The Secretive World of Auctioning the Clothes of Aristocrats and Stars
STARF⭐️CKER’s Liz Goldwyn remembers what it was like to sell vintage at Sotheby’s in the late nineties, before it was a worldwide trend.
In today’s issue of Back Row:
A special guest post by vintage collector , who talks about what it was like to auction vintage clothes at Sotheby’s in the nineties.
Tips on how to find great, affordable vintage pieces in the U.S. and Europe.
Loose Threads, including Chanel’s monster 2023 sales, the Cannes red carpet, and more.
A note to readers: I recently heard about
’s lifelong passion for vintage clothing and her job in the Sotheby’s fashion department when it was just getting started in the late nineties. (More than a dozen of her pieces now reside in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute’s permanent collection.) With vintage looks attracting more attention than new clothes at the Cannes Film Festival red carpet, I asked Liz if she would share her stories about the late nineties vintage market here in Back Row. As a Goldwyn and the owner of a ballgown previously worn by Ava Gardner, Liz is without question a front-row person. I am thrilled she decided to stop by Back Row for today’s special guest post. Liz is also the author of the brand new Substack , which has become my new addiction. Subscribe to for stories like this and so much more.The Secretive World of Auctioning the Clothes of Aristocrats and Stars
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My younger brother and I got our allowance from recycling when we were kids growing up in L.A. We would collect newspapers and soda cans and take them to the dump every Saturday. Being conscious of reducing/reusing/recycling was pretty common, living in California. Buying vintage fashion, like dresses from the twenties and forties, was what my friends and I did as tweens.
And it was cheap.
When I went to boarding school on the East Coast, the first designer piece I bought was at a dollar-a-pound spot in Boston, where everything’s dumped on the floor and you pick through and pay by weight. It was a nineteen-sixties floor-length cream shantung satin Courrèges skirt.
In the nineties, vintage was not like it is today. There was a much bigger market for it in L.A., where the popular look was retro (unless you were a Hollywood agent in an ill-fitting Armani suit). Today, a beautiful nineteen-thirties print dress sells for several hundred dollars in good condition; but back then, it cost less than $10. I started to learn how to look for things. You could find quality pieces in the nineties in the Salvation Army and thrift stores — even designers like Rudi Gernreich, Norman Norrell, Halston, and Yves Saint Laurent.
By the time I was 17, I was studying photography at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. From age 13, I always had a job. My dad was against spoiling his kids — he would always say, “You're going to learn the value of a dollar.”
My dad and grandparents were art collectors, and a family friend was the head of the Impressionist department at the auction house Sotheby's. I went uptown to have lunch with him, and he asked me to meet him at the office. We were walking through the hallways, and this woman was on her knees dressing a mannequin. Sotheby’s had no fashion department then.
I said, “That's a 1963 Rudi Gernreich kabuki dress.”
She said, “How do you know that?”
I said, “I collect him.”
She wanted to know how I knew about all of these designers. I told her I loved vintage fashion and researched it for fun. She said, “I'm starting a fashion department at Sotheby's. Would you want to come work for me?”
And I did.
***
I came from 90210. I didn't know 10021, the Upper East Side zip code. I didn't know what socialites were. I’d never heard of W magazine or Page Six. This was pre-Paris Hilton. I came from a Hollywood background and didn't know that there were people who were in business, who basically owned most of the world. I didn’t know that these people had daughters who were beautiful and who wore nice clothes and who went out and got their photos taken.
My scene in New York was very different. If I had my photo in Thrasher (a skateboard magazine) or Paper or Interview, that was the height of cool. I lived downtown, below Fourteenth Street. My friends — artists and designers and young actors like Chloë Sevigny — and I all wore vintage or indie designers. We liked Susan Cianciolo and Benjamin Cho, who passed away and whom a lot of people have ripped off, along with more established avant-garde designers like Martin Margiela, Comme des Garçons, and Yohji Yamamoto, which we bought at sample sales.
I would show up to Sotheby's for work in these insane outfits — custom-made suits by Susan Cianciolo that had threads hanging off of them and hems that looked like they were ripped. The guards would be like, “You got your skirt stuck in the escalator.” A lot of the Sotheby’s women back then were wearing cashmere twin sets, pearls, and Hermès scarves. They would say, “Darling, let me snip the threads off your dress.” There would be complaints about my clothes, like, “She can't wear colored fishnets to work.”
Sotheby’s, which was founded in 1744, had this amazing computer database called STARS, which were detailed records of clients and auction sales going back centuries. I could look up my grandmother and find where she had sold jewelry back when she was worried that my grandfather was going to bankrupt them by funding a film with his own money — risky unless it hit.
All this gossip was contained within the auction records. Let's say you had sold a painting years ago, STARS would include information about the sale, and it also might say, “The third wife took this painting in the divorce and gave it to her lover.”
