Hubert de Givenchy’s Fine Arts and Decorative Arts collection at auction
French fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy at the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague on November 23, 2016 during a retrospective of the fashion designer’s work at the To Audrey With Love exhibition. More than 1,200 lots of works of art and decorative arts from its two houses will be auctioned via Christie’s Paris in June.
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The fine and decorative art collection of the late French fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy will be auctioned via Christie’s in June.
More than 1,200 lots, including French and European furniture, sculptures, Old Master paintings, and modern and contemporary works of art, will be sold in a series of live, online auctions from July 14 to June 23.
“Through this sale, we are very happy to be able to celebrate the exceptional taste of Hubert de Givenchy and his lifelong companion Philippe Venet,” the Givenchy family said in a statement via Christie’s. “We wish to share the elegance and the aesthetic heritage that they bequeathed to us in order to inscribe their vision in the history of art and interior decoration in a universal way.
Hubert de Givenchy (1927-2018) moved to Paris at age 17 to study at the Beaux-Arts and later apprenticed to some of the most successful fashion designers of the time. He opened his own fashion house in 1952 and instantly rose to fame. He went on to design iconic wardrobes for high profile clients such as actress Audrey Hepburn, US First Lady Jacquline Kennedy and horticulturist Bunny Mellon.
De Givenchy retired from styling in 1995 after selling his eponymous label to LVMH in 1989. He died in 2018 aged 91. His lifelong companion, Philippe Venet, also a fashion designer, died last year. Venet’s collection of nearly 270 lots of post-war and contemporary art, furniture and decorative arts, housed in his Parisian pied-à-terre, sold for 12.8 million euros (14 .6 million dollars) at Christie’s Paris last September.
Most of the lots offered for sale came from two of Givenchy’s houses, Hotel d’Orrouer in Paris and Chateau du Jonchet in the Loire Valley in central France, Christie’s said.
The auction house has yet to release highlights and full content of the sale. Selected items will be the subject of a worldwide traveling exhibition, from Palm Beach, Florida, from March 5 to 26, to New York from April 8 to 13 and to Hong Kong from May 23 to 26 before returning to Paris before the auction.