History will be made by history on June 20th when Kerry Taylor Auctions launches its two day Passion for Fashion sale. There are plenty of notable vintage pieces (Alaïa, Hermès, Balenciaga, Chanel, et al) in the 557 lots on offer, but it is day one, dedicated to 147 lots from the collection of the Brighton, UK-based vintage dealer Mr. Steven Philip, which is particularly breathtaking. To anyone at all interested in the history of British fashion in the ’70s and ’80s—Philip is, to a staggeringly encyclopedic degree, because he lived it —the sale represents the chance to own something that could just sit just as easily in a museum as your own closet. (Actually, given the rarity and provenance of what he’s selling, the former is likely a more appropriate place than the latter.)

What makes it special? Rarer than rare full looks from some of the late Vivienne Westwood’s most innovative and influential collections: Pirates from 1981, or Nostalgia of Mud from 1982, or 1989’s Britain Must Go Pagan. John Galliano is healthily represented by the likes of a vest from his Les Incroyables degree collection in 1984, complete with original sketch and swatches, and the earliest examples of his exemplary bias-cutting skills, which date from the late ’80s, when he was living and designing in London. Also included is John Flett, a name known only by a few these days; if there’s any justice in the world, the sale should bring him back to the fore. These lots are sprinkled among pieces with fascinating back stories: a 1977 Westwood punk tee owned by the fabulous Pete Burns of Dead or Alive (he and Philip were friends) or a 1983 Witches ensemble by Westwood that belonged to Malcolm McLaren’s then girlfriend Lauren Hutton.

“Steven has always understood what is important, and he appreciates what is important,” says Kerry Taylor, the first auctioneer to recognize the importance of the punk and post-punk landscape of British fashion. “There are real fashion moments here.” Taylor’s own favorites include the early punk things, the 1982 Westwood toga dress with a gold bra (inspired, she says, by Westwood seeing women in South Africa wearing bras over their clothes as status symbols) or her slash and cut denim, inspired by an Elizabethan technique: “It wasn’t punk, it was historicist,” she says. And, of course, Galliano, such as the kimono coat from his 1985 collection The Ludic Game. “There were journalists fighting to get into that show, and Anna Piaggi was stuck outside, going nuts,” recalls Taylor, laughing. “In the end John did the show twice. It was crazy, wonderful, all these wonderful bird shapes. The kