At yesterday’s Doyle New York Couture Textiles and Accessories auction, there was a lot of lively bidding, and with vintage becoming a viable alternative to retail, there was a lot of attention focused on the event. According to Jan Glier Reeder, Doyle’s Couture Specialist, “We set a Doyle record for Fortuny this time with the fabulous biscuit white Delphos dress that came in the box AND, most rare, three cards from the Fortuny shop on Madison Avenue.” This “once in a lifetime find” went for $12,000 – much higher than the estimated $5,000 to $7,000.
Alas, my absolute, hands down favorite piece…which I would have killed to own, was coincidentally the catalogue’s cover – a Fabiani surrealist dress (click here to see photo) from the 60’s, which featured a trompe l’oeil design of “two attenuated hands, one adorned with a large teardrop emerald glass stone ring with rhinestone baguettes.” Estimated at pulling in somewhere between $1,000 to $1,500, it eventually found a home at $3,250. Ah, well!
The highest price for an item was actually $16,000 which went for an Emile Friant ‘Portrait of Charles Frederick Worth’, 1893, which, according to the catalgue, was owned, at one time, by Gabrielle Chanel, who hung it on a wall in her Paris apartment.
