The Queen of Couture

Mouna Ayoub is selling some of her Gaultier couture this week, most of it from the glam 1990s, when she was fashion's top client. She reminisces about those times, and tells us what she's buying now.

In the 1990s, Mouna Ayoub was couture’s premiere customer. At one point, she owned more than 2,700 pieces of the wildly expensive, one-of-a-kind, made-to-order fashion.

One of the houses she loved back then was Jean Paul Gaultier, who launched his couture line in 1996. Tomorrow, she is selling 41 of her Gaultier couture looks at Maurice Auctions in Paris.

A runway model and Mouna Ayoub wearing Gaultier couture gown from Spring/Summer 2005, known as “Mozambique.” It is up for auction tomorrow, Lot 24, with an estimate of €7,000 to €10,000.

Many of these silhouettes I remember on the catwalk—most especially “L'Ecume des Jours,” a denim-and-ostrich feather gown from Spring/Summer 1999, which has an estimate €25,000 to €35,000—and watching Mouna’s eyes light up as she made notes on the program, so her vendeuse could pull the items for fittings the next day.

Unlike many of the socialite clients sitting in the front row back then—like Nan Kempner, who went to her first Dior show at 15—Mouna was not born into a life of couture. She learned about and cultivated it as an adult, after she married very well.