Interview

From Hamish Bowles’s couture collection, from left: patchwork satin domino, Galanos, 1958; orange faille evening dress, Givenchy, 1960; chopped-green ostrich-feather evening dress, Scaasi, 1959; (reflected in mirror) embroidered point-d’esprit jacket and feather-trimmed skirt, Christian Lacroix, 1992; apricot faille Trapeze line evening dress, Yves Saint Laurent for Christian Dior, 1958; patchwork skirt and printed organza blouse and scarf, Yves Saint Laurent, 1969; Cerise faille evening dress, Christian Dior, 1956; chiffon dress over satin slip with matching cape, Mainbocher, 1932. Bottom center: embroidered moiré evening dress and satin pants, Emanuel Ungaro, 1984.

Hamish Bowles is not of the opinion that fashion is best appreciated on a short-term memory. For more than 30 years, the British style maharishi and longtime European editor at large at American Vogue has been amassing one of the richest andrarest collections of couture on the planet. He started as a child in London, picking up costume pieces from thrift stores—a compulsion that quickly turned into pure obsession by the time he studied fashion at Central Saint Martins College. His various jobs at top-tier fashion magazines hasn’t helped things either. His trove ranges from the 1850s all the way to last season, with heavy doses of Balenciaga, Galanos, Dior, Yves Saint Laurent, and a number of rare-bird couturiers you’ve probably never heard of. Today, a vast majority of Bowles’s boon—upward of 2,000 pieces—is housed in a storage unit in Long Island City, New York, where the collector can be found giddily digging through racks ofMontanas, Molyneuxs, and Malandrinos, wearing white gloves and gasping in delight at his own finds. He’s currently at work organizing, documenting, and cataloging the entire collection, with plans to one day create his own foundation. In the meantime, Bowles remains ever busy curating costume shows in his mind. Designer and amateur couture collector Narciso Rodriguez stopped by the storage unit to get a frock tour like no other.

Narciso Rodriguez: That was an inspiring afternoon.

Hamish Bowles: That’s nice to hear. It’s so exciting, having a designer come to see the collection. What was intriguing for me was when you looked at something like that purple gazar on the ’67 Givenchy dress—not the overdress, which is the statement, just the infrastructure. I could see you working it out in your mind.

NR: It’s just meticulous. It’s so clean and well thought out. It was not meant to be seen, ever.

HB: The infrastructures of so many of those clothes are extraordinary. It’s not just mid-century couture, which you imagine is going to have some unbelievable armature within it to create its shape and silhouette. It’s even there in an ’80s Geoffrey Beene dress or a ’60s Galanos . . . the kind of dresses that women would buy off the peg in chic department stores across America. The construction and interior lives of those clothes is breathtaking.

NR: What’s the earliest piece in your collection?

HB: It’s a bodice. The label is Worth & Bobergh. [Otto] Bobergh was Charles Frederick Worth’s partner, but only for the first two years of Worth’s business, from, I believe, 1858 to 1860. Princess Metternich, who was the wife of the Austrian ambassador to Napoleon III’s court, soon discovered Worth. She was a woman of hideous aspect, but she was extraordinarily chic, and her clothes
attracted the attention of Empress Eugénie. Worth then became Eugénie’s dressmaker, and in a sense, the official of court couture. I was thrilled to discover it. It’s not a particularly sensational piece in itself, but you could absolutely imagine it in one of those daguerreotype calling-card portraits of Princess Metternich. It really is a piece that is resonant of the history of couture, because Worth was the first couturier in the modern sense. Before that there were great dressmakers—Rose Bertin dressed Marie-Antoinette, and Leroy dressed Josephine, and then Palmyre was a great 1840s dressmaker. But in that period, women would go to choose their fabrics at the fabric supplier and then choose their trimming somewhere else and the dressmaker would put it all together with them. Worth went in with his vision and said, “I see you as a Renaissance princess in chartreuse velvet and purple neon damask, and that’s what you’re wearing.” So that is kind of the scintillating birth of couture. That’s the oldest piece I have, and I’m so excited to have it just for that resonance.

NR: What is the latest piece that you’ve collected?

HB: I have Tom Ford, Gucci, Saint Laurent, McQueen, and odd pieces that I’ve just acquired because I happened to have come across them and felt they have some historical resonance. A case in point that I’ll never forget is this Catherine Malandrino dress. After 9/11, at the first party that people actually felt that they could go to, all the women were wearing Catherine Malandrino’s American Flag dress.

NR: Oh, that’s great.

HB: It was such a defining moment. I just happened to come across one of those dresses in an Upper East Side thrift store recently. I acquired it because it encapsulated a very precise moment. Actually, I have some other patriotic dresses. I have a red, white, and blue piqué Fourth of July evening dress that Trigère made in the mid-’60s. Basically, I am acquiring things for the exhibition in my head. I am thinking, Well, this would be a great dialogue with that.