Alexander Fury: The Collector

Journalist and author Alexander Fury is one of the most prolific and passionate collectors in fashion. His archive, which contains more than 3,000 items, includes Antony Price, John Galliano and Vivienne Westwood. For this issue, he poses with some of those pieces and picks out the AW23 looks he regards as future collectibles. And who better to talk to Fury about what drives a true collector than legendary vintage dealer Steven Philip, who has had a profound influence on shaping vintage tastes?

Left: mannequin wears coat by YVES SAINT LAURENT HAUTE COUTURE AW01, Alex wears coat, jumper and trousers by SAINT LAURENT BY ANTHONY VACCARELLO AW23, shoes by YVES SAINT LAURENT RIVE GAUCHE. Right: mannequins wear bodice by MAISON MARGIELA SS97, sleeve and coat by MAISON MARGIELA AW20, Alex wears mask by MAISON MARGIELA AW20 coat, corset, shorts, socks and shoes by MAISON MARGIELA AW23.

Steven Philip: I thought about you when you were doing the Westwood book [2021’s Vivienne Westwood Catwalk: The Complete Collections]. I think, God, he must be running 16 hours a day.

Alexander Fury: The weird thing is that I retain a lot of information. The publishers would ask me, “Can you tell us where this quote is from?” And I’d say, “It’s from this documentary I watched when I was 16 and memorised.”

SP: You’ve been going to auctions for a while? I’ve been going for 30 years.

AF: For about a decade. It’s like these odd rhythms, where suddenly something makes 10 times the estimate. I’m like, why has this made so much money? It’s just that two people wanted it and refused to stop. Competition. I get that.

SP: There are a lot of new people I want to get involved. I have to think about them, the new generation.

AF: I think there is this weird nostalgia, especially for people that maybe didn’t live through it. I find it scary that kids born in the 2000s are buying vintage Gaultier.

SP: Gaultier was one that made the big move [to appeal to young people]. But a group of new kids on the block are taking over [collecting]. It’s fantastic.

AF: What I find interesting is that they collect in a specific way. A lot collect to wear it as well, which I think is very…

SP: Wonderful.

AF: It’s different to how I collect. I don’t know if you ever collected to wear?

SP: I used to try them all on in the bathroom. I’d leave a dress open at the top, to see what it looked like. I did wear it to a certain point, but I stopped. I still wear Westwood.

AF: That Westwood Gorilla jacket [AW92] I bought from you, I’m going to wear it. That’s the whole point. Generally, it depends on what the piece is and how much I’ve paid. I’m not going to wear the Dior couture, but it’s not for me to wear.

SP: You started off collecting Lacroix, didn’t you?

AF: The first things I collected were Antony Price, two cocktail dresses. I was doing a curation project at Saint Martins and proposed an exhibition of Price. I went deep into the research and asked museums if they had it. It turned out the V&A have [only] one Price. I went on eBay and there were two dresses, so I bought them. Those were the first things I bought without the intention of wearing. I’d bought bits of vintage [before]. I had a Westwood pirate scarf. If they didn’t fit, I’d sell. You know that Galliano shirt you sold? Yellow and purple stripe [SS91]? I bought one when I was a student because I intended to wear it. But when it turned up it was smocked and really small, so I couldn’t. But I bought those dresses. They were a tenner each.

Left: mannequins wear VALENTINO AW23, Alex wears VALENTINO SS22. Right: mannequin wears ALEXANDER MCQUEEN AW19, Alex wears ALEXANDER MCQUEEN AW23 

SP: I started collecting Antony because it was part of the period. It was so glamorous. We were going to Heaven and the girls were going to Annabelle’s in an Antony Price. It brought back my whole life of Roxy Music and Bowie and glamour.

AF: Somebody sent me – this is the beauty of Instagram – a picture and wrote, “This dress is in a charity shop”. It was an Antony Price, and it’s the fucking showpiece. It’s got a massive velvet bow, like it had angel wings. It was 110 quid in the Royal Trinity Hospice, opposite Worlds End [in Chelsea]. I bought that six months ago. But vintage has become a machine now. I’ll see something on Vestiaire and then see it a week later, 10 times the price, on 1stDibs. I think that’s disgusting because dealers are taking it away from people.

SP: It’s computerised, that’s what I was telling you. But I love hunting. I love gathering. I’d go all over the world.

