7X7 MAGAZINE
JANUARY 2010
www.7×7.com

FLY BY NIGHT
Having lived in the East Bay for a long time, The Archive was always sort of a golden oasis; a shining exemplar of discretion and simplicity in a city so consumed by consumerism that good stores are often left on the wayside in favor of something bigger, something brighter, and something (usually) of much more marginal quality. But now that I live in the city, I truly understand how ridiculously lucky San Francisco is to have a place like this.

If you don’t like spending money on your clothes (and I’m not talking about inflated prices like that Abercrombie or Reiss), then you should take any super positive review with a grain of salt. Unlike restaurants or nightclubs, it’s much harder to set an objective standard for cost-to-value for what you wear. The people who come to here and the people who work here don’t necessarily want to buy expensive clothing; it’s just that they’ve come to realize that the clothing that they want can only be made by certain people and can only be purchased at certain price points.

David and Arthur are, by far, two of the most knowledgeable people about fashion in the entire Bay Area. Between the two of them, they know enough about history, construction, and just plain old taste that if people gave them a chance, they could probably save all of the city from its grunge-y, self-destructive habits. People who complain about the service here just don’t understand that the usual clientele don’t require someone fawning over them every single second. If you want to see how good the folks at The Archive can treat you, try engaging them in a genuine conversation about clothing: how things fit, how things are fabricated, who makes them, what fabrics are used, where are they sourced? Unlike pushy sales people are other stores, they actually know and love every single one of their products and are more concerned with you getting what you want than them getting a sale.