At Sotheby’s, I was responsible for producing photo shoots and cataloging clothes, along with bringing young designers and artists into that world, like my friend and artist Tom Sachs who made a piece for us to auction. (I can’t remember what exactly it was, but he definitely made me a pair of faux Chanel nipple clamps for my birthday one year, so it must have been good.)
A lot of the clothing Sotheby’s auctioned didn't sell for much, even though we had amazing pieces. That said, Hollywood memorabilia was always big. The suit Audrey Hepburn wore in How To Steal A Million designed by Hubert de Givenchy during the height of their collaboration sold for a little more than $10,000 (it was estimated to sell for $3,000 to $4,000). But we might spend $100,000 on producing auction catalogs, and not make that back in the sale just because there was not a market for vintage like there is now.
My boss Tiffany Dubin was the stepdaughter of the late Alfred Taubman, who owned Sotheby's at the time and was fabulous. Tiffany’s mother was friends with all the European socialites who bought haute couture, and I got to travel to Europe with her and go into people's closets and hear their stories.
An example, without naming names: Imagine an Austrian woman named Muffy. A lot of these clients had been princes and princesses, but the countries that they were princess or princesses of had been communist or democratic for a long time. But you still had to call them Princess or Prince or Count or whatever. They had their title, and maybe they still had some jewels, but most of their land had been taken away, and many of them somehow ended up in New York. They were sort of these down-on-their luck Europeans from countries that had long disposed of royalty. But they still insisted on being very grand and never let you forget your place.
So we would go to their houses or apartments or pieds-à-terre. I think for some of them, auctioning clothes was just fun. Or they wanted to see how they liked working with Sotheby’s. You could tell when they were selling clothing because they needed money. Maybe they had some land and houses, but lacked the funds to keep it up. We would show up and there would be poodles pissing everywhere, and you could see where they had obviously sold a piece of furniture because the carpet was a different color in that spot.
Clothing was a low lift for Sotheby's, and was often a way to get access to clients’ bigger ticket items, like paintings and furniture. Because clothing is so personal, when you go into someone's wardrobe, you learn about people's insecurities. If they had a mastectomy, it would come up when they showed you a custom interior ballgown bust. Often they would cry telling you stories, like, “I met my husband in this dress,” or, “I found out my husband was cheating in this dress.”
We did the Duke and Duchess of Windsor sale, which included needlepoint, china, furniture – everything. That collection came through Mohamed Al-Fayed, because he bought their house in the South of France. (If you saw The Crown, this was a plot point.) I worked on the clothes. All of the Duke of Windsor’s plus fours golf outfits, I thought, were so chic, and I really wanted one. Ralph Lauren outbid me on every single one. Everything sold for a lot in that sale. The Duke had a 26-inch waist, and the Duchess had something like a 22- or 23-inch waist. We sold some of her Mainbocher pieces, and the Duke’s wedding suit, which had “The King” hand-stitched into the inside of his morning coat (he wore it before he abdicated).
We'd often have to deal with living relatives or the people who originally owned the auction items, which was sensitive, because clothes and jewelry carry so much emotional weight. I worked on the Marlene Dietrich estate sale, which was upsetting for me, actually. Her grandson was behind that sale, and I just felt like he wanted to sell everything he could for profit, like a ripped stocking or a tissue — things that were so personal and didn’t need to be exploited for a little extra cash. Her apartment was kept as though she went out to get coffee and never came back. It was very eerie. It made me think a lot about privacy and how we consume a public figure's death.
Dietrich had an incredible clothing collection — early forties and fifties couture, and into the seventies, she acquired amazing Cardin and Courrèges pieces and pantsuits that she had garters built into, because she was accustomed to having structure inside her clothes.
When I started working for Sotheby's, I realized that I had a real vintage collection. I always wore it. Some collectors that think that's sacrilegious, but I think it should be worn.
***
Through Sotheby’s, I met Pierre Bergé and Yves Saint Laurent when they were starting their Musée Saint Laurent in Paris. The archive was a climate-controlled space with vaulted steel hanging garment racks. Drawers would come out for all the jerseys and the velvets and the beaded pieces you don't ever want to hang. I realized I needed to take better care of my collection, which was hanging — exposed — on racks in my Chinatown loft. I didn't have the resources at that time to store clothes properly. Now, I have a climate-controlled space in L.A. with racks and racks and racks, but it's a lot of work to upkeep.
I think designers, stylists, influencers and celebrities are now aware that the vintage looks get more points on the red carpet today. In the nineties, stars didn’t usually have stylists. Demi Moore has an amazing vintage collection, and she wore it to the Oscars and other places back then. She was a serious collector, and she wasn't working with someone who told her to do it — and she got ripped apart by the Hollywood fashion police.
Now, because most Hollywood stars have stylists, the general public can't tell who actually has good style. Some have really good style, and maybe they employ a stylist because that makes it easier to pull new looks. In Hollywood, it's challenging as a woman to be in front of the camera. Especially once you pass 35 years old. Though things have definitely changed for women in film in recent years after the #TimesUp, #MeToo movements, Hollywood is still largely a boys’ club. If you can get a fashion or cosmetics campaign, you can be a little more selective with the roles you choose to take. And a lot of that comes down to how you appear on the red carpet and what brands you associate with.