AF: A lot of it now is how quickly you can click. I bought a spring 1995 Galliano dress on 1stDibs for about a grand because there isn’t a picture on Vogue Runway. They didn’t have any idea what it was.

SP: I got a Saint Laurent 1978. It was fantastic, a velvet tux suit. It really excites you to know who it’s been on. I sold Kylie so much Antony Price, like that blue parachute [dress]. I got great joy that they went into another life on Kylie Minogue. Another life on Kate Moss. Sometimes I wouldn’t tell them who it belonged to, but if I knew them well enough, I would.

I must tell you this story. Once a girl came into the shop with her mother, it was her 21st birthday party. I had bought the Jerry Hall stuff years before and brought out this black cocktail dress. She put it on and her mother said, “Darling, it’s stunning. It’s beautiful. It’s perfect.” Honest to God, you’d think I’d just given them a lottery ticket. It was everything she desired. It was £350. I said, “After your party, open this [envelope] and you’ll see who that belonged to.” I put the photo in of Jerry Hall. She wrote me this letter saying, “Thank God I never knew that on the night! I would never have been able to compete with Jerry Hall.” Well, that’s exactly why you compete. That girl will still have that dress thinking: my 21st, that belonged to Jerry Hall. The biggest model in the world. Fucking love it. All of these things mean a lot to me. How did Lacroix come into your life?

AF: I was obsessed when I was a kid. From Absolutely Fabulous. I heard the name and started to look into him. Lacroix’s very, it’s if you’re like…

SP: Ivana Trump. No joking.

AF: Well, I was going to say, if you are a 10-year-old gay boy from the north of England, look, you do have the same taste as Ivana Trump. That’s what you want. Glittery shit covered in pattern.

Left: mannequin wears skirt and jacket by MIU MIU AW23, Alex wears jacket by MIU MIU SS11, jumper, shirt and trousers by MIU MIU SS22, shoes by CHURCH’S x MIU MIU AW23. Right: mannequins wear top by LOUIS VUITTON SS14, dress by LOUIS VUITTON SS23. On floor: men’s bag by LOUIS VUITTON AW23 and pouch by LOUIS VUITTON SS23, Alex wears coat and gloves by LOUIS VUITTON AW18, shirt by LOUIS VUITTON AW06, bag by LOUIS VUITTON SS01.

SP: I knew about Lacroix obviously before Ab Fab. I was attracted, but thought: oh my God, too many fucking different colours. I never saw the collectability of it.

AF: Let me get my Lacroix book down. I want to show you a picture because I still think about getting offered this. You know that Irving Penn picture [of the SS95 duchesse satin dress]?

SP: Oh my God, yes.

AF: A dealer in California had that dress and it was the couture sample sold to the client. It was the corset, skirt, shoes, choker, stole, the whole thing. But they wanted 30 grand for it. $30,000. It’s an amazing thing. But can I take care of this? The size of something like that. I’ve got some really good bits of Lacroix, though.

SP: I would imagine there are a lot of pieces that were owned by wealthy people who just didn’t care after [they wore them].

AF: I think there’s a lot of that. Because also it was very fashion-y and when it went out of fashion, it went out of fashion. With Lacroix, the only stuff I want is the couture. For me, that’s the right level.

SP: Where do you see yourself going? Obviously, you got into Westwood and the rest is history.

AF: Well, John [Galliano] was a big one when the whole thing happened at Dior, because John was something I’d taken for granted. That he was just always going to be there.

SP: You’ve got to remember the whole of the ’80s.

AF: He didn’t have a pot to piss in.

SP: Saint Laurent, Chanel, nobody wanted them in the ’80s. They were so clever – how do we get back into this new market? How do we get back to kids so they all buy this? Or are they buying Vuitton? My generation, nobody bought Vuitton. The only time I saw it was when the Kennedys were leaving an airport. But then everybody’s got it. Gaultier was one of the people that started it. When he came to London, he was fascinated by punk. He used to come to [gay pub] The Bell, fucker never missed a Sunday for years. It’s amazing how we all got there because there were no phones. It was a lot of money, a dream come true to buy Galliano couture. You’d have to fucking sell your gran.

