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A Bid For Fame Now Costs a Fortune

During a recent auction held at Profiles in History in Los Angeles, one bidder paid $15,000 for a pair of cuffed beige trousers. Of course, those pants bore a Warner Bros. ink stamp and handwritten label reading "5-21-54 Prod. 810 Jim Dean" indicating that they were worn by James Dean in the 1955 classic East of Eden. Another bidder at the same auction paid $55,000 for a green taffeta gown designed by the great Walter Plunkett for Katharine Hepburn in the 1936 feminist epic A Woman Rebels. At Christie's, Ursula Andress's bikini from 1962's Dr. No recently fetched nearly $60,000. Like film props and other Hollywood memorabilia, movie costumes that were once heir to hungry moths have become red-hot in the collectibles market. Collecting film costumes is no longer merely the concern of preservationists or a pastime enjoyed by rabid movie buffs. It has become much more widespread—and much more expensive.

"Whereas a sizable percentage of those who collect historical autographs does so as a financial investment, buyers of Hollywood costumes do it because they love James Dean of Marilyn Monroe or 'Star Trek,'" says Lorna Hart of Profiles in History. While that has always been the case, the number of people moved to acquire costumes or props used by a star skyrocketed in the '90s when commercial establishments like Planet Hollywood began buying and displaying these items for everyone to see. Prices rose, public interest rose, and prices went up higher. The largest buyers of Hollywood vintage costumes and memorabilia today, says Catherine Williamson of Butterfield & Butterfield in Los Angeles, are private collectors—often people in the Industry and, "for some reason," she laughs, "a lot of Texans."

The prices costumes now command at auction are eye-popping. Not long ago, the Beverly Hills-based online service Fine Arts Brokerage (www.fineartsbrokerage.com) sold for $8,250 the full-length, sleeveless, gold lamé gown designed for Audrey Hepburn's opening ballroom scene in 1953's Roman Holiday. Another bidder parted with $6,750 for John Wayne's black linen and leather eye patch from the 1969 Western True Grit and its 1975 sequel, Rooster Cogburn. In 1999, Christie's auctioned off the Jean Louis gown that Marilyn Monroe donned for her "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" serenade in 1962—a seminal moment in the auction world, given that the bidding reached $1.27 million. Indeed, nearly everything that once graced Monroe, even in her more obscure films, tends to draw big bucks. The white Beatrice Dawson dress she wore in 1957's The Prince and the Showgirl went for $62,500 at Profiles in History in Los Angeles. Even a beige silk number she donned briefly in the same film went for little more than $23,000 at Butterfield's in L.A.

What exactly do people do with one of Carole Lombard's suits or Harold Lloyd's smoking robe once they've parted with by bucks for it? "Very few collectors actually wear the costumes to parties or events," says Lorna Hart. "Some people restore them and put them away in archival vaults while others display them." As to the future of costume auctions, Williamson predicts a continuation in escalating prices. "Collecting costumes seems more democratic than collecting fine art or 18th-century French furniture," she points out. And since studios these days move to auction off memorabilia as soon as production wraps, "Some kid in middle Georgia can easily go online and buy a costume worn in say, Blade 2."