The Sotheby's auction house was chosen by the administration of the Karl Lagerfeld Estate to sell its collections garnishing its residences in Paris - the apartment at 17 Quai Voltaire (Paris 7th) -, in Louveciennes - an opulent house surrounded by a large park - Provence and Monaco where he had an apartment in which he did not go much, preferring Saint-Tropez.
The inventory (planned to last two months) will be followed by an auction of the collection in Monaco.
This inaugural sale will take place in the second half of 2021 and will underline the couturier's strong link with the Principality and the princely family.
It will be followed by other dispersions in Paris, Charpentier gallery.
“
It is with great pride that our teams heard the news.
The sale will pay tribute to this immense designer, a key figure in fashion and the arts,
”said Pierre Mothes, vice-president of Sotheby's France.
This sale is made to cover a debt of 32 million euros that Bercy is claiming.
The estimate of the assets of the famous couturier who died on February 19, 2019, furniture and real estate, would represent half of the debt.
Hence the interest of selling in a large international house to make it an event and boost prices with mediatization and marketing orchestrated to measure.
Karl Lagerfeld has always been a curious lover of beautiful things.
All his life he accumulated objects out of horror of the void with a certain bulimia, before reselling them.
Often to pay off tax debts such as the Château de Penhouët in Grand-Champ in Morbihan.
In 1991, the couturier had sold at Sotheby's his collection of Memphis furniture for which he was one of the first to be interested, long before the singer David Bowie.
The 133 lots, including the famous boxing ring-shaped bed, Tawayara, by Masanori Umeda, for 1.5 million francs.
In 2000, it was to Christie's that he entrusted his 18th century collection of works bought at high prices from major Parisian antique dealers and which totaled 145 million francs in Monaco.
Finally, he returned in 2003 to Sotheby's to disperse in Paris, the Art Deco content of his house in Biarritz and his apartments in Monaco which totaled 7 million euros, doubling the estimated estimate.
It was the latter who took it to disperse what remains.
The whole promises to be just as important.
All the more so since he would have also accumulated his latest finds in a huge warehouse, it is said, of 2,000 m2.
Since these sales, Karl Lagerfeld had continued to tirelessly buy new objects, especially design, with the eye of the always seasoned collector, without looking if he was really doing good business ...