October 21, 2008

Grande dame Rosamond Bernier opens up her vintage couture closet

A connoisseur of the finest of arts and highest of cultures, New York socialite Rosamond Bernier has a wardrobe that befits her status as an international grande dame. For the first time ever, she will be opening up that legendary wardrobe for a sale on Yoox.com, the highlight of which is Bernier’s haute couture water-print taffeta ball gown designed in 1959 by Yves Saint Laurent for Christian Dior, with its matching evening bag—a rare example from Saint Laurent’s brief reign at Dior, which gave him his entrée into the realm of Parisian high fashion.
Bernier has given more than 200 lectures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and many of her talks were about artists whom she counted among her friends: Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, Joan Miró, Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti.
Rather than wearing a little black dress for the lectures, she liked to go all out with her high fashion ensembles. “I thought of it as a performance," explains Bernier. Many of those couture dresses remained ‘sleeping beauties‘in her closet until Federico Marchetti of online retailer Yoox.com came along and convinced her to put them up for auction.
Yoox will create a dedicated area featuring excerpts from her lectures, photographs from her personal collection, and a video interview, to establish the biographical context for the selection of vintage pieces available for sale.
Bernier worked for Paris Vogue after World War II before co-founding L’Oeil, a prestigious art magazine of the era. She has lived in New York for nearly 40 years now with her husband John Russell, a former New York Times art critic. She has been decorated for her contributions to culture, awarded the Legion of Honor and the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres in France, and the Cross of the Order of Isabel la Catolica, bestowed by King Juan Carlos of Spain.
On Yoox.com Rosamond Bernier will comment on each featured item from her wardrobe, sharing her recollections of how and when she acquired it and the noteworthy occasions on which she wore it.
The sale is geared toward serious private collectors and museums. It will also feature a Zandra Rhodes dress from the early 1970’s, a Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel red wool bouclé suit from the early 1980’s and a Kenneth Jay Lane leaf necklace, circa 1970.
The sale starts this Thursday October 23 at around 9 a.m., EST at Yoox.com.

October 21, 2008 in SALES/EVENTS | Permalink

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