In a year characterized by iconic closet sales from some of fashion’s most influential characters (there was Chloë Sevigny, Kate Moss, and Veronica Webb among others), the upcoming auction of Mouna Ayoub’s ’90s Chanel Haute Couture collection may trump them all. Beginning on November 20, Maurice Auction, in partnership with Kerry Taylor, will be offering 252 lots of Chanel haute couture from some of Karl Lagerfeld’s most memorable collections. Meaning, if you visited “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty” at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art earlier this year and wished it was a shoppable event, your prayers have been answered.
It was the 1990s when Ayoub, whose couture collection has been rumored to include more than 10,000 pieces, first purchased a Chanel look, and for the record, she always buys the full look and rarely makes alterations to the design that was presented on the runway. “[The first Chanel piece I ever bought] is a dress suit with a jacket that has sable around the neckline,” she says on a Zoom call from Paris where she is finalizing details for the auction. “It was very modern. And I have to admit at the time I was very young and I was very impressed by the supermodels, it was shown in Vogue and in many magazines, and I just loved the look of it.” The outfit, from the fall 1990 collection, features a bias-cut dress in black wool crepe with a ruched ivory satin neckline, and a matching jacket, trimmed with a rich brown sable collar and fastened with a white silk camellia flower—along with two gilded buttons. It is one of the first items in the catalog.
Suits were in fact some of her earliest fashion purchases. “When I was young, I was a tomboy, but my mother was very fond of suits,” Ayoub recalls. “She had a seamstress in Beirut and she used to buy fabric and together they would create the most fabulous suits; so I grew up thinking that suits were the thing to wear, and I couldn’t imagine myself wearing a dress because I was a tomboy. That’s why when I started ordering [couture], I started with suits.” Her introduction to couture was a “simple white suit” from Jean-Louis Scherrer that she wore at her wedding.
“When I came into the scene, which was in the ’80s, there was a lot of talk that haute couture was dying, so I kind of panicked and said ‘that cannot be!’” Ayoub remembers. “I started making my own crusade for haute couture, and sometimes I would buy a whole collection just because I loved it, but also because I saw there was a lot of work put into it, a lot of creation.”
As such, many of the pieces in the auction have never been worn and have spent the last 30 years in museum-quality storage. Ayoub’s decision to sell her collection is two-fold. First and most importantly, part of the proceeds from the sale will go to the Fondation des Femmes, an organization that raises money to fight for women’s rights issues and for young victims of domestic violence in France. The second reason is to make space in her closet for new acquisitions.
“I am selling because most of those pieces don’t fit me anymore. I’ve set aside all the pieces from when I was in my 20s, 30s, and 40s and I’ve kept everything [I bought] from when I was in my 50s until now—and I am 66 years old,” she says. “Because I have kept them for so long without having the chance to wear most of them—I was married then and I wasn’t allowed to wear short dresses, or dresses with no sleeves and things like that—they’re still brand new and it’s about time for somebody else to enjoy and wear them.”
After her highly-publicized divorce from a high-profile Saudi businessman in1996, Ayoub was finally able to wear the things she wanted to. Like the famed “Coromandel” dress from the fall 1996 collection—a version of this dress was featured in the recent Met exhibition—which she wore soon after becoming single again; or a divine gold dress with all-over embroidery from 1996 which finally saw its day in the sun on a recent Cannes red carpet. Both are part of this auction.
“I used to buy everything that was wearable, and thinking I will have to wear them at this occasion or that occasion,” Ayoub explained. “Now I buy the most striking pieces where there is the most work, the most métiers d’art-embroidery and feathers.” She is still a loyal client at Chanel (“I love what Virginie [Viard] does,” she says), but has since added a few new names to her collection. “I love what they do at Dior, I think Maria Grazia [Chiuri] is very talented, and now I have a new love which is Kim Jones at Fendi—I’ve just ordered two dresses and I’m waiting for them to be delivered.” She continued, “I am totally crazy about Schiaparelli; the last piece I bought is like a giant volcano coming out of your bust with lots of stones. Now I buy the most spectacular pieces because I love them, I love the work behind them and what they represent. If you look at my closet, all you’ll find are masterpieces.”
