When she was eleven, Beverley Birks retrieved her grandmother’s collection of custom-made clothes from the trash. Thus began what eventually grew into one of the largest private collections of 20th Century haute couture. Until the 1980s she had little trouble acquiring vintage couture for reasonable prices. But a Christie’s auction in 1979 woke up the appreciation and thus the market of old Chanels and Diors. Restoration costs also ate into Birks’ pocketbook and she eventually quit her job as an art dealer to become a dealer in her main hobby, selling a percentage of her always growing couture collection to museums and other dealers. A partial database of Birks’ collection is available for searching online. There are also pages of representative images from her vast trove. (source: Architectural Digest, Oct 1994)