And...the Versace Atelier Dress

 

As the Caroline Charles dress we purchased gained global press for how much it earned, this dress came up for auction. For over 14 years, the Versace dress had been in a cupboard in Germany belonging to a collector of Versace gowns. Julien's brought it in from Germany and Livinio and I were asked if we wanted to attend the auction.   

 

26th June 2015. My husband and I really weren't ready to buy another dress so quickly after the last major purchase, but we had

a line of equity on our home that we could use for the second investment.

 

This dress was stunning.  

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I had never seen anything like it and the image of her wearing it was incredibly iconic. Diana first wore this dress in 1991 when photographed by Patrick Demarchelier. The photo was used on the cover of Harper's Bazaar six years later, a month after she died.   

 

On the day of the auction, I was nervous as Livinio and I once again set a budget limit we felt good about.  We sat in the back row with our daughter Ilan who came with us. We gave her the job of holding up the paddle for each bid. There was a bidder on the phone and slowly but surely it came down to just the two of us. The dress was quickly going up in value.  

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The bidder on the phone suddenly asked if the bid increment could be reduced and the auction house politely declined. We had one last bid as we reached our maximum budget. Livinio and I looked at each other and both agreed: one more go! We signaled Ilan and she put our paddle up. The phone bidder stopped…

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SOLD!! And......we owned the dress! 

 

We were ECSTATIC!!!  Especially when we found out we were bidding against Historic Royal Palaces.  

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And now?  The supreme responsibility of taking care of it.