Are the living legends of the fashion industry following fashion legends of the past ? Has Pierre Bergé, partner of the deceased Yves Saint Laurent, set a trend for fashion designers by auctioning their entire art collection ?

It all started last month when the Yves Saint Laurant auction at Christies reached a staggering € 307.5 million. Only a few weeks later Sotheby’s auctioned off the Versace collection. Her to the results were above expectations and the predicted £ 2.8 million outcome eventual resulted in  £ 7.4 million.

It is now the Japanese fashion designer Kenzo Takada who wishes to down size and auction off his collection. Kenzo recently moved from a stately mansion in Paris to a smaller residence on the Seine River. His collection consists of over 1000 pieces, ranging from paintings, photographs, vases, sculptures and antique trinkets to Hopi Kachina dolls and bronze Buddhas.

The auction house Aguttes is still in the process to compiling the auction catalogue as Kenzo has difficulty determining which objects to keep and which to flog. The auction is planed to take place on 16 & 17 June.

In conclusion one might ask one self if there is an underlying reason for celebrity designers to auction their collections. Are the auction results of YSL and Versace the true motivation to cash in on ones collection ? Or will the auction merely be used as a marketing instrument in order to gain free publicity and to reposition ones fashion brand ?  Rest assured that the publicity machine will run at full throttle if the Kenzo collection would contain any of the still missing Qing dynasty bronze animal heads, of which two were claimed by the Chinese government during the YSL auction.