Fashionphiles had a heyday this week courtesy of London-based Kerry Taylor Auctions. The house’s Passion for Fashion sale on Tuesday morning had it all—gowns, bathing suits, accessories, and ephemera, including a coveted cache of drawings by the visionary Alexander McQueen, the progenitor of this century’s most sensational museum show.
Insane steals and superstar finds abounded across the auction’s 436 lots. Eagle-eyed shoppers scooped treasures like a maximalist Prada shell necklace, a quilted Chanel handbag, and a faux fur Vivienne Westwood jacket all for mere triple digits. Upon hammering at £65,000 ($82,500), a sumptuous satin jacket from Gabriel Chanel’s early days became the event’s most expensive item. But, its most recognizable came in close second—John Galliano’s controversial Dior newspaper dress, favored by fictional fashionista Carrie Bradshaw, which sold for £55,000 ($69,800).
Lot 125. Photo: Kerry Taylor Auctions.
Somewhere between those two poles, the lot containing the McQueen drawings drew in £20,000 ($25,400), another relative bargain, considering a smaller collection hammered at $50,000 during a 2020 RR Auctions sale.
The provenance on this week’s Lot 125 states it cropped up on the market courtesy of a close family member whom McQueen originally gave it to. The disparate archive centers on 54 loose pencil and biro drawings, including 11 menswear designs McQueen most likely made as a Central Saint Martins student between 1991 and 1992, and 43 womenswear sketches covering some of his most memorable motifs of that same decade, like a spiked leather bodice and a bridal gown with ropes of pearls. Fifteen more xeroxed menswear and women’s wear sketches round out that part of the trove.
Drawings and photos. Photo: Kerry Taylor Auctions.
Art has long separated itself from fashion, and all other crafts, on that grounds that it’s not beholden to function. McQueen truly created clothes that became art. Yet, it was only in the lifelong refuge of his sketchbook, liberated from classical physics, that so many of those inventive garments could take shape. In 1990, when McQueen went to ask Bobby Hillson, the head of CSM’s MFA fashion program, for a job as a cutter, Hilson told him to come back the next day with drawings—which earned him enrollment.
McQueen graduated and founded his eponymous line in 1992. Four years later, he went to head up French house Givenchy, where he worked until 2001. “I treated Givenchy badly,” McQueen himself once said. “It was just money to me.” Nonetheless, McQueen won British Designer of the Year for his efforts at Givenchy in 1996, 1997, and 2001.
McQueen drawings from the cache. Photo: Kerry Taylor Auctions.
Lot 125 offered a particularly intimate window into this pivotal period of McQueen’s career. In addition to its 69 drawings, the assortment also offered one lucky anonymous buyer the entire studio book for the Givenchy haute couture Spring-Summer 2001 World Tour collection. Inside, material swatches and inspiration images punctuate xerox-ed designs and sketches. Although only 34 looks made it down the runway, 47 appear in this book, offering yet another powerful insight into how McQueen winnowed down his work. Polaroids of models wearing toiles also appear, alongside several personal photos taken by the legend himself on vacatios and at a Galiano fashion show.
As whoever acquired these treasures likely knows, it’s almost enough to make you feel like you were actually there, too.