Saturday@Phillips Presents: Tastemaker Hamish Bowles

by pmaxwell, 6 October 2008

Saturday@Phillips Auction

Reception: October 21, 2008 6-9pm
Phillips de Pury & Co.
450 West 15th St NY, NY 10011

Auction: October 25, 2008 Noon

Hamish Bowles is the European Editor-at-Large for Vogue and the Editor-in-Chief of Vogue Living and is recognized as one of the most respected authorities on the worlds of fashion and interior design. “My first real couture purchase, made at the age of 13 or so, was a Cristobal Balenciaga day suit, ca. 1964. It was made from a French navy wool bouclé with buttons securing the front skirt flap that lined up with those on the jacket. It had been donated by a lady of title, to the annual fête of the Sadler’s Wells Ballet Company, and I spent a full week’s pocket money on it: 50 English pence! I was wildly excited and still treasure it. Like so much of Balenciaga’s tailoring, it is a masterpiece of refined understatement. At the same event, there was an auction for a garnet velvet bolero jacket, embroidered like a matador’s and also by Balenciaga that was donated by Dame Margot Fonteyn. This dated from 1946. I vividly recall that it sold for 60 pounds—or 120 weeks’ pocket money. Alas, I hadn’t saved enough, and I didn’t get it. However, nearly thirty years later I found the same piece, unlabeled, in a Los Angeles vintage store. Everything comes to he who waits!”

Hamish Bowles

Lot 3 ETTORE SOTTSASS “Le Strutture Tremano table”
During its heyday, I thought the work of the Memphis Collective almost unspeakably ugly and deeply naff. I now recognize its perverse invention and actually have grown to rather like the sickening colors and absurd geometries, which at the time were coarsened by every second-rate magazine art director and vinyl record cover designer. I could live with this—perhaps as a plinth for something rather lovely and distantly antique as an aesthetic counterpoint?

Lot 4 MAISON JANSEN Pair of armchairs
I like the ambassadorial chic of Jansen’s work during this period, when the house worked (and ultimately bankrupted itself) on the decor for the millennial celebrations of Persia‘s Peacock Throne. This Louis XVI style fauteuil is anonymously elegant and would work in so many environments.

Lot 7 JOHN DICKINSON “Y” table, model no. 118
I love the organic quality of Dickinson’s work and the troglodyte flavor of this table would set off more conventional pieces (like the Jansen chairs) very effectively.

Lot 43 TAKASHI MURAKAMI Monogram Multicolor—black
Marc Jacobs’­­ collaborations with some of the most significant artists of our time is in many ways the most potent since Schiaparelli conspired with Cocteau et al in the 1930s. Murakami’s playfully re-imagined Vuitton logo print is something I‘d like for my costume collection.

Lot 74 CANDIDA HÖFER Palacio Real Madrid V
Höfer’s sly, dissecting eye has transformed this imperial room, designed to awe, into a place that seems purely unnerving. I enjoy her unique take.

Lot 89 SLIM AARONS Elizabeth Bowen
Aarons was brilliant at evoking a sense of place, period and class. This portrait of a writer whose work I adore is elegiac in many ways. Bowen stands before Bowen’s Court, her romantic family home in Ireland. When she was compelled to sell it, the local farmer came ‘round and made cheery noises with his family. She sold it to him and he demolished it days later.

Lot 164 RONAN & ERWIN BOUROULLEC Three “Cloud” shelving systems for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
The Bouroullecs are brilliantly inventive and this is a piece of theirs I have always admired. I think it would be a strange and wonderful presence in a room.

Lot 199 JACK PIERSON New Palms
This image reminds me of treasured holidays in Tangier, Morocco as though one were sprawled out in a magical garden looking up into the palms.

Lot 437 LINE VAUTRIN Compact
Vautrin’s work has a strange poetry to it. I love her word games.

Lot 456 BAUHAUS Telephone
This is wildly stylish - something Garbo could have used in a grand hotel—and might encourage me to use a landline once in a while.