“I thought it was either that art is too expensive and fashion is too cheap,” says Gouzer, “or that vintage couture should be seen differently, because some of these designers have an equally important influence on the cultural landscape [as] artists, and some of them are fantastic.”
The idea of The Impossible Couture Collection came to his head then, and he proposed it to Brant, whom he’d met in passing while they were both working at Sotheby’s earlier in their careers. Brant jumped on board to curate the lots.
The original concept was to put together an auction featuring the work of the most prominent designers in the past four or five decades. And they hadn’t planned to put together a runway show.
“But one thing led to another,” says Gouzer. The fashion crowd responds well to glitz and glamour, and a 50-ish person runway show at a mansion is the kind of catnip big spenders respond well to.
“We had some conversations with some consignors who were saying those dresses need to be seen in movement,” Gouzer says, “and movement was the dimension, the fourth dimension, that you’re missing with vintage if you only see them on static models.”
Brant’s curation includes two of the arguably most recognizable pieces in fashion history.
The first comes from Naomi Campbell, his godmother, and is a complete ensemble by Alexander McQueen for his final runway show before his death in 2010. The look is composed of a dress and footwear—the emblematic McQueen Armadillo shoes made famous in part by Lady Gaga—that McQueen presented in 2009 for his spring-summer 2010 show titled Plato’s Atlantis. It will be auctioned in full, for an estimated value of $600,000 to $1,000,000.
