From a 26-year-old Callaghan dress on Chloë Sevigny to sold-out vintage Balenciaga, Nicolas Ghesquière’s early designs are officially trending, and he’s in on the moment.

There’s a particular kind of fashion nerd flex happening right now, and it doesn’t involve anything from this season. It’s a 26-year-old striped jersey dress, pulled from Chloë Sevigny’s own closet, from a label most people have never heard of: Callaghan, the Italian house where a 20-something Nicolas Ghesquière was quietly designing collections years before Balenciaga made him a household name. Sevigny wore it to Louis Vuitton’s Cruise 2027 show in New York, the same city where Ghesquière staged his final Callaghan collection, and where Sevigny, his earliest and fiercest celebrity friend, was in the audience the first time around.&nbsp;
It’s a full-circle moment, as right now, Ghesquière’s entire back catalogue–Callaghan, his genre-defining run at Balenciaga, work from Trussardi, even early Louis Vuitton–is getting the kind of reverent, resale-market attention usually reserved for archives that have already been canonized. Vintage dealers are building entire categories around him as younger designers are openly naming him and using him as inspiration. And Ghesquière himself just spent his Fall/Winter 2026 Louis Vuitton show throwing back to shapes he invited decades ago. His past, it turns out, isn’t in the rearview mirror at all; it’s the current It reference.&nbsp;

To understand why Ghesquière’s Callaghan pieces have become the ultimate inside holy grail, you have to understand how briefly—and precariously—that era existed at all. In the mid-'90s, Ghesquière was doing double duty, designing under his own name for Trussardi and then Callaghan, while simultaneously building what would become his famous body of work at Balenciaga, where he’d been named creative director at just 25. Callaghan’s Spring/Summer 2001 show in New York was the house’s first-ever New York presentation, and Ghesquière’s American debut. When Gucci Group acquired Balenciaga, Callaghan couldn’t renegotiate Ghesquière’s contract, and the label eventually folded. He never showed for them again.
That’s part of what makes the Callaghan and early Balenciaga archive so charged now, since it’s not rare due to age alone, but rather because of its short-lived run. There was no natural conclusion or farewell collection on Ghesquière’s part; one era ended so the next one (Balenciaga) could fully begin. Which means every Callaghan piece still floating around is a fragment of a body of work that feels exclusive to those who can find it. Some pieces have even ended up in museum collections, including the Met, showcasing Ghesquière’s talent before he caught waves into mainstream luxury.&nbsp;
And Ghesquière, still in his creative-direction prime, is actively boasting this interest in his archive. His Fall/Winter 2026 Louis Vuitton show, “Super Nature,” pulled directly from silhouettes he explored with early Balenciaga, proving to himself that his clothes are not disposable. Younger labels are feeding on this archival obsession, the downtown darlings at Vaquera have referenced his archive directly, and Gabriel Figueiredo built early buzz for his own line, De Pino, on loving pastiches of Ghesquiere’s Balenciaga era greatest-hits, including the padded coats, scuba fabrics, and the sharp, sci-fi tailoring that made his 1997 to 2012 run at the house the most influential of its generation—not to mention his most well-loved contribution to fashion, Le City bag.&nbsp;

That influence has made its way into an actual market. Vintage dealers like ReSee, Resurrection Vintage, and 1stDibs now run entire categories dedicated to his work, chasing hard-to-come-by designs like the 2003 Parachute jacket and scuba mini dress, or the Fall/Winter 2006 collection he pulled straight from Cristóbal Balenciaga’s own archives. Resurrection’s client list runs from Kim Kardashian to movie stars like Jennifer Lawrence, turning his archive from a niche fashion-nerd interest to a genuine red carpet strategy. Of course, it also helps that the timing is perfect, as fashion is already knee-deep in a Y2K revival, and Ghesquière basically invented the era’s version of avant-garde the first time around. That only tells us that Nicolas Ghesquière truly is having a comeback, and that he also never really left; fashion is just catching up to him once again.&nbsp;
Below, find some of Ghesquière’s best archival moments:

Callaghan Spring/Summer 2001 Ready to Wear. Getty Images.

Callaghan Spring/Summer 2001 Ready to Wear

Balenciaga Spring/Summer 2002. Getty Images.

Balenciaga Spring/Summer 2003 Ready to Wear. Getty Images.

Balenciaga Fall/Winter 2003. Getty Images.

Balenciaga Spring/Summer 2006. Getty Images.

Balenciaga Fall/Winter 2008. Getty Images.

Louis Vuitton Fall/Winter 2026. Getty Images.

Chlöe Sevigny at the Louis Vuitton Resort 2027 Show. Getty Images.

Everyone’s Chasing Nicolas Ghesquière’s Past

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Everyone’s Chasing Nicolas Ghesquière’s Past

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