Neiman Marcus is selling a piece of history by offering volumes of Jacques Fath’s sketches and three couture dresses for $3.5 million in its holiday catalogue, but how those items got there is a story in itself.
Fath died in 1954, and his widow, Genevieve, closed the house two years later, but held onto 3,488 sketches spanning from 1948 to 1956. When she was in her 90s, she turned them over to a family friend. About 10 years ago, Rita Watnik, owner of Lily et Cie, a vintage store in Beverly Hills, acquired the 26 Italian leather-bound books containing the sketches. After he had been diagnosed with leukemia, Fath, anticipating a horrible death, drew enough sketches to carry the line for two years after his death, Watnik said. The designer was in the habit of drawing the same dress from five different angles, she added.
Valerie Steele, director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, said, “At the end of the Forties and into the Fifties, Fath was the heir to Dior.
“Fath was a very interesting and intriguing person. His clothes were very beautiful and glamorous and he himself was very beautiful and glamorous,” she said. “To me, he was in a way like Thierry Mugler — very theatrical, very femme fatale and one of the designers with a cut-short story.”
Watnik, who is widely known for her vintage finds and celebrity clientele such as Karl Lagerfeld, Demi Moore, Renée Zellweger and Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, said she received a $4.1 million offer for the Fath memorabilia not too long ago. But she declined because the interested party, whom she declined to name, wanted to take apart the collection. “I thought it would be a great travesty. I would rather take way less money and make sure the buyer keeps the collection together,” Watnik said.
The volumes were believed to have been lost for many years and subsequently were not featured in the “Jacques Fath Les Annes 50” exhibition that was held at the Palais Galliera in 1993, she said.
Unlike some of his peers, Fath kept meticulous archives of his sketches and illustrations, instead of giving them to clients who purchased the dress as was the norm at that time, Watnik said.
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The Paris-based designer built a following among Greta Garbo and American sirens such as Rita Hayworth and Ava Gardner.
He also befriended Stanley Marcus after receiving the Neiman Marcus award from him in 1949 — a footnote that appealed to Watnik when mulling over whether to offer the Fath sketches to the retailer. Fath later invited Marcus to visit him and his wife at Chateau de Corbeville outside of Paris. Despite being in the midst of designing his fall collection, he welcomed the legendary retailer with a square dance, where Fath and guests such as Pierre Balmain and Jean Desses turned out in head-to-toe cowboy attire. The hoedown also gave Marcus the chance to meet Fath’s international clients.
When Neiman Marcus asked Watnik for a proposal for its holiday catalogue, the Beverly Hills retailer said she liked the idea of putting up the Fath archives, due in part to the designer’s link to the company. Both parties have teamed up before and the retailer once approached Watnik about opening a Lily et Cie in-store shop, but she declined. Asked if it was difficult to decide to part with it, Watnik said: “Nothing is difficult to let go of if you know the conditions under which you are selling them are correct and good.”
A buyer might be drawn by the tax deduction incentive. “If you agree to loan it to a museum for 10 percent of any given year for 10 years, you get a tax deduction at the end of the 10 years for the full value. When you do that, the institution is responsible for conservation. The likelihood is they really won’t use them [due to limited gallery space]. There are also a load of economic opportunities in terms of publishing and things like that,” said Watnik.
But the $3.5 million price tag is hefty enough to make some pause. Steele, for one, will be keeping her eyes peeled to see who buys what Watnik described as “nice for a starter kit.”
But Watnik isn’t bidding adieu to all things Fath. She still owns 100 pieces of the designer’s fashion-related art, including textiles he created for scarves to give to customers.