Marcus Allen never stuck to one lunch table in the high-school cafeteria—he floated between groups, as friendly with the jocks as he was with the art kids. “I had a squad at each table,” he told me as we sat in a sunny Nolita workroom a day before his runway debut for New York Fashion Week back in September. (More on that triumph later.) It’s a brief anecdote, but it’s telling of the brand he’s built today: the Society Archive, a cult New York vintage studio turned design house that marries the preppy style of the jocks with the creative irreverence of the art kids.
Born in Cleveland, Allen moved to the Boston suburbs at age 11 to live with his aunt and uncle. It was there, among the East Coast boys he befriended, that he got his first up-close look at American prep: “They were rocking soccer shorts with an oxford that their mom or grandparents bought them,” he recalls.