have his archive housed in museums, so he could curate exhibitions chronologising his collections of Comme, Gaultier and Margiela. He’s had calls to do as such already, but between running a global fashion brand and managing the archive with Benacer, there simply aren’t enough hours in the day. “Sometimes I think I could just sell it all and retire to Patagonia,” he says with a laugh. Before he can kick back with a piña colada, though, there’s more fashion hunting to be done.
Taken from 10 Men Issue 62 – BIRTHDAY, EVOLVE, TRANSFORMATION – out on newsstands now. Order your copy here.
ADRIAN APPIOLAZA: WARDROBE WONDERS
Photographer FRANCESC PLANES
Fashion Editor and Talent ADRIAN APPIOLAZA
Text PAUL TONER
Production SONYA MAZURYK
Special thanks to SUGAR ANSARI, THEO KATSAROS and RYAN BENACER
blazer by MOSCHINO 1993
