Dear Shaded Viewers,
Impossible Couture
*Peter Brant Jr. opens his Gilded Age carriage house for one night, before twenty-three lots by Galliano, Alaïa, Schiaparelli, McQueen, and Saint Laurent go to auction.*
On Friday, September 11th, an intimate audience of editors, collectors, and familiar faces from art, fashion, and luxury will gather inside Peter Brant Jr.’s Gilded Age carriage house on New York’s Upper East Side. There will be no runway in the usual sense — just a single, intimate show, these exceptional pieces presented in movement and on the body, in the spirit of the great Paris couture presentations of the 1950s. A fitting frame for a collection that treats fashion less as costume than as sculpture.
This is The Impossible Couture Collection: twenty-three lots, curated by Peter Brant Jr. and brought to auction through Fair Warning, spanning five decades and as many houses — John Galliano, Azzedine Alaïa, Elsa Schiaparelli, Alexander McQueen, Yves Saint Laurent.
**The highlights**
The pieces likely to draw the most attention come from Naomi Campbell’s own archive: Alexander McQueen’s celebrated *Plato’s Atlantis* “Armadillo” ensemble, together with a pair of the legendary Armadillo shoes she wore for Fashion for Relief in 2010 — python-printed, curved, nearly architectural on the foot.
Beside them, Yves Saint Laurent’s 1965 Mondrian dress — the shift that turned a canvas into couture and remains, sixty years on, one of the most quoted silhouettes in fashion history.
And a run of rare Galliano — the Parrot Tulip gown from “Le Papillon et la Fleur,” a cutwork showpiece worn by Naomi Campbell herself, and the matador-inspired look from “Dolores del Rio” — alongside runway dresses from the personal archive of Jørgen Simonsen, the designer who worked directly at Galliano’s side.
**Further afield in the twenty-three**
Elsa Schiaparelli’s gold insect collar, from her 1938 “Pagan” collection —
Martin Margiela’s papier-mâché gilet, torn newsprint stitched into an Artisanal Line showpiece —
A Paco Rabanne dress built entirely of gold-linked plates, worn like armour —
And Sarah Burton’s honeycombed “Bees” ensemble for McQueen, alongside Alaïa’s hooded gown and sequined column dress. Each one, as the collection’s own framing has it, less a garment than a defining artistic object of its time — which feels exactly right.
**Key dates**
– **Friday, September 11** — Unveiling, by invitation
– **September 12–16** — Private viewing, by appointment
– **Thursday, September 17, 3PM** — Live auction, conducted by Jussi Pylkkänen, former Global President and principal auctioneer of Christie’s, broadcast globally through the Fair Warning app, by invitation only
*The Impossible Couture Collection is presented by Fair Warning.*
Later,
Diane
