Archives are the fashion industry’s best kept secret. In every fashion capital, you will discover an archive that provides a wealth of inspiration for all your favourite designers. In London, we have The Contemporary Wardrobe, a vast subculture archive that frequently loans pieces to designers and stylists. In Paris, there’s spots like Passage – formerly known as Le Souk – which holds a collection of over 40,000 items, including contemporary ready-to-wear and haute couture. In Berlin, ENDYMA is the place to go.
Founded in 2014 by Greek collector Michael Kardamakis, ENDYMA (which means ‘clothing’ in ancient Greek) holds the world’s largest collection of vintage Helmut Lang, alongside rare pieces from Raf Simons, Rick Owens and Junya Watanabe, to name a few. Born and raised in Athens, Kardamakis started the collection while studying art history in Norwich in 2014. After graduating, he moved to London, where he continued to grow the archive, before moving back home to Athens for several years. In 2020, he relocated to Berlin, which became the perfect base for ENDYMA.
Here at Dazed, we were following ENDYMA’s rise long before the archive rooted itself in Berlin. Back in 2018, we had a lengthy chat with Kardamakis about his pathway into fashion, but now, ENDYMA is telling its story in its own way. Premiering exclusively with Dazed, Kardamakis has linked up with Berlin-based filmmaker Philippe Gnannt to release a 25-minute documentary about the archive.
“I’ve wanted to do a feature about vintage clothing for a while,” says Gnannt. “I was immersing myself in that world, researching designers, garments, history, etc. One of my rabbit holes led me to ENDYMA and I couldn’t believe that there was this great archive not so far from me. I took a chance and reached out shortly after.”
The director admits that he’s spent many hours watching fashion documentaries and cites McQueen and Dior and I as his favourites. That said, he didn’t want this film to be anything like them. “I was less interested in making a polished fashion film or a YouTube archive tour. I sort of wanted to capture the spirit of the archive through a more grungy, skate documentary approach,” he says.
“When ENDYMA started it was more of a shop than anything else – and not even a particularly good one!” remembers Kardamakis. “But eventually, I found my place within the industry and the project shifted to a rental service. Now, it’s turning into something like a fashion-borrowing-library or wannabe museum. Throughout this journey, it hadn’t really occurred to me that our story might be interesting enough to share with the wider public like this.”
It took Gnannt three days to shoot the documentary, plus countless late nights editing. You can watch the fruits of his labour in full above. As for ENDYMA’s future, Kardamakis has two goals: to continue growing his collection to reflect a wider range of designers, but firstly, to get his hands on some 70s Armani.
