“My clothes contain memories for me — when I bought them, where I wore them,” Amira Casar remarked as she went through some of the 250 pieces she’s selling on ReSee on Thursday.
And how.
Among the items on offer are a fur chubby once owned by French artist Dora Maar, whom she portrayed in the 2010 film “La Femme Qui Pleure Au Chapeau Rouge”; several jaunty Chanel suits, emblematic of her long, close relationship with Karl Lagerfeld, and a 1985 turquoise Antony Price gown she bought on a lark at age 14, reasoning “I loved Roxy Music, and I knew that Antony had done the covers” — and confessing that she wore it only once.
Discussing the sale felt like a crash course in art, fashion and film history — and at times like a theatrical performance as Casar roamed the ReSee showroom in Paris, excitedly explaining the backstory of each dress, which often related to a strong female character from a film, novel or stage play, sending her off on multiple cultural tangents.
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Hoisting a black velvet Yves Saint Laurent toggle coat from the celebrated fall 1974 “Ballets Russes” collection, she said her mind went immediately to Sergei Bondarchuk’s epic “War & Peace.”
“Soviet film, eight hours. It’s the most beautiful film ever,” she enthused.
And the coat? “I wore it to a Chanel show,” she said with a yelp of laughter. “How naughty I was.”
The sale is autobiographical, revealing multiple facets of the British French actress’ long and eclectic career — and her upbringing among England’s horsey set and the drama crowd in France.
She credits her Russian mother for sparking her passion for clothes.
“I used to help my mother dress. She always called me ‘my eyes,’” she related. “Later on, I realized that Elizabeth Tudor called [the Earl of Leicester] ‘my eyes.’”
In her teen years, Siouxsie Sioux and Adam Ant were among Casar’s fashion heroes, and their punky style can be felt in her sleeveless red Balenciaga sweater dangling raccoon-like tails; her Martin Margiela Artisanal waistcoat cobbled from two Salvation Army hussar jackets, and her black Jeremy Scott T-shirt bearing the hand-painted slogan, “Viva Avant Garde.”
“I was an aesthete,” Casar said. “I never followed fashion, because I wasn’t interested in fashion. I was interested more in just trying to be the individual.”
A frequent fixture in fashion’s front rows, and a model in her teenage years after being discovered by Helmut Newton, Casar has enjoyed close relationships with many fashion designers, including Nicolas Ghesquière during his Balenciaga days.
Among the memorable Ghesquière designs in the sale are his silk cargo pants, a black sweater bearing a German Shepherd dog, a patchwork top and one of his short, pinstriped overall dresses from spring 2001.
Some of the items in the sale were gifts from designers, including an ergonomic, futuristic Chanel bag that Lagerfeld unleashed in 1998 ahead of the new millennium, anointing it the “2005.” It’s being sold with the original gift box, which the late German designer signed, “Bon voyage, Bon Shopping, Love, Karl.”
But Casar bought most of her vast wardrobe herself, scouring flea markets, antique shops and designer boutiques on a global scale. French vintage specialist Didier Ludot, who closed his Palais-Royal shop last year, was a frequent haunt, where Casar scored several YSL couture pieces made for Miss France 1966, including a brown leather fringed coat that still looks groovy.
Her daring and eclectic taste — and keen fashion instincts — are reflected in the vast range of her designer wardrobe, stretching from Azzedine Alaïa and Helmut Lang to Rifat Ozbek and Romeo Gigli.
There are a few choice pieces from Junya Watanabe and Comme des Garçons, but Casar is saving her vast collection of Japanese design for “chapter two” of her great decluttering.
So why she is parting ways with chunks of her wardrobe?
“I just could not project myself any longer in these clothes, as much as I loved them,” she said. “I wanted to make a revolution in my life.”
According to her, an epiphany was portraying Saint Teresa of Avila at the Avignon Festival in 2024.
“She gave up all the worldly goods to become a very important nun, a very feminist nun, educating young women on how to carry themselves. She gave them a whole suitcase of rules and laws. She restructured the whole of the Carmelites,” she said. “And I thought, if Saint Teresa could get rid of all her worldly goods, then I should be able to.”
Casar plans to donate a percentage of the proceeds to the Fondation Valentin Haüy for the blind.
ReSee founders Sabrina Marshall and Sofia Bernardin, both fans of Casar on screen, also lauded her daring and playful approach to fashion, with a punk-rock edge.
“Avant-garde, but modern and a real woman in mind” is how Marshall described the curation of the sale, which should last about a month.
Marshall and Bernardin worked hand-in-hand with Casar to make selections, with a strong focus on the 1990s and the early 2000s.
ReSee’s roster of notable resellers include actress Catherine Deneuve and jewelry designer Gaia Repossi, and the founders acknowledge that the provenance of clothes and accessories can be a strong selling point for site visitors.
For example, included in Casar’s sale are high-waisted cargo pants from Yves Saint Laurent that she wore when portraying Annella Perlman in the 2017 film “Call Me By Your Name.”
“I think that they love the idea of delving into somebody’s universe, seeing a point of view and a personality,” Bernardin said in a separate interview. “But when you take and dissect these pieces and separate them, they really are remarkable.”
Marshall highlighted that “there’s really a reason behind why [Amira] purchased each piece, not because it was the hot item of the moment, or because everybody had it, but because it meant something deeply to her as an artist, it connected to something in her past, or it really awoke her senses.”
Prices range from 250 euros for an Alaïa cardigan and climb to 13,200 euros for a silk brocade couture coat by Yves Saint Laurent for Miss France in 1966.
The sale comes after a strong year for ReSee, which logged double-digit revenue growth in 2025, according to the company, founded in 2013.
