It's all about Yves in the €4m sale of the century
AUCTIONS: A view of salons from the private collection of late French fashion designer Yves Saint-Laurent
Wednesday November 11 2009
A billiard table, several giant chandeliers, and even pots and pans; items from Yves Saint Laurent's private country hideaway have gone on show ahead of the second instalment of this year's record-smashing YSL-Pierre Berge "sale of the century".
In all, 1,185 items go under the hammer at a giant four-day auction starting on November 17 that winds up with the sale of the late fashion designer's S-class Mercedes-Benz and Hermes crocodile leather luggage.
The sale of items that belonged to the late designer and his partner is expected to raise up to €4m at Christie's France.
The auction of his art collection in February raised a record €342.5m. Although there are no important art works in this sale, the auction house is expecting considerable interest.
Pierre Berge, partner of Saint Laurent, opted to sell the collection amassed over a lifetime after Saint Laurent's death in June 2008, and plans to offer the entire proceeds of this month's sale and some of the money raised in the first auction to fight AIDS.
Intimacy
Lots at the auction come mainly from the couple's three-storey 1874 Chateau Gabriel on the Normandy coast -- a rambling place in vast grounds. They bought it in the 1980s and redecorated in to evoke Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time and Luchino Visconti's final film The Innocent.
"All of this belonged to Saint Laurent and Berge, it was part of their intimacy, their universe," Jonathan Rendell, deputy head of Christie's America, said.
Francois de Ricqles, the deputy president of Christie's France, said: "This auction is totally unlike the first There are no masterpieces this time, we're not expecting to break market records."
jlast@herald.ie
- Jane Last
