A few weeks ago I bought a beautiful neon-pink silk dress from the estate of the great actress Hannelore Elsner at an auction for 520 euros (including buyer's premium).

This is guaranteed, also because I wrote an article about it that appeared in the FAZ magazine, a newspaper that Bild has described several times as "serious".

It is also guaranteed that the dress found a buyer within a few minutes at the - also reputable - online shop Rebelle for 600 euros.

That filled me with relief at the time, because it gave the newspaper its money back.

But it also nurtured doubts in me: Had I sold the dress below value?

Timo Frasch

Political correspondent in Munich.

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In any case, it was perfectly clear to me that the new owner, whoever it was, presumably a reader of the FAZ magazine, was not only fascinated by the material that the dress was made of, but also by the material that it gradually became a legend: worn by Elsner in 2008 on the occasion of the awarding of the German Film Prize in Berlin, then an object of discreet desire at an auction, and finally the protagonist in a two-page magazine article.

Nothing happened for weeks

And the legend should be spun further: At my request, Rebelle asked the buyer whether he or she could imagine being available for an interview for a continuation of the great Elsner dress story and thus becoming part of it himself . For that alone, some people would give up their shirt. But nothing happened for weeks. Then came a call from Rebelle, more precisely from a strict goods inspector. I thought she would tell me now that our sales proceeds have been credited to the account. Instead, she informed me that the buyer had withdrawn from their purchase. Reason: There were no labels on the dress. So it could not be guaranteed with 100 percent that the dress, as I had stated in the ad and in the article, was actually by Jil Sander.

I was completely offended.

I could never have imagined that the buyer of this dress, which had come about in such a unique way that he had to believe it was a coincidence, could value something as mundane as labels, yes, that he could possibly be in the dress just saw a status symbol or, worse, an investment for more expensive resale.

And even if: Doesn't the dress become much more valuable, ideally as materially, if you know or at least can imagine that Hannelore Elsner found the labels to be possibly uncomfortable on her velvety-soft skin and therefore she used a small pair of nail scissors with which she usually found it used to do her manicure, carefully severed it?

A fashion expert confirms the origin

The truth is, I didn't even notice that the labels were missing. But shouldn't the auction house where I bought the dress have drawn attention to this? I follow up. It is said of Neumeister in Munich that Ms. Elsner "often removed the labels from the clothes". The cut, style, color and material suggested, however, that it was a Jil Sander dress. “A fashion expert whom we consulted confirmed this assumption.” Neumeister estimates that the probability that the dress is from Jil Sander is “very high”. Without a label, however, it is “not certain”, as indicated in the auction catalog with a question mark after the designer name.

With this information I turn back to the strict authenticity checker at Rebelle. You remain skeptical. Especially with some designer brands such as Chanel, Hermès, Prada or Louis Vuitton, more and more fakes are in circulation that even fashion experts can rarely identify as such. Further FAZ research then shows that the dress was not only demonstrably worn by Hannelore Elsner on the red carpet in Berlin, but was also presented on the catwalk in September 2007 - at a show by the Jil Sander brand in Milan!

So everything speaks in favor of the fact that the first buyer stole an absolute bargain himself.

He gave me the opportunity to make the price a little rounder and, above all, more realistic: 1000 euros.

This is still a ridiculous price, after all, the dress has gained another episode since the last sale, comparable to the shredded Banksy work, which multiplied its value after its partial destruction.

So what are you waiting for ?! 

On rebelle.com you can find the dress from this Saturday under the keyword "Hannelore Elsner" - and buy it.