Bidding for a wedding dress is not my lot

We’re not calling it a wedding dress. We’re calling it a dress I might wear to my wedding. Wedding, even, feels too burdened a word, the sentiment and various expectations loaded upon it as if wet cheese on chips. “Wedding” – what am I, 12? No, I’m a woman with two children, one large cat and a boyfriend who has decided, correctly, he’s too old to be described as a boyfriend. There is more to this story, of course, there always is, but for now the thing you and I need to focus on is: I need a dress.

The thing is, I am horrible at shopping. Apart from a brief blitz through Topshop in my teens, 20s, most clothes shops have continued to inspire in me the same deathly boredom they did when I’d trail behind my mother as a child. This, along with taste, guilt, budget, these excruciating elements that build an identity, has meant that almost everything I wear has been bought secondhand. This extends beyond clothes, too, with most of my furniture and tchotchkes coming from auction houses – as I type I have a tab open with a live auction where I’m bidding for cutlery. I’d never, however, attended a fashion auction before, so when I saw a dress (Chloé by Stella McCartney from Autumn-Winter 2001, ox-blood georgette, with a boned midriff panel and black stencilled face on the hip) up for auction, I decided not just to bid on my phone, but to nip there in the flesh.

I wasn’t going to get married in white – regarding virginity the jig was probably up, but also I wanted something I’d wear again, and much as I try and fight it I don’t have the lifestyle for white. I do, however, have the lifestyle for things that are blood-coloured and printed in abstract fashions that might conceal a stain, so this dress (estimated price £150) was perfect. I arrived soon after the auction had begun. It was a vast-windowed shopfront on a busy road near the river – the C10 bus dragged past the estate opposite, dog walkers peered in. I accepted a paddle and crept inside. The room was empty except for four serious employees taking silent bids on the telephone, and behind six rows of plastic seats a young woman with greyish blue curls and silver jewellery, who logged sold prices in a little sketch book. At the back of the room an army of naked white mannequins watched with plastic despair or maybe excitement (not sure, they were headless).

I sat in the fourth row and waited patiently for lot 148. The auctioneer, who wore a black double-breasted pinstripe suit, small moustache and slick side parting, was about to sell a Dolce & Gabbana dress to an online buyer (“Fair warning at £200, I’ll sell for £200…”) and I was pleased to note the pieces appeared to be going for around their estimated prices. The room smelled of dust and old wool, that grandparental perfume one associates with well-stewed beef. Lot 123, “John Galliano, a designer who’s been in the news a lot recently – a pink gown, £550…” The dull thud of the hammer, an employee tried to open her Graze snacks silently so as not to bother the live recording. A line of tables to my right shielded the industrial rails of dresses being bid upon, crammed together as if backstage.

And it did feel as though we were backstage or at least that some safety curtain had been removed – while a high-fashion boutique curates a performance for its clientele, with scented candles and piped music, here all pretence was gone, and the priceless designer pieces not only had prices, but prices that were being shouted out by a man with a hammer, and a Biba jacket was crammed next to an Alaïa dress, and they were suddenly less than fashion and less than clothes, and just things, to be sold. I loved it.

“A Moschino french fries handbag from 2014, Jeremy Scott, fast food meets fast fashion, and fast bidding,” the auctioneer said, pleased with himself – its price rose as an online bidder silently fought with someone on the phones. The sense of anticipation hummed in £20 increments, and the hammer fell at £1,000. I shifted a little in my seat. As my lot approached, I considered how much I should pay for something I hadn’t even touched. Surely, hopefully, nobody else would want a dress that was basically brown, a dress that, judging by the pictures, was almost certainly uncomfortable under the tits. Still, I slipped another £100 into the budget in my head just in case. My kids could eat plain pasta next week – they’d be thrilled.

I felt as if I was about to sit an exam or perform my batmitzvah – the nerves mixed with the elderly smell propelled me into a particularly anxious chapter of my personal nostalgia. And then my lot arrived, and I prepared to raise my hand. Except, said the auctioneer, they weren’t going to start this bloody dress at £100 like most of the other lots (a Vivienne Westwood ensemble including shoes went for under £300), because there was “a lot of interest here”. He opened bidding at £360. £480, £620, “My American bidder at £900… Fair warning?” It sold for £1,170. I kept my face appropriately blank, like an Oscar nominee kindly clapping the winner they’d lost to, then walked solemnly down towards London Bridge empty handed. My friend texted me sadly, “Might have to go to a shop.”

Image by Alamy