Once the preserve of luxury megabrands with long histories, archives are becoming de rigueur for a handful of fashion labels striding into their second decade.

“Outsourcing is also an option. Garde Robe is a garment storage service used by several New York-based labels, including Jason Wu, Oscar de la Renta and Carolina Herrera (as an official partner of the CFDA, it offers discounted rates for members). “Some designers have a couple of dozen pieces and others have 30,000 pieces,” says Doug Greenberg, Garde Robe’s vice president of sales and marketing. “We pioneered the ‘Cyber Closet’ in 2001, which is like an e-commerce site where everything is organised by colour, pattern, embellishment, designers. You can create a cart and we deliver to the studio or shoot location in stain-free ‘red carpet-ready’ conditions”.

The original story was featured in Business of Fashion. Read the full story here.