From 1997, the year of her divorce, onwards, her life changed, and so did the way she thought about ordering couture. “The second phase of my life, after my divorce, I started ordering like most women, according to occasions, be it weddings, galas, birthdays, parties, whatever,” she says. “But that wasn’t as much fun. It was much more fun to be ordering by instinct than by need; I loved what Galliano did, but a lot of the things I wouldn’t have been able to wear because they wouldn’t have been appropriate.” Lot 11, a Galliano for Dior satin, silk crepe, and lace evening dress with Masai beading (estimate, 80,000-100,000 euros) is an exception. “This was a dress that I fell in love with,” Ayoub says. “I didn’t order it for any occasion because I had just gotten divorced and didn’t know anybody, I wasn’t invited anywhere. I loved it, but I never wore it. That’s why the beads are perfect.”
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Over her years and years of ordering Dior couture, Ayoub got to know each of the designers who led the house, growing closer to some than others. “They each had their own language in expressing Monsieur Dior’s heritage, and each one was very intelligent and emotional, in a way,” she says. The outlier, she says, was Marc Bohan, who, for her, “lacked emotion; he was an excellent designer, very serious, a gentleman, but there was no emotion flowing from his collections.” Gianfranco Ferré, his successor, she was much more in tune with. “Ferré used to say, ‘Mouna is a gift from God for couture’,” she remembers, laughing. “He was the closest to Monsieur Dior; he had fabulous shapes and an abundance of fabric. Unfortunately, the two most beautiful dresses of Ferré’s I owned I donated to the Musée des Arts Decoratifs in Marseilles, so they’re not in this sale.”