A Brooch Once Belonging to Audrey Hepburn Sold for $425,000 at Auction

BIDDING GEMS: Signaling sustained and robust demand for fine jewelry amid a wider luxury lull, a Bulgari brooch once owned by Audrey Hepburn sold for 355,600 euros, or about $425,000, at a Sotheby’s auction in Paris, nearly six times its high estimate following fierce bidding among four would-be buyers.

Jewelry items, which included several designs by Jean Schlumberger, accounted for half of the top-10 highest bids. A Paul Guillot diamond brooch, formerly owned by Elizabeth Taylor, sold for 50,800 euros.

Haute couture pieces, including a 1962 Balenciaga coat, also fared well at the sale of Doris Brynner’s personal belongings, which coincided with Paris Couture Week and brought in 1.72 million euros, well above its estimate, according to Sotheby’s.

Hepburn and Taylor were two of Brynner’s closest friends who passed long before her, willing her jewels that lived up to her exacting taste.

Rare shoes were the big surprise of the auction, with a pair of pink, flower-dusted Christian Dior by Roger Vivier pumps fetching 16,510 euros, more than 33 times the high estimate. A pair of Vivier ankle boots in a chocolate brown alligator skin went for the same sum, well above the estimate of 400-800 euros.

A widow of the Russian actor Yul Brynner and a woman with a nonpareil flair for decorating and entertaining, Brynner was perhaps best known as the longtime head of Dior’s home furnishings and gift department. She also did modeling and worked at Pierre Cardin upon her arrival in France in the ’50s from Chile, and later at Valentino, taking charge of special client relations at the Roman couture house.

A lifelong collector of designer clothing, jewelry, baskets, books, tableware and more, she died last February at age 93.

Victoria Brynner, who sifted through her mother’s vast stash of belongings, envisioned the Sotheby’s auction as a way to “pay tribute to my mother’s elegance and style, while ensuring her place in the collective memory,” adding that she’s “delighted that her precious possessions will continue to be cherished by their new owners.”