Fashion has a particular way of romancing the past—often with a three-decade rewind, mining the design codes that shaped an earlier generation. That underpins the ongoing fascination with the 1990s, as seen across the fall 2025 runways. There were minimalist skirt suits at Calvin Klein, courtesy of its new creative director, Veronica Leoni; broad-shouldered silhouettes in buttery leather and satin at Anthony Vaccarello’s Saint Laurent; and low-slung pants and monochromatic dresses in Haider Ackermann’s debut collection for Tom Ford, complete with a cameo by the era’s muse, Karen Elson. It’s less expected to resurface century-old styles, let alone the actual antique garments themselves. That’s the inspired counterprogramming on offer with a new capsule of evening wear, created in collaboration with Etéreo Vintage and the Upper East Side atelier ONE OF.

The collection of 10 looks, which launches tomorrow, is a poetic exercise in reanimation, featuring relics by the likes of Jeanne Lanvin, Madame Grès, and Jean Patou. It all started with a shared address on East 70th Street, where Etéreo’s Zabrina Estrada at the time rented a showroom one floor below Patricia Voto, the designer behind ONE OF. “We have the same sensibilities of slow fashion and old-world feel,” says Estrada, known for sleuthing out early-20th-century European couture. Voto, who honed her ready-to-wear chops at Altuzarra, Rosie Assoulin, and Gabriela Hearst, operates at the bespoke end of fashion—at times reworking heirloom wedding dresses into custom bridal looks, or creating made-to-order pieces using an unearthed clutch of fabric. The two neighbors decided to work on a rarefied upcycling project, built around vintage treasures that were in an otherwise unwearable state. As Voto gamely puts it: “Challenge accepted.”

A 1920s Jean Patou dress (right), reimagined as a silk-wool kimono.

The results, as seen during a recent visit to ONE OF’s studio, are as much alchemy as they are reverent translation. Voto holds up a silk-wool kimono with an elaborate nuit de chine scene—originally a 1920s dress attributed to Jean Patou, which Estrada found at auction, practically in fragments. “The tulle was completely broken; the beads were starting to fall off,” says Voto, describing the work of invisible mending, using coral beads and other materials from unsalvageable sections to restore the rest. Now seemingly pristine, the decoration unfolds in landscape across the back of the belted, dropped-shoulder jacket. Another Parisian dress from the early 1920s, this one with swirling beadwork, has morphed into a pair of fluid, wide-leg pants—proof again of Voto’s unconstrained vision for seeing the antique garments as raw material. Here, she has married practicalities (keeping the inner legs clear of beading) with verve (adding a wispy beaded fringe to the outer seam). For Voto, there’s a through line back to her early days at Parsons, where a professor took note of her interest in 2D and 3D work and suggested she study product design. “I’m so grateful I did because it allowed me to approach design from a problem-solving lens,” she says.

A 1920s Liberty & Co. dress (left), given an airy neckline and contoured hem.

Fragility was one such recurring problem here. An ivory 1920s Liberty & Co. dress, featuring gold filigree threadwork on silk, needed “a lot of TLC,” says Estrada, recalling her commutes upstairs to the ONE OF atelier. “The material was just kind of falling apart in their hands.” Voto and her team added an interlining to stabilize the fabric; she pruned back the top to reveal a square neckline, added vintage trim for the straps, and introduced a dynamic hem that follows the contours of the decoration. Another impossibly delicate dress, a 1930s New York design made of a striped velvet devoré with oversize black flowers, has been reimagined as a three-piece set. Along with the floor-length skirt, there’s a bandeau top fashioned from three recreated flowers; the little bolero can be worn on top, its velvet ribbons dyed a deep chocolate to match the precise fade of the original fabric. It’s decidedly playful, something Margaret Qualley might frolic in with the right amount of insouciance. Estrada agrees, joking about our email thread: “cc: Margaret!”

A 1930s dress from New York (right), recast as a spirited three-piece set.

What’s most satisfying about the capsule is the inability to discern where old becomes new. In the case of the 1930s Lanvin dress, only the round satin appliqués were sturdy enough to be saved. Voto transferred them onto an existing ONE OF dress style with a similar fitted bodice, amplifying the skirt with 10 layers of silk gauze. A luminous dress from 1920s New York, whose chinoiserie panels originally wrapped in horizontal bands, has been deconstructed and remade with a vertical configuration; each of those floor-skimming golden panels is now capped off with a piece of its repurposed fringe. There are a few entirely new elements, too. A pair of pants made from technical scuba fabric is layered under a 1930s piano shawl. Voto dreamed up a sleeveless ostrich-feather top—she gives a shout-out to Dersh, a family-run supplier in the Garment District—to pair with an intricately beaded 1920s silk dress from Rhode Island, which has been reborn as a skirt.

A 1930s Jeanne Lanvin dress (left), rendered anew in silk gauze with the original satin appliqués.

If there was any piece that gave Estrada pause, it was the 1950s Madame Grès dress in pale yellow chiffon: a rare well-preserved find, but unbelievably small in size. “I had it for over a year, but it didn’t fit anyone,” she says, describing a push-pull over the questions of preservation versus adaptation. “I really do believe in the circularity of these pieces. In the end, we want it to live a new life.” The Grès is now rendered as a discreet two-piece ensemble—“even more modern,” Estrada says, its original label now joined by the capsule’s new one.

A 1920s beaded dress from Rhode Island (right), fashioned into a skirt and paired with an ostrich-feather top.

Even with all this exactingly preserved craftsmanship and ornament, what runs through the 10 looks is a palpable sense of ease. It’s the thread that connects the present day to the changing era a century ago, when restrictive corsets fell away and trousers came onto the scene. “It brings it full circle, in a lot of ways,” says Voto. “The fashion of the 1920s and 30s, things were getting looser, easier.” Still, certain parameters are welcome in today’s breakneck, click-to-buy fashion environment. “I like constraints. There’s something more creative about working within those,” Voto says, explaining that there’s no room for error with one-of-a-kind materials. The same goes for Estrada, whose constraints are baked into her perpetual hunt. For now, they’ve managed to take a handful of treasures out of retirement and put them back on the town. As Voto says, minutes before her next fitting arrives, “We’re just extending that lifeline.”

Photos courtesy of Etéreo Vintage and ONE OF