Vintage Fashion

Contents of a Straits Chinese shophouse sold at auction provide window to the past

With hindsight, the boast made by the Flying Steam Company – 'To China in Twenty-Four Hours Certain' – was a tad ambitious.

British wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill memorabilia in the form of slippers, brandy balloon and cigar box.

In playing condition but with enough problems to be catalogued as ‘sold as seen’, a Nicole Frères brass inlaid music box was one of the unexpected stars of the first three-day sale to be held at Ripon auction house Elstob & Elstob (22% buyer’s premium).

Clothes, letters and photographs of the last queen of Madagascar are to return home after the Madagascan government bought the collection at a south London auction.

This leather-soled silk and kid leather shoe decorated with pleated ribbons is inscribed in pen on the heel 'Soulier de Marie-Antoinette donné à M.de Voisey'.

As travel possibilities opened up with the advent of railways and steamships, the question of how to transport belongings became an important one. One of the first manufacturers to tackle this with great success was entrepreneur and designer Louis Vuitton (1821-92).

At TW Gaze (18% buyer’s premium) in Diss, Norfolk, on August 12 this early 20th century Louis Vuitton wardrobe trunk, no 796731, sold for £4200 against an estimate of £1800-2500.

Oxfordshire dealership 3Details offers this original Louis Vuitton trunk with its instantly recognisable monogrammed canvas for £22,500.

This c.1905 leather top hat ‘bucket’ by the prestigious hatters Johnson and Co of Regent Street, London.

A bowler hat that once belonged to Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria will go under the hammer at Dorotheum on October 19 in the sale of imperial court memorabilia and historical objects in Vienna.

Mayfair gallery fashions an innovative method of exhibiting works from the 1950s-80s.

An unexpected but welcome entry to Bonhams’ latest sale of Fine Books, Atlases, Manuscripts & Historical Photographs was a pair of 17th century linen, leather and black silk shoes.

This couture gown, sold for £360 at Sworders (25% buyer’s premium), was once owned by the woman who hosted the wedding of Wallis Simpson and the Duke of Windsor.