Roughly one year after her passing, Doris Brynner’s personal belongings will go under the hammer at Sotheby’s in Paris in late January, bringing to light her exquisite taste — and recounting her colorful life via fashions, furnishings, art and memorabilia.
A lifelong collector of designer clothing, jewelry, baskets, books, tableware and more, Brynner never threw anything out, including receipts for her Balenciaga couture gowns and every postcard she ever received, according to her daughter Victoria Brynner, who sifted through a vast stash of belongings and keepsakes packed into her late mother’s Paris apartment and house near Lausanne, Switzerland.
An exhibition during Paris Couture Week will precede the Jan. 27 sale, whose star lots include brooches that once belonged to Audrey Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor, two of Brynner’s closest friends who passed long before her, willing her jewels that lived up to her exacting taste.
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The Bulgari brooch that once belonged to Hepburn is expected to fetch 40,000 to 60,000 euros, while Taylor’s diamond Belle Époque bow is estimated at 20,000 to 40,000 euros. An online sale will follow from Jan. 28.
“She was a great storyteller,” Brynner said of her formidable mother, who died last February at age 93. “So when I started going through her things, I knew the history of so many objects, and I realized how much they had shaped my knowledge, my taste — my everything.”
A widow of the Russian actor Yul Brynner and a woman with a nonpareil flair for decorating and entertaining, Doris Brynner was perhaps best known as the longtime head of Dior’s home furnishings and gift department. She also did modeling and worked at Pierre Cardin upon her arrival in France in the ’50s from Chile, and later at Valentino, taking charge of special client relations at the Roman couture house.
The Sotheby’s sale will crystallize an era when personal style was central, and when Brynner moved among a swath of Europe’s beau monde with last names like Agnelli and Aga Khan.
Victoria Brynner said her mother was always a meticulous dresser, though her style changed over the years, gradually becoming more colorful — and practical.
“She dressed appropriately for her age and her changing body,” Brynner said, describing a “system of dressing” her mother developed, buying multiples of everything, including scores of trousers, sweaters and blazers, the key elements of her wardrobe in her twilight years. “She was never a matchy-matchy person.”
Mario Tavella, president of Sotheby’s France and chairman of Sotheby’s Europe, said that what defined Brynner’s fashion style across many eras was elegance, and rigor.
“I’ve never seen Doris with a hair out of place,” he marveled in an interview. “She reminds me of a world that perhaps does not exist anymore.
“This sale is also organized as a homage to a figure who should be remembered for her immense elegance and style,” he added. “I’m sure that many of her friends, and many young generations, will appreciate her allure.”
Tavella said Sotheby’s various category experts were astonished by how meticulous Brynner was in her collecting, and so consistent in her high level of taste.
“I was not surprised because she was a rigorous, exigent lady,” said the executive, who met Brynner about a decade before her passing, treasuring their relationship “because she didn’t give her friendship to everybody.”
Tavelli said he expects the brooches, because of their beauty and provenance, to be among the most hotly contested lots in the sale.
“We sell beautiful things, we sell luxury things,” he said. “I think that the message of elegance of beauty and rigor that Doris shared with many others, it’s very relevant for our clients and for Sotheby’s philosophy.”
Among the roughly 300 lots on offer are home decor items from various eras — she ran La Verandah and DB Decoration boutiques in Switzerland before joining Dior — artworks she collected with her late husband, and colorful illustrations by her many fashion friends, who included Karl Lagerfeld and John Galliano.
“it was really about putting a cohesive collection together that showed who she was, the time she lived, and the historical aspects,” Victoria Brynner said.
According to her daughter, her mother’s taste was sure and instinctive, “but she was also smart enough to learn from people who had great taste. It started in the ’50s with [art patron and socialite] Arturo López, who took her under his wing. He had all these fantastic homes, and she was thirsty to understand how things were served, where they were served, how places were decorated, what was appropriate, what wasn’t.”
Among other notable lots are candelabra by Claude Lalanne, glass-brick artworks by Jean-Michel Othoniel, bronze and metal boxes by architect Peter Marino, and a drawing by Pablo Picasso.