People were recently surprised that stylist Law Roach said Zendaya buys her vintage dresses. It’s chicer to own your clothes, especially vintage, if you’re able to afford it. Also, as Roach said, when you buy something, you understand the value of it.
The thing with Elizabeth Taylor was she owned her diamonds. Demi really would buy her nineteen-sixties, nineteen-fifties Cristobal Balenciaga. Chloë Sevigny and Sarah Jessica Parker also really know their shit. But I don't think you have to have a ton of money to find incredible pieces today, despite the competition for vintage fashion. Resale and thrift shops in areas where wealthy ladies are likely to donate clothes usually have great scores. This is a secret of vintage dealers from coast to coast — usually within an hour or two drive of a big city. Hint: the suburbs of Chicago, Michigan, Florida, California, Connecticut, etc. In Europe there is great vintage to be had, particularly in Milan, London, and Paris, though it may be more expensive unless you hit flea markets and vintage fairs. You can also go on the RealReal and buy great stuff that maybe no one's interested in right now. In the last few years, I've found pieces that I couldn't afford when I was 17 or 18. A Comme de Garçons pink sequined dress that I loved in the nineties, I found on the RealReal for not that much money.
I will always believe that the most fun part of vintage is the thrill of the hunt and finding a gem — like my Courrèges skirt in the dollar-a-pound sale.
Liz Goldwyn is filmmaker, artist, and the founder of The Sex Ed, an educational platform dedicated to sex, health, and consciousness. She is the author of Pretty Things: The Last Generation of American Burlesque Queens; Sporting Guide; and Sex, Health & Consciousness. Her latest venture, STARF⭐️CKER, a multi-media autobiographical tale set in Hollywood, is available exclusively on Substack.
Loose Threads
By Amy Odell
On the topic of vintage: who writes A Tiny Apt. on Substack has a lovely interview with Erin Wylie of about thrifting. Wylie said, “A lot of people these days are talking about finding their ‘personal style’ and I see that it could be hard to do that when we're so inundated with images. I developed my personal style in the aisles of countless thrift shops where I was free to find what spoke to me, rather than what was being sold to me. The beauty of a good thrift store is that it’s not merchandized and it spans eras, so you’re not being swayed toward what some brand or buyer thinks is a trend for the next month. You learn to trust your gut and hone your OWN eye.”
Chanel, which is a private company and only releases limited financials, reported that 2023 sales were up 16 percent to $19.7 billion. Business of Fashion noted that social media users often dislike Virginie Viard’s collections, but Chanel Chief Financial Officer Philippe Blondiaux said, “…[T]hese things happen to any designer… But since Virginie [Viard] took over from Karl…the Chanel fashion business has been multiplied by 2.2. The Chanel ready-to-wear business has been multiplied by 2.5, and the ready-to-wear business last year of Chanel grew by 23 percent.” He added, “I think it’s a testament to the quality of her collection, to her creativity.”
A painting of Kate Middleton by British-Zambian artist Hannah Uzor appears on the cover of the new issue of Tatler. The Daily Mail pulled some negative social media responses to the portrait, which the Princess of Wales did not sit for as she’s undergoing cancer treatments.
New York City is introducing a toll of $15 to try to reduce the number of cars entering Manhattan. Vanity Fair has a story about how people who summer in the Hamptons feel about it: “One woman who splits her time between her Gramercy Park apartment and Amagansett house has her ‘status greens’ to consider in her commute. ‘I wish I could drive out there Memorial Day and stay until Labor Day, but this ain’t 2020 anymore,’ she says. ‘I really can’t bring all my CSA produce back into town on The Jitney [the bus that goes from Manhattan to the Hamptons] — I’d need to buy a second seat.’”
What have your favorite looks on the Cannes red carpet been? I loved Michelle Yeoh in Bottega Veneta and Anja Rubik in Saint Laurent.
Back Row is taking the rest of the week off for Memorial Day weekend and will return to its regular posting schedule next week. I wish you all a wonderful holiday weekend.
This was such a fun read! 10 out of 10 would read a book in this vein.
Loved this... I started buying vintage in the nineties, because it was so fucking cool, unique and hugely affordable, even to a teen! The hunt for those gems is so exciting and I'll never forget the day I found a completely unexpected vintage shop in a tiny Welsh town, in which I got a 1940's cinched-waist coat and a 1940's black crepe dress for £40/£20 respectively. I still treasure them both. I wore a 1960's silver lurex mini-dress and matching jacket to my school prom, which I'd picked up for about £10 and got married in a 1930's wedding dress I'd bought for £40 in my twenties... I bought it for a new Burlesque routine, but it was too nice to add rip-strips to, so I kept it and sure enough... one day I got married in it! Still love second-hand today and spend way too much finding preloved Vivienne Westwood online : )