Fashion History for Sale! Mouna Ayoub Is Selling Her 126-Piece Dior Haute Couture Collection

By the end of day on January 29th, Mouna Ayoub, the Lebanese businesswoman, real estate titan, and major, major haute couture client , will have some 126 fewer pieces (from full looks to bijoux) in her sizable collection, all of it Christian Dior. Ayoub is auctioning them off at Dior Masterpieces with Kerry Taylor Auctions in collaboration with Maurice Auction at a sale at Le Hotel Bristol in Paris. Let’s just say, importance-wise, this is like having fashion history flash right before your eyes; not just what Ayoub bought, but the story of the house of Dior itself, with her having ordered across the Marc Bohan, Gianfranco Ferré, John Galliano, Raf Simons, and Maria Grazia Chiuri eras. There’s everything from a 1985 Bohan tulle and sequin ballgown (lot 72, estimate 4,000-6,000 euros) to a lamé cloque Chiuri dress from 2022 (lot 1, estimate 6,000-10,000 euros), taking in along the way Ferré’s architectural rigor (a 1989 bead organza gown affixed with a lily of the valley corsage; lot 59, 5,000-7,000 euros), Galliano’s theatrical, push-the-envelope romanticism (including a cire metallic evening coat lined in sequins from his famed The Matrix collection of 1999, lot 30, 10,000-15,000 euros), and Raf Simons’s conceptualism, perhaps most exquisitely in the form of lot 5, a gilt embroidered 18 th century redingote from 2014, its opulence in stark contrast to the minimalist top and pants for underneath, and estimated at 12,000-15,000 euros. Still, despite the incredible iconicity of much that is going on sale, Ayoub is ready to let it all go. “My collection has been with me for 40 years, and it’s time for it to move to a new horizon, to make others as happy as it made me,” she says. “It has served its purpose; it’s not so much the pleasure of wearing them as much as [it is] the pleasure to live the experience of ordering them.” If some of us derive more out of the getting ready to go out at night than the going out itself (guilty as charged, here, on that one) then for Ayoub, the process of bringing a couture look to life over weeks and months is really what lives with her. And for her, there was always something particularly magical about the experience of Dior.sprin “Interacting with all the people behind them: That has been the most pleasurable part of my experience of my Dior couture,” she says. “The directrice and the premiere...they listen to you, help you, and if you have a confidence problem about your shape, they give you a good feeling about yourself. They surround you with love. Even if the fittings themselves can be a little arduous.” Ayoub expands on that, laughing, “I have a difficult approach to dresses; it’s not just the owning, I want the full experience of all the fittings. I am the most annoying customer! I love to have as many [fittings] as possible. I want something to be perfect, and because I am not a model, I have...

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