About

WIL ARCHIVE is the new Berlin-based one-size label by Sarah Gottschalk, bet­ter known to many as Sarah Jane. Togeth­er with Nike van Dinther, she co-found­ed This is Jane Wayne, one of Germany’s best-known inde­pen­dent fash­ion mag­a­zines, which they ran from 2010 to 2023.

With WIL ARCHIVE, she launch­es her first inde­pen­dent label, shift­ing the focus to the emo­tion­al val­ue of cloth­ing. Inspired by the shirts of her late father, the project explores mem­o­ry, long­ing, and the idea of cloth­ing not as a set of rules, but as an invi­ta­tion to be worn in one’s own way.

WIL ARCHIVE was cre­at­ed in 2025 dur­ing a hol­i­day with my sis­ter and is ded­i­cat­ed to my father, who had passed away ten years ear­li­er.

My father loved sail­ing and the sea. Boats, ropes, har­bours, easy shirts and uncom­pli­cat­ed mate­ri­als some­how always belonged to him, which is also why the logo became a small imper­fect sail­boat qui­et­ly drift­ing across fab­ric like a mem­o­ry.

To this day, I still wear a few of his old shirts. My father was a very tall man, so on me they always felt over­sized — in this com­fort­ing, effort­less kind of way that some­how makes you feel pro­tect­ed with­out even notic­ing it. Over the years, these shirts became some­thing I reached for again and again. They fol­lowed me through sum­mers, through trav­els, through dif­fi­cult days, through ordi­nary morn­ings, through moments where I sim­ply want­ed to feel a lit­tle more held togeth­er. And some­where dur­ing that hol­i­day with my sis­ter, I sud­den­ly thought: every­one deserves a shirt like this.

A piece of cloth­ing that slow­ly becomes part of your own life. Some­thing famil­iar. Some­thing reli­able. Some­thing that car­ries com­fort, mem­o­ries and ease all at once.

The shirts of WIL ARCHIVE are inten­tion­al­ly inspired by the pro­por­tions of my father’s orig­i­nals and designed in one shape. On some peo­ple they look over­sized, on oth­ers more clas­sic, short­er or longer — and that is exact­ly how they are meant to exist. They are not sup­posed to dic­tate how your body should look. They are meant to adapt to the per­son wear­ing them and slow­ly become part of their sto­ry over time.

In a way, every piece begins with my father’s shirt. But it is meant to become yours.

And although my father prob­a­bly would have found the idea of all this slight­ly ridicu­lous, I still hope he would have been proud of it.