
Under the Hammer
Get your bids in...
Some very collectable vintage Richard James is going under the hammer next week at Kerry Taylor Auctions in London.
Firstly (Lots 145 and 146), there are two embroidered silk-blend Nehru jackets, one in yellow (above) and one in blue (bottom), from the Spring/Summer '90 Cecil Beaton collection, which we showed at the Opera-Comique in Paris. Katherine Hamnett and Paul Smith were the other Brits there, we remember.
The chest and shoulder of the jackets are embroidered with a winding green silk rose-briar blooming with three-dimensional buds of pink organdie. Richard's inspiration came from the beflowered jacket Beaton wore to a fête champêtre he hosted at his country house, Ashcombe, in 1937, where he was famously photographed by Gordon Anthony (below).
The V&A holds the same jackets and exhibited them in its March '97 The Cutting Edge: Fifty Years of British Fashion exhibition.

And then (Lot 147) there are two intarsia knits (top) from 1990 or thereabouts, the blue one of which was inspired by a tea service that Salvador Dali designed in 1938 for Royal Crown Derby. Again, the V&A holds both pieces.
The Male Sale is at Kerry Taylor Auctions on Tuesday 14th October at 2pm.





