Mouna Ayoub is widely acknowledged as one of the biggest if not the biggest haute couture client in the world. Haute couture looks are made bespoke by a handful of Parisian houses and can cost anywhere between $10,000 and $300,000 apiece. Her collection, she estimates, totals more than 1,000 made-to-order pieces and spans some 45 years of fashion history.
Married to Saudi billionaire Nasser Al-Rashid in 1979 after she met him while working as a waitress in Paris, hers was a rags-to-riches story (they later divorced in 1996). Until recently, hoarding fashion was Ayoub’s greatest passion. Lately, however, she has started putting some of her treasures up for sale.
Next week, following sales of pieces from her collection by Jean Paul Gaultier and Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel, 130 of her Christian Dior pieces are up for auction. The sale will take place at the Hôtel Le Bristol in Paris, led by London-based specialist Kerry Taylor and Paris-based Maurice Auctions.
Rich with pieces by former Dior artistic director John Galliano, the lots include key looks from his 1997 debut and six outfits from his controversial spring/summer 2000 “Homeless” haute couture, a show that prompted protests outside Dior’s headquarters and was famously parodied in the film Zoolander. It is Ayoub’s favourite collection.
Alexander Fury: What motivated you to sell these pieces now?
Mouna Ayoub: Because these clothes have been with me for so long. Some I have never worn. It’s my way of sharing the beauties with a generation that was not able to experience any of these designers. They served their purpose with me. It’s about time they move to another owner, whether it’s a museum, a private individual or the house itself and make other people happy.
Another reason is because none of my kids want to look after my collection. They’re all boys, and my daughter has absolutely no interest in fashion. She’s [an academic] at Oxford, specialising in [the] history [of science] in Mesopotamia.
Ancient Mesopotamia had a big fashion moment.
It was big — especially the head covers. But she has no interest, and my boys say: “No, Mom, we don’t want to look after your collection. We will feel guilty not doing it as well as you do it.”
How do you care for your pieces?
I have to say that I take very good care of my clothes. I’m particular. I am terrified of moths. It makes me very sad when I see a couture dress not well taken care of, though I’m a little bit sloppy when it comes to paperwork. My kids call my dresses my dolls. “Go look after your dolls, Mommy.”
Do you have them in your home or storage facilities?
Only the most recent ones are in my apartment in Monaco. The other ones I keep in a facility, about three and a half hours from Paris. I keep my clothes in museum boxes with silk paper inside. I never hang them. And that’s why they all look brand-new. The [sale] prices justify this extra care because they went up, quite substantially.
I wondered about your relationship with Dior: what was special about it and what drew you to the clothes?
My mother was crazy about the New Look. She loved the dresses that Mr Dior created.
Was your family wealthy?
No. We were a very middle-class family in Beirut. We didn’t have money to buy a car, let alone couture. But my mother had a seamstress and would take me to her fittings. I would see how complicated it was to make a New Look dress. That’s why I started my collecting with Dior.
Because Dior was this mythical thing?
It reminds me of my mother. And I loved him as a designer. He died the year I was born, but my mother was in love with his designs. I love the name.
Did you see these clothes as a collection or a curation, or were they always bought with the intention of wearing them?
I never wanted them to be made for me. I always wanted the original. Because I was pregnant all the time — so I didn’t like when the dress was made for me. When I first started buying couture in the 1980s, couture was having a hard time. I wanted, in a way, to save it from disappearing. I was buying and talking to all the princesses in Saudi Arabia about coming to buy too.
You were the crisis PR for couture?
I was. But there are not many ladies who buy couture because of what couture represents. Me and maybe one other lady in America buy just for the beauty of it and to preserve it and to encourage it. There’s a lot of money invested in couture and there’s a lot of rich people who buy couture because they can afford it. But not for the art of couture itself.
Jean Paul Gaultier once said that everyone respected you as a client, because you didn’t change the designs.
Who am I to change anything? The funny thing is that some ladies who go and order couture, think they have to do that because it’s couture. They don’t have the understanding that this is a piece that was artistically created. I cannot understand how they go into a couture salon and they want to change a dress. It makes me suffer.
What couture do you buy today?
I have a lot of pieces from Armani. Real clothes. Schiaparelli too. I still buy Chanel. I still buy Dior. Schiaparelli, Chanel and Dior — they’re the top, absolutely the top in craft.
Are you excited by the new designers going into Dior and Chanel and the forthcoming couture season?
I have seen the prêt-à-porter and I was very impressed by Matthieu Blazy [at Chanel]. I saw that [Dior creative director] Jonathan Anderson has a lot of talent, but his ideas are everywhere. We need to give him a little bit of time, I think. I’m excited to see what he will do in couture.
Do you have a preference as to where pieces go?
I prefer a museum environment because I know they will take good care. I have visited so many museums, and I have seen how they keep clothes. It’s marvellous. Prêt-à-porter, you can keep any way you want, but couture pieces are really artistic pieces.
Items in the sales of your Chanel and Gaultier couture pieces both broke world records: did that surprise you?
They were a big surprise. I knew they were valuable, but I didn’t realise they are that valuable. But that tells you that there is an appreciation, in this world, for the craftsmanship of couture.
Kim Kardashian purchased pieces from those sales. What do you think of that?
That she has good taste.
The ‘Dior Masterpieces: The Mouna Ayoub Haute Couture Collection’ auction takes place on January 29
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