Paris Haute Couture Week is in full swing, in the meantime fashion industry reports highlight that there is an increase in vintage clothing sales, with consumers looking for quality pieces and luxury retailers offering vintage selections in dedicated spaces.
How can you reconcile these two things – Haute Couture and vintage shopping for desirable well-constructed pieces in excellent conditions? Well, checking out auctions such as the one currently on at Sotheby's in Paris, dedicated to the wardrobe of Claudia Cardinale.
The Italian actress and icon of style starred in iconic films such as Luchino Visconti's The Leopard, Federico Fellini's 8½ and Antonio Pietrangeli's The Magnificent Cuckold and the auction offers a selection of 130 couture and ready-to-wear pieces Cardinale donned on the set, at official events and in her day-to-day life.
The auction, taking place online until 9th July, features some gems from the late 1950s through to the early 1980s, by designers such as Emilio Schuberth, Roberto Capucci, Irene Galitzine, Barocco, Balestra, Nina Ricci, Boza Kosak,Sonia Rykiel and Ossie Clark. 
Sotheby's recommends to film and cinema fans a long gown in fuchsia organza embroidered with floral motifs by Livia, worn by Cardinale for her first appearance at Cannes Film Festival in 1961.
But there's more for cinema lovers, including a sheath dress covered in black sequins and trimmed with pink and blue flowers, by Nina Ricci (Haute Couture collection, Autumn-Winter 1963-1964), which the actress modelled at the 37th Academy Awards in Los Angeles in 1965 as a presenter alongside Steve McQueen. 
A palazzo pyjama suit by Irene Galitzine is instead similar to another one Cardinale wears in Blake Edwards' The Pink Panther; a leather coat fastened with multiple straps appears in the poster for A Fine Pair by Francesco Maselli (1968) and at the beginning of the movie when her character, Esmeralda, arrives in New York, but there's also a cocktail dress trimmed with black petals by Nina Ricci from Pietrangeli's The Magnificent Cuckold and a black swimsuit by Cole of California seen in Lost Command by Mark Robson (1965). 
Yet, to be honest, these are not the best pieces on offer. If you are a collector of vintage and Haute Couture you should try to get the Capucci pieces, while keeping an eye on the Nina Ricci ones, without forgetting some of the designs by Lancetti and Balestra (up to the early '70s), nor dismissing the pieces with no labels (especially those from the early '60s) and the Marucelli black dress (we don't see a lot of her designs around...). 
You can instead leave behind the Marina Lante Della Rovere designs as they are not very valuable (but if you're an American vintage dealer you could make money out of those ones as they are in good conditions and there is a demand in the US for vintage pieces, in fact, snatch only the two prairie dresses by this minor label, both from 1971). 
Capucci-wise Sotheby's reminds us that the actress was a client of the fashion designer, so the dresses were especially created for her or were taken from collection items and readapted. 
There are quite a few coats by Capucci that could become investments if you manage to get them, among them an orange gabardine coat with leather belt and a coat with embroidered rays of silver pearls, but there are also skirt suits, harem pants and a navy blue wool tunic with brick red jute shirt dress underneath.
One of the best pieces by Capucci is a shading mauve wool coat with matching dress from 1969 that looks particularly beautiful, minimalist, and timelessly modern.
If you're looking for more pieces along this line check out the Louis Féraud 1961 navy blue shantung dress with inlay of bronze and red bands and red belt or the black shantung cocktail dress with heart-shaped neckline by Livia that Cardinale wore a party in Rome in 1960 with Jean-Paul Belmondo.
There are some good and some bad news about this auction: it features some garments at relatively low prices considering they belong to an actress and they were designer clothes (the starting price for some of the piece is 1,000 euros). That said - and here's the bad news - there is a vintage clothes frenzy out there, so expect collectors, museums and buyers to come up with very good offers, and don't underestimate fashion designers who may try and buy pieces to copy them. 
Can't afford any of the designs, but love the high fashion and cinema angle given to this autcion? You can still admire the designs until tomorrow at Sotheby's Paris - looking doesn't cost anything and you may still learn some useful fashion tricks from the pieces on display. 
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