Hi!

I’m Rachael Que Vargas— artist, designer and a force of nature in the best possible way. I make sculpture, jewelry and mosaic, and now I am teaching myself to design and make clothes.

One way or another, I’ve supported myself with art and design since I left home at 17. But I feel like I’ve learned more about art in the two years I’ve spent studying clothing than I did in the last 40 years supporting myself as an artist.

Fashion is more art than art is.

If Andy Warhol hadn’t already said it, I would have had to.

I’m amazed at how much depth there is to find— color, texture, form, pattern, functionality, flow, movement. Also history, labor practices, sustainability, social status, class. Things I could have learned from other art forms but didn’t have to. To really understand fashion, all of these things and more become a vital part of the story.

R Que V Archive began as a personal reference library of exceptional clothes I collected to study their construction.

With any art, the way I learn best is by close examination of objects to see how they’re made. I also read, watch documentaries, talk to people who work in the art form and focus on details, but what works best for me is to really handle things and see how they work. Clothes in particular are such complicated objects that you really have to wear them to fully grasp how they will feel in motion, how they move, what works and what doesn’t work as well.

The collection evolved into a shop for many reasons.

For one thing, it gives me a good reason to buy a wider range of sizes and styles so I learn more.

But it’s also about sharing what I’ve learned, seeing what other people see and building community. I hope to create kind of a salon space as educational as it is sensual, a place to talk about art and design and clothes and life.

“I want to empower women. I want people to be afraid of the women I dress.”— Alexander McQueen

I love this quote.

Fashion is one of the most empowering tools at our disposal. Dressing to please and express yourself is a way to take and hold personal power. Sharing that power with other women really is one of my biggest motivations behind opening the store.

There’s a delightful bravado on display when McQueen says he wants people to be afraid of the women he dresses… it’s punk, it’s authentic, and I suppose sometimes it happens.

But my experience has actually been kind of the opposite— people seem to find me more approachable when I wear interesting clothes. Random strangers start conversations so much more often these days, pretty much every time I leave the house. And the diversity of people who approach me has also gone way up. I really, truly love that I have access to a much broader and deeper community now.