How to turn fashion into a genuine investment
Vintage pieces are more likely to have stood the test of time
‘Guess how old this is?” asks Kerry Taylor, pupils dilating, fingers pointing to a floor-length, full-black taffeta skirt and wasp-waisted jacket in magenta sackcloth, festooned with black frogging and passementerie. The style is High Victoriana, but the finish is not. “Erm, early Fifties?”
“1946,” she fires back. “Balenciaga at his most Spanish.”
Unlike me, Taylor recognised the evening suit the moment she clapped eyes on it because every year, as a world-renowned evaluator of vintage clothing, she visits the Cristobál Balenciaga Museum in Getaria, Spain, so they can update their insurance. There aren’t many Balenciaga pieces, iconic or otherwise, she’s not familiar with. She also has a photographic memory, so she knew exactly where else she’d seen this outfit: on a photograph of Gloria Guinness. Currently adorning a mannequin in her rough and ready warehouse in Bermondsey, southeast London, it’s undoubtedly seen more glamorous surroundings and will again. “It’s an exquisite piece and typical of him at that time. It has been altered internally, but minimally. Museums will love it.”
It’s this subterranean level of knowledge that has made Taylor not only pre-eminent in her field, but a bench marker. Twenty years ago, she says, when she first launched her fashion auctions, having been summarily fired from Sotheby’s on her way to see a client, “you could buy amazing, important Chanel dresses for £600. Now they’d be more like £20,000”. Driving the rise, she says, is a surge of interest and appreciation of fashion craft and history, evidenced by the proliferation of fashion museums across the world, and the advent of the blockbuster fashion exhibition. “There’s so much more awareness of fashion’s cultural relevance,” she notes, not just among professional curators, but with new generations of private collectors. Who are they? Anyone and everyone. Hollywood celebrities, models, designers, stylish, non-famous women who’ve worked out this is a way to wear the haute-est couture at a fraction of the cost of new. “The South Koreans in particular are big spenders. Initially they go for items with a celebrity association, but many are evolving into genuine connoisseurs”.
Trade is brisk. With between four and six auctions a year, each containing around 400 lots, Taylor’s warehouse has become a beacon for dealers and designers from across the world. On Dec 4, she’s holding an auction of Sean Leane’s costume jewellery in New York. Estimates are high – £300,000 for a neck piece. “I’m pushing the envelope, but I view Sean’s best pieces as sculpture”.
She is tantalisingly discreet, admitting only to Marie Helvin, Jerry Hall and Björk as customers, but many big names have browsed and bought. She’s often seen her pieces on the red carpet, although sometimes the actresses didn’t buy directly from her, but through LA vintage stores. “So a dress they end up paying £10,000 for, they could have had for a thousand,” she says.
The sums vintage clothing fetches may seem mysterious and volatile, but they have an internal logic that’s arguably more transparent than the pricing structure of new luxury goods, partially driven as the latter are, by hype and canny marketing. Vintage pieces are more likely to have stood the test of time, not just reputationally, but because of their exceptional quality. “The reason Hermes bags like the Kelly, Birkin and Constance retain their value and in some cases surpass it,” explains Taylor, “is that they’re not simply about current status. They’re genuinely artisanal, whereas most other luxury bags are produced in a factory”.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t fluctuations. Notoriety can trump craft and even the great designers have better years than others. Sixties and Seventies Yves Saint Laurent is generally regarded as the high water mark of his career. Paul Poiret’s 1911 orientalism is more sought after than his plainer Twenties collections.
And it can be tricky predicting which of the current labels will have long-term appeal. Vetements, because it has turned out be such an influential label, will see prices for its much-copied 2015 floral, ruffled dress fetch far more than anonymous pieces of superior workmanship. Taylor often sees un-named exquisite evening bags from the Thirties go for under a thousand, while an anonymous beaded dress from the Twenties or Thirties can be snapped up for a few hundred.
Inevitably stardust comes into play. “Anything – anything
– that belonged to Diana is at a premium. Marilyn Monroe even more so, because in addition to being a legend, she was a sex symbol.” Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly are also Midas figures. And should Kate Moss ever sell any of her clothes, there will be a stampede, reckons Taylor, “not just because of who she is. She’s collected vintage for years and has some amazing examples”.
Meanwhile, a delectable 1961 Balenciaga couture pink capeback silk gown should fetch at least £10,000 when it comes up on Monday, says Taylor. “But there are sweat stains under the arms, so it will probably go for £3,000 to £5,000. “Had the perspiration belonged to Hepburn or Kelly, it would have been a different matter”.
The joy of collecting highquality vintage is that it combines social history with craft while providing careful owners with something to wear. It’s true that Very Important Pieces should probably be kept in climatically controlled conditions away from sunlight – most items, if sensibly looked after, can be resold for the same amount or more. Clients often
buy Seventies Thea Porter, Bill Gibb or Ossie Clark (eat your heart out, Isabel Marant) for a few hundred, (there are several coming up on Monday,) wear them twice and sell them on, recouping all their outlay. Other instantly wearable pieces on Monday include a block coloured, sleeveless Chanel dress estimated at £400 to £600 – a 10th of what new couture would cost.
Presumably, traceless deodorant is key. So is research. Taylor sees mounds of jumble arrive in black bin bags, only to discover treasures. Five years ago she unearthed a label-less black marocain beaded dress that she instantly identified as Madeleine Vionnet.
“The woman who brought it to us thought it was nothing.”
It sold for £60,000.