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Diary of a dress detective - Telegraph

Amy says: “I’m sporting a vintage find from my favorite clothes
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Diary of a dress detective
When the auctioneer Kerry Taylor is not rifling through the wardrobes of the famous, she's digging around in binary bags - and unearthing clothes that rotate out to be value tens of thousands of pounds.
BY Gareth Wyn Davies |15 September 2009

Diary of a dress detective

Kerry Taylor has what many women might think the imagine job: travelling the world to rummage approximately the wardrobes of the rich and famous in search of choice pieces of haute couture. As an auctioneer specialising in vintage fashion and historical costume she has sold pieces belonging to the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, European royalty, Daphne Guinness, Lucy Ferry… The buyers are no less glamorous, whether it's a publicity-shy private collector, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York or a fashion house desperate to plug the breaches in its package.
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This Tuesday she will auction the closet of the late Vogue vogue editor-turned-costume designer Marit Allen, ashore benefit of Allen's babies, including pieces by Mary Quant , Bill Gibb, Galliano and Ossie Clark - a bargain expected to heave well over ￡40,000.
Taylor, 48, and her husband, Paul Mack, a potter, live in south London and Dorset, where they are restoring a cottage. We asked her to keep a diary of her typical week…
Monday
I went to see something locally who has a collection of late-Victorian dressing. I was there for 10am and left at about 3pm, without stopping. We don't get that many man collectors in fashion, but this man has been collecting since he was a student. All the clothes belonged to the wife of a businessman, and he'd done a lot of research into her life. It was lovely, with wonderful colours and glimmering brocaded satins woven with lilacs and big autumnal bouquets.
Unfortunately, there were quite a lot of alterations, which affects their value. I noticed them because I must look at things forensically, which constantly my clients haven't done themselves - having bought the pieces years ago they just adopt them as they are. The original owner had obviously put on weight and had amplified the waistbands. Also, there were a lot of 'undress' gowns and tea gowns and I said, 'Well, it looks to me as if she spent a lot of time at home to have so many of these.' It struck me as weird. I said, 'Was she ill? What did she die of?' We looked it up and she died of kidney failure at the age of about 60.
I will leave the landlord in truce now and he can think about what he wants to do. With some collectors the clothes virtually chance a part of their human and parting with them is like amputating a limb. It can be very, very upsetting, something I have to be judicious of.
Got back to the office and someone came in with a beautiful printed lace dress by Coco Chanel, about 1927, which will do very well because of the loosen of the film Coco Avant Chanel with Audrey Tautou. I estimated it at about ￡2,500 to ￡3,500, but I won't be surprised if it achieves more than that. My client bought it for ￡100 at one of the vintage fairs. The dealer hadn't looked inside and spotted the label! That will be one for my December auction.
You actually, really don't understand what you might find in this job, and that namely what namely so thrilling, particularly if it's an old household trunk that comes in and there are membranes and wafers of age tissue paper and bits of lace, then you come cross an 18th-century waistcoat. It's like detective work. A madame came in last year with a bag of stuff,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], and, oh, it was one frightful thing afterward the next. Then by the base there was some yellow satin and she pulled it out and I recognised it for creature designed at Matisse as Le Chant du Rossignol, one of Serge Diaghilev's ballets. Her brother was a ballet enthusiast and had bought it by an auction in the 1970s. I said,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], 'I calculate we ambition obtain ￡20,000 apt ￡30,000 because it,' and she nearly died. It made ￡32,000, in truth.
Then there was the English pair who phoned me once. They'd bought a mill in France to do up as a vacation home. Up in the loft, covered in pigeon sand, were original Madeleine Vionnet boxes and inside were dresses from the 1920s. This was an essential chapter of Vionnet's evolution, preceding the prejudice cut. There was carton upon box of them. Quite extraordinary. That little collection raised ample money for their new dome.
Tuesday
Spent the day in the office, although there's no such thing as a typical day in this office. We were drowning in frocks, cataloguing the Marit Allen auction.Some collections tin be very, very time-consuming to list. This one arrived in big tartan sacks in a complete confuse. The first job was to put anything on to padded hangers and sort into categories. Anything that looked like it had moths we vacuumed and put in the freezer. Moths are such a problem immediately. It's this universal warming thing. Whereas they accustomed to die off to a degree in the winter, immediately they chomp their course through things all year around.
My assistant, Hettie, and I have been putting all the Mary Quant attach, and the Zandra Rhodes together, and the Bill Gibb,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], and the Biba, and the Granny Takes a Trip… The most exciting thing in the entire collection is a white gaberdine-cotton and silver vinyl minidress and matching coat by John Bates, which Marit wore for her wedding in 1966: really cool and iconic.
When I am on a deadline like this I am usually up at 6, in the office for seven and home by 10. I will do this until I have achieved. I just trip into bed, having made myself an omelette. People mention, 'Your job is so excellent and glamorous,' and yet I am equitable exhausted. When I get home I tend to read fashion books in bed. I am a crackpot, really. To relax I love watching films - really agreeable films with really good clothes, or wrong films with good clothes in some cases! Nothing gets me riled like a historic drama that's got bad clothes. I am fair watching the DVDs of Mad Men: I love it. Costume-wise it is highly accurate.
Wednesday
To Milan to view a collection of [link widoczny dla zalogowanych] . I was up at 4am and drove to Gatwick, parked up, then connected the queue for check-in, which snaked around the whole of Gatwick. Got the 7.10am flight and was picked up at the hangar by my customer,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], who was the maximum attractive Italian. You don't know who you are going to encounter, and I am not very optimistic, but he was lovely. He drove me to his country house overlooking a beautiful lake, where I looked at his collection of Rive Gauche clothes and accessories and designs and sketches from 1969 to 1996. There were fashion movies, all the catwalk shows from the 1980s along, books with swatches in. We stopped merely briefly for lunch.
His housekeeper brought up some parma ham and a glass of the local red brandy - we sat there watching films of fashion shows with lunch on our laps.
Then it was behind to Milan airport, where easyJet didn't take off. My flight was meant to be about 5pm, and it took off at 7pm. Got home, exhausted, about 9.30pm and fell into mattress.
Thursday
Up very early afresh. I drove to a house in north London and met Osman, my lovely intern, and we spent the morn going through dozens of rails of clothes, from Victorian right through to the 1960s, electing things for the October auction.
So in the meantime as cataloguing things I am business-getting for the autumn. I visit Paris two to three periods a year, and I have human based there scouting for me. That's where you still find things because the French always dressed well, whereas the English spent their money on their horses and their houses and gardens. I've known most of my personal buyers for about 30 years now, and I know their savor. I too know what a lot of the salons are ambitioning. I reserve an eye open for things for them.
I'd made Osman and me some sandwiches for luncheon, which we ate in the motorcar, then we drove to dissimilar house in north London where I met Kate Franklin, who was Bill Gibb's affair associate. She doesn't have many things left, merely there were some clothes and incipient sketches, including one of an kit made for Twiggy, which I've said should fetch ￡600 to ￡1,000 for it is such an iconic image. Dropped Osman off and got home about seven. By this point there wasn't any edible in the house.
Friday
Worked always day in the bureau, then went home to elect up my sons, Tom, 21, and Alex, 19, to go to Dorset. The car broke down in Tulse Hill, so we had this crazy scramble to get out of London. Got a taxi to Clapham Junction, bought some very expensive practice tickets and administered to get ourselves there.
My husband, who has got a pottery down there, had made a lovely repast for us. Understandably,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], he gets averse to the hours I work, so gets on with production his kettles while I get on with my frocks and we penetrate every additional at the weekends. I miss him, though. We're renting a tiny one-up, one-down annexe while we do up our cottage,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], so we spent the weekend moving furniture and packing up the cottage and production bags for the philanthropy shop - really relaxing!
I've all loved fashion, but if you saw me in Dorset you'd never trust I worked in the fashion world. I go round in great huge quilted tartan farmer's shirts and wellies and no a scrap of make-up. I am peerless merry like that. I adore it.
Monday
Get on a plane to Europe to look at a collection of haute couture belonging to one of the most artistic style icons of the 20th centenary. There were only about 25 pieces, but they are by a famous couturier. Very tiny belonging to her has ever come on the mall, so it's all very exciting. In terms of value it's not huge - probably among ￡80,000 and ￡120,000, which is nobody in the wider contrive of things. I regularly sell clothes for tens of thousands of pounds. The highest sum I ever effected for a single item was ￡200,000, for a 16th-century doublet. In terms of 20th-century dress, the most was probably the Catherine Walker dress Princess Diana wore to Thailand, which I sold for ￡62,000.
I never know what the next day will bring, which is what makes my job so amusing, but fingers crossed it's something special. Let's wait and see…
The Marit Allen Collection sale is on Tuesday at 10.30am, with viewing today noon-4.30pm and tomorrow 9.30am-5pm, at Unit C25, 40 Martell Road, London SE21 ( kerrytaylorauctions.com )

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