AF: You can still find them, but again, it’s hunting. You can’t go to obvious places. I got one from a French auction house. Honestly, if it was at Kerry Taylor [Auctions], it would be 10 times that. It’s from John’s first Dior couture [collection, SS97], Eva Herzigová’s lilac, bias-cut dress. Dior were trying to buy it. I outbid them somehow. It wasn’t even that much. I mean, Steve, seven grand I paid for it. It’s a lot, but not for that.

SP: A museum could have come up with three grand for it.

AF: Maybe they didn’t know it was the sample.

Left: mannequin wears jacket by VIVIENNE WESTWOOD AW96, Alex wears coat by VIVIENNE WESTWOOD AW91, jacket by VIVIENNE WESTWOOD SS92, trousers by VIVIENNE WESTWOOD AW23. Right: mannequin wears dress by CHRISTIAN DIOR HAUTE COUTURE SS97, Alex wears jumper, shirt, shorts and socks by DIOR AW23, rings by DIOR AW00.

SP: You’ve got your foothold. You have one of the biggest collections now.

AF: I’m lucky that my earning power has gone up as the prices have. I have people who slightly hunt me out in a nice way and say, “I’ve got this, are you interested?” I always remember what you said to me when you were selling that Galliano oyster dress [SS88]. I asked, “Why would you ever sell that? It’s such an important piece.” You said, “It’s not part of my story.” After that, I sold maybe 10 pieces – because they weren’t my story. You told me, “I love it when it’s raw, not couture, when it goes to Paris and becomes refined and it’s Empress Josephine.” I love the couture.

SP: I couldn’t get my head around couture. People say, “Why didn’t you collect Saint Laurent or Courrèges?” I had bits, but it wasn’t part of my life, it was part of my fantasy.

AF: When I was about 12 I went to Harvey Nichols in Leeds and there was a Galliano suit for sale. I begged my mum to buy it for Christmas. I said, “Look, you can wear the skirt. I’ll wear the jacket.” But she wouldn’t. There was a McQueen, too. I always say now, “If you’d bought that, you would’ve been quids in.”

SP: The secret is to squirrel away until you’ve got it right. But you have to sell. I sold the rubies and kept the diamonds.

AF: In terms of the diamonds, that Dior couture is a diamond. I’ve got another one from the Homeless collection [the controversial SS00 Dior haute couture show by Galliano] that is the sample. Whenever a Dior goes for loads at Kerry, Joe [Larkowsky, Fury’s partner, an illustrator] says: “If you sold that, we could buy a house.” I say, “Yes, we could. But this is the only one that exists. It’s never going to come back.”

SP: Don’t leave it too long to assess it. You’re so clever in the way you do things. Be clever for you, not for a company, and document what you’ve got. I wish I had all the pieces I sold. I wish I’d documented that. That’s why I’m saying it.

AF: I’m excited to see what you’re doing now. I want to see the next sale and see what you kept. See [if] you’ve kept all the best bits for yourself! Because everything’s going to have a story and a reason.

SP: I have a new studio – and I am keeping some great diamonds from the past. Some old classics and mixing them in with lots of new pieces and obscure items that people love from the studio. I will still have a plentiful archive, but will be refocusing on the joy of collecting. Everybody that works with me says, “Have you just got everything?” Someone once asked me, “Do you own everything from the ’80s?” Do you remember?

AF: Yeah!

SP: It was in a magazine. “Is it true? Do you own everything from the ’80s?” Yes, very nearly.

Left: mannequins wear dress by AZZEDINE ALAIA AW82, gloves by AZZEDINE ALAIA AW81, dress by ALAIA AW23, Alex wears bolero by ALAIA AW23, shirt, trousers and belt by ALAIA. Right: mannequin wears dress, shoes and Galleria bag by PRADA AW23, Alex wears coat and shoes by PRADA SS17, jumper by PRADA AW17.

Taken from issue 71 of 10 Magazine – FASHION, ICON, DEVOTEE – on newsstands now. Order your copy here. 

ALEXANDER FURY: THE COLLECTOR

Photographer JASON LLOYD-EVANS
Sittings Editor SOPHIA NEOPHITOU
Talent ALEXANDER FURY
In conversation with STEVEN PHILIP
Grooming SKY CRIPPS-JACKSON using Davines and Lumene
Photographer’s assistant PHILIP BANKS
Fashion assistants GEORGIA EDWARDS, SONYA MAZURYK and BELLA KOOPMAN
Production ZAC APOSTOLOU