Out Of Fashion?

This auction will remain in Martin Kamer's memory. He took part in it anonymously and by telephone from London. Not only did he buy many pieces for a lot of money, he also opened a new chapter in his career: From now on he was no longer interested only in dresses from the 18th and 19th centuries, but also in haute couture.

The biggest enemy of antique textiles and historical clothes is the clothes moth. Martin Kamer also loses some of his collector's items to this voracious insect, but he knows how to defend himself with appropriate measures over time. Kamer also noticed that moths do not touch clothes with certain dyes.

Throughout his career, Martin Kamer has worked with many people on a professional level. With Rita Brown, Jan Reeder, Kumi Sakurai, Judith Clark and Annette Soumilas, he has a longstanding collaboration and special friendship. In this episode, Kamer talks about how the "five main ladies" came into his life and what the collaboration looked like.

The Kamer-Ruf collection also includes some historical sportswear such as riding gear, dresses for tennis players, cycling outfits or swimwear. Martin Kamer reports on the successive emergence of leisure activities and the associated development of leisure fashion.

As a child, Martin Kamer cuts out articles and photos from art and fashion magazines and archives them. As a teenager he comes into contact with old photographs and books. During his art studies in London, Kamer spends every Friday researching in various museums and libraries. That inspires him a lot. Nowadays, Kamer gives various people access to his private library for research purposes. It contains many rare historical fashion magazines and books.

Martin Kamer not only collects historical ladies' dresses, historical men's dresses are also part of his collection. They make up about a quarter of the collection. Luxurious men's dresses from the 18th century have always been in demand, men's dresses from the 19th century less so. This has changed dramatically in recent years. Times have changed. Today, record prices are also being paid for historic men's fashion from the 19th century. Kamer tells of the extremely successful exhibition «Reigning Men: Fashion in Menswear, 1715-2015» at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in 2016.

Go behind-the-scenes and see how the exhibition at LACMA was being prepared: https://vimeo.com/162776397

Martin Kamer tells of an auction in London where disorder reigns and where a dress by Mme Paquin is being auctioned off. Jeanne Paquin was an important fashion designer and one of the first women to run haute couture houses in Paris, London and Buenos Aires. During a visit to the auction house, Kamer discovers a dress without a label (circa 1915). He knows that it must be a dress by the fashion designer Jeanne Lanvin. Both dresses, that of Paquin and that of Lanvin, are incomplete. Elsewhere, Kamer finds loose dresses that he can attribute to Paquin and Lanvin's dresses. And he is absolutely right, as he can prove later.

Martin Kamer reports from an auction in London in 1988, where hundreds of haute couture dresses are auctioned off in one weekend. The label is missing on some of the dresses. Martin discovers dresses by Vionnet and Chanel among them. Years later, he can only prove that these dresses can actually be attributed to these fashion designers. He later sells a dress by Gabrielle Chanel to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York where it still is. Besides Kamer reports on the dust allergy he has suffered from since this auction.

Annette Soumilas* explains the tasks of a textile conservator and explains the difference between a textile conservator and a textile restorer. For the exhibition "The Vulgar" at the Barbican Museum in London (2017) and for the exhibition "Recent Parades" at the Kunsthalle in Bern (2018), she was taking care of loans from Martin Kamer by preparing them for the exhibitions. For the one in Bern, her skills were particularly in demand for the parasol from the ensemble "The Queen of Sheba" by Paul Poiret (1914).

* Annette Soumilas is an independent costume and fashion designer, specialising in textile conservation and display of historic dress.

Martin Kamer does not only acquire at auctions. The scene of this anecdote is the St. Louis flea market in Paris. In the 1980s, a trader sells Martin Kamer a Turkish dress with harem pants. The yellow coat and the sky-blue trousers do not match because of the different embroideries, Kamer knows that. He bought the two pieces anyway - and two years later, when he goes shopping again at the same dealer, he will be in for a pleasant surprise. A top by Charles Frederick Worth immediately catches his eye.