It was men’s fashion week in Paris, and the Archivist Store was as busy as Gare du Nord. That is, if the train depot were frequented solely by people who could tell a mere North Face jacket from a North Face Purple Label one.

Inside, a boutique owner from New York stood at the counter buying a stack of dog-eared issues of i-D magazine from the 1990s. A stylist, also from New York, popped out of the dressing room to tell his friend that he just had to have this pair of faded black trousers. A couple of visitors from Japan stopped by, one of whom had a pop-up at the Archivist for her own vintage shop last year. It was a success. She warmly greeted the store’s owner, Sami Taider.

“Fashion week is the busiest time of the year,” Mr. Taider said, taking a break for an interview at a corner bistro. “But when you have a business like this, it’s important to have people coming every day.”

Since opening its doors in December 2022, the Archivist Store, with its uncluttered, white-walled interior, has become the Paris men’s resale mecca. If you ask a certain breed of shopper — someone who collects ’90s Issey Miyake sweaters or who can tell the age of a Stussy tee by its label — it’s the best vintage store in the city, if not the world. (It is probably the only vintage store reselling Stussy that the label’s reclusive founder, Shawn Stussy, has actually visited and posted about on Instagram.)

But why? It’s all in the mix. Vintage stores tend to have a parochial focus on one period or class of clothing — your Americana Levis specialists, your hole-ridden metal tee slingers or those aesthetes who sell only Christian Lacroix frocks from the late 1980s.