EXCLUSIVE: New Paris Auction House Penelope’s Hopes to Corner the Market for Fashion

PARIS – For all the major luxury brands based in Paris, the French capital has so far lacked an auction house specializing in fashion. 

Enter Pénélope Blanckaert, a vintage and contemporary fashion expert with 18 years of experience working with auctioneers including Artcurial, Piasa and Millon. 

Her eponymous platform, Penelope’s, wrapped up its inaugural sale on Monday, and has four more planned before the end of the year, including the first auction of vintage Prada and Miu Miu.  

“I realized that I wanted to do this job, but differently,” Blanckaert told WWD.

“Generalist auction houses are absolutely not equipped to handle fashion, whether in terms of storage spaces or photographing lots; packing them for dispatch; marketing, or websites, which lack adequate search filters,” she noted. “The idea is for Penelope’s to become the auction house for fashion.”

Her website, penelopesauction.com, allows users to search items by size and color. Potential bidders are redirected to the Drouot marketplace, but she hopes to eventually also control the purchasing end. 

A graduate of the Institut Français de la Mode, Blanckaert brings a strong editorial take to the project. For her sale of 20th century fashion magazines, which ran from Sept. 26 to Oct. 7, she tapped French artist Kat Gallicere to create a series of collages. 

She believes it’s important to put a modern spin on vintage clothes. Having strong imagery also helps to sell lots to overseas buyers, who are not interested in reading reams of description.

“By mixing, say, Saint Laurent with Comme des Garçons, you totally change the perception of it,” Blanckaert noted. “I’ve always done that. It feels natural, but I’ve noticed a lot of women love the idea of vintage, but don’t really know how to wear it.”

Penelope’s specializes in items that are at least 20 years old, with prices ranging from less than 100 euros to several thousand. 

“I don’t want this auction house to be too elitist,” said Blanckaert, though she also helped private auction platform Fair Warning sell a Paco Rabanne dress for $100,000. “There’s nothing to say we can’t work with that caliber of pieces.”

It’s a competitive market, with the proliferation of secondhand platforms online, and a lack of transparency on pricing. Penelope’s takes a 20 percent commission on sales, and items are priced competitively to encourage bidding. 

Formerly Hermès vintage and fashion arts director at Artcurial, Blanckaert works with sellers who have a minimum of 10 or 15 pieces to offload, and also acts as an agent for other auction houses. Bags are authenticated both internally and by an external expert.

“The idea is to forge partnerships with auction houses who get the odd fashion item but prefer to pass it on to a specialized auction house. It’s like a customer service,” she explained. 

Rather than throwing a variety of items into the mix, she wants to narrow down sales by theme, with just 150 to 200 lots, in the hopes of appealing to expert buyers.

“We’re not going to sell just Chanel, Dior and Louis Vuitton. We want those items, of course, but we’re also planning a Dorothée Bis sale next year,” noted Blanckaert, who’s been entrusted with the archives of Jacqueline Jacobson, the cofounder of the cult French brand born in the 1960s.

In January, it will be Gianfranco Ferrè, another first on the auction scene. Blanckaert hopes to eventually expand from fashion to a variety of branded items.

“You can buy a dress for 80 euros, but also a Kelly bag for 10,000 euros,” she said. “We have something for everyone.”