- - A Dior Gown By John Galliano Fetches Hundreds of Thousands at Auction

Camille FreestoneJanuary 30, 2026 at 12:24 AM

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John Galliano’s Dior Is A Favorite At Auction Stephane Cardinale - Corbis

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At a live auction yesterday in Paris, French-Lebanese businesswoman and socialite Mouna Ayoub sold 126 pieces of Dior Haute Couture. Her private collection is essentially a retrospective of the well-known French fashion house’s history—at least it is from 1984 to 2022. There are pieces from the stewardship of Marc Bohan, Gianfranco Ferré, John Galliano, Raf Simons, and Maria Grazia Chiuri. Sales for Maurice Auction’s “Dior Masterpieces” drastically outperformed estimates, in some cases, by over 1,000 per cent. And there’s a throughline to the results: the only items that fetched over 100,000 euros—and there were 18 of them—were from John Galliano’s time at the helm.

Lot 39: a dress from Galliano’s Spring 2000 couture collection from Dior JEAN-PIERRE MULLER

The highest bid came from Lot 39: a painted silk evening gown from Galliano’s controversial “Clochards” or “Homeless” Spring 2000 couture collection. The dress features a twisted bodice of beige taffeta and pink brocade made to look like trash bags with boning bursting from the hemline like a misshapen umbrella and black “tape” stitching at the seams. It went for 663,000 euros. In fact, the top three highest performing pieces were all from that collection, including Lot 43, a distressed black coat and trouser set sold for 624,000 euros, and Lot 40, a metallic one-shouldered evening dress littered with found objects for 546,000 euros. Sorted by price, Raf Simons was the next designer to pop up 19 items in with Lot 5, an embellished evening coat from Fall 2014 that went for 91,000 euros

A look from Dior’s Spring 2000 couture collection from Ayoub’s personal collection that was up for sale JEAN-PIERRE MULLER

The next highest performers came from Galliano’s “Maasai” collection from Spring 1997, his “Mata Hari” collection from Fall 1997, and the “Diorient Express” collection from Fall 1998. Galliano is no doubt one of the greatest designers of all time. But he was also controversial: the themes for his collections were often culturally insensitive, which only increased his renown.

Collections of archival fashion with this sort of illustrious provenance, from highly lauded designers in their periods of rupture, are known to fetch high price tags on the secondhand market. Other highly desirable areas include Lee McQueen’s late 1990s and early 2000s collections for Alexander McQueen and Mrs. Prada’s initial “ugly chic” prints, also from the late 1990s. And the desire is increasing as this marketplace gains visibility and respect.

The second highest performing lot of the sale was a distressed set from Galliano’s Spring 2000 couture collection from Dior JEAN-PIERRE MULLER

For Ayoub, Galliano holds a special place. In a statement via Maurice Auction about her Dior collection and the house’s various couturiers, she said: “They were all very different; Bohan’s clothes were elegant and feminine, and as a young woman, they made me feel confident when I wore them. Ferré’s designs were opulent, glamorous, feminine, and beautifully structured, but Galliano was undoubtedly my favorite. He freed me from all the classic looks I had worn until then. His clothes embodied the freedom I so desperately needed and craved after my divorce. They represented the outward expression I needed after years of seclusion.”

A Dior couture coat from Fall 2014 by Raf Simons Fairchild Archive

The collector, who married the billionaire Saudi businessman Nasser Ibrahim Al-Rashid in 1979—and divorced him in 1997—shops for couture with the ardor most of us would reserve for a local sale rack. Commonly thought of as a purveyor of this increasingly intimate world of elite craft, she is known to leave runway designs untouched instead of altering them to her tastes as is allowed in the world of couture. In 2023, she hosted a similar sale for her collection of Chanel couture specifically. The highest bid for that was for a couture evening coat from Spring 1996 embroidered to resemble the Coromandel screens favored by Gabrielle Chanel. It fetched 312,000 euros. Three years later, she’s more than doubled that number with this Dior auction—the added elusive subversion from Galliano probably didn’t hurt either.

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”