Didier Ludot on Cleaning House, and Why Vintage Chanel is Hot in China – WWD

PARIS — Fans of Didier Ludot’s must-see vintage store in Paris can now snap up a piece from his personal collection of art and antiques — and not surprisingly, fashion permeates the decor of the homes he shares with his partner, designer Félix Farrington.

The couple will put the contents of their Paris apartment under the hammer in a Nov. 17 sale jointly held by Artcurial and Christie’s, the prelude to a second auction of vintage haute couture from Ludot’s archive to be held on Jan. 26 during Paris Couture Week.

The “Didier Ludot & Félix Farrington Collection: From Meissen to Memphis” sale consists of 450 lots spanning from the 18th century to the ’80s: think a portrait of Queen Marie Antoinette with sky-high hair, juxtaposed with an egg-shaped sculpture by Memphis Group founder Ettore Sottsass.      

“When I met Félix, we visited each other’s apartment and chose what we liked, and then we mixed everything together,” Ludot told WWD. “And then one day, we woke up and decided that the 18th century was really great. Félix developed a passion for ceramics, and I started collecting chairs.”

Among the items that Ludot brought to the mix are sketches by Yves Saint Laurent, Roger Vivier and Christian Bérard.

Fashion lovers might home in on a battered Louis Vuitton trunk handbag from the 1910s; chunky costume jewelry from brands including Chanel and Saint Laurent, and three heart-shaped compacts made by Goossens for Saint Laurent, which were a gift from his friend, the model Bettina Graziani.

He compared decorating an apartment to getting dressed in the morning. “You won’t always wear things that necessarily look like they go together. What’s interesting is to mix and match. At the end of the day, when things are beautiful, they go together, even if they are of different periods and different styles,” he said.

One of the star lots is his small blue sculpture of a rhinoceros by François-Xavier Lalanne, with an estimate of 30,000 euros to 50,000 euros. But Ludot is equally fascinated with relics of the people he admires, whether it’s interior decorator Madeleine Castaing or Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor.  

Among Simpson’s former possessions that he’s letting go is a 114-piece part dinner service from her 1937 wedding to Edward VIII, following his abdication from the British throne. More poignantly, there are also two embroidered silk quilts from their country home in the French town of Gif-sur-Yvette. 

“I like being surrounded by people who fascinate me,” Ludot said, revealing that he’s held on to the notebook in which Simpson wrote down the habits and preferences of her weekend guests. “It will say, ‘Mrs X doesn’t like green beans. Mrs Y goes to mass at seven.’ I like to leaf through its pages. It transports me to a world that no longer exists.”

Portions of the collection also reveal snippets of fashion history, like the sketches by Janine Janet, who in the ’50s and ’60s created whimsical window displays for couturiers including Cristóbal Balenciaga, Hubert de Givenchy, Pierre Balmain and Nina Ricci.

The sale includes a 4-foot, 5-inch statue that Janet designed for a Balmain store window, representing a woodland creature whose limbs are made of leaves and strands of pearls, wearing a guipure lace dress in pristine condition.

Ludot said he had no regrets about parting with such rare items. “I want to share them with others. It’s like when I did my first sale of haute couture. Once I’ve owned an object, I have it for life. It can go away to a new owner, but it will always be mine,” he said.

Asked whether he and Farrington are turning their backs on Paris for good, Ludot had reassuring news for fans of his vintage emporium in the arcades of the Palais-Royal, whose clients include Nicole Kidman, Julia Roberts and legions of stylists, designers and fashion students.

“I’ve been at the Palais-Royal for 48 years and I plan to continue for a while,” he said. “I love the exchange with people who come to sell, because I only buy at the store. I never go to auctions, so there’s a dialogue with these people who’ve been around for a while and who come with their clothes, and I enjoy that.”

The couple are busy decorating their new place, and plan to split their time between the French capital, their home in Provence and Nice, where they are setting up another secondary residence.

“Since Artcurial and Christie’s emptied the apartment, we’ve already started buying new things,” Ludot said, explaining they often get inspired by meeting people. “We are very good friends with Hubert Le Gall. We are interested in acquiring this artist’s work, so you have to turn the page.” 

Ludot is putting the finishing touches to the catalogue for the upcoming couture sale, which will feature around 180 lots. When he opened his store in 1974, shortly after Saint Laurent’s Libération collection sparked a craze for vintage clothes, the profession of “haute couture antiquarian,” as he describes himself, didn’t exist.

Now dressing in secondhand clothes has become a lifestyle for millions of consumers, ranging from Gen Zers worried about fashion’s impact on the environment to celebrities looking to stand out on the red carpet.

Ludot famously sourced the 1950s Christian Dior dress that Reese Witherspoon wore to receive her Oscar for Best Actress for “Walk the Line” in 2006. The actress was reportedly embarrassed at having donned a vintage Chanel dress to the Golden Globes that she later found out had been worn by Kirsten Dunst to the same event three years before. She wanted something unique.

Although Ludot was initially reluctant to part with the Dior dress, which he had just found, he eventually relented. “She came to the store and tried on the dress. It was an incredible stroke of luck because haute couture clothes are made to measure, so your body has to be a perfect match. And she bought the dress and won the Oscar,” he recalled.

Last summer, Kidman dropped by while in Paris to model in the Balenciaga haute couture show. “She bought several dresses,” Ludot reported, noting that the Australian actress has been visiting the store for two decades. “Julia Roberts comes every year. She often buys a coat because she’s very sensitive to the cold.”

In-the-know celebrities and models like Demi Moore, Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell have been coming to Ludot since the ‘90s. But he’s acquired a new following among Asian customers, in particular from South Korea and China, who have more recently converted to the charms of secondhand clothes.

“I’m seeing a new clientele that feels more chic wearing original clothes, because you don’t see them everywhere,” he said.

“I have a whole network of Chinese businesswomen that want to dress in Chanel for conferences and meetings, but they don’t want to buy current Chanel because they might run into a competitor wearing the same outfit, so they come here. I have five clients like that. Fortunately, they’ve never met at the store,” he said.

Ludot welcomes the emergence of global online sellers who have popularized vintage dressing, and he wants to do his part to preserve French couture.

“French fashion is a bit like gastronomy: we have an international reputation to uphold. I think the vintage trend is here to stay. It’s not a seasonal phenomenon. There are any people who, 15 years ago, would not have bought secondhand clothes, and now, a lot of ordinary people dress that way,” he said.  

“Twenty years ago, when a woman died, even in wealthy families, her clothes were thrown out or discarded, so there were many haute couture pieces that were lost,” he said. “These days, whenever a grandmother dies, the family goes through their closet to save anything of value, which is important, because it helps to preserve haute couture.”

In addition to passing on rare pieces to new owners, Ludot works closely with major French luxury brands to source items for their archives.

“I’ve been known to sell the same design to Dior three times over, because they organize a lot of exhibitions across the world, so if they find a copy of a design they already have in their archives, they buy it too. I also work a lot with Chanel and all the other houses, and it makes me very happy when these clothes return to their original home,” he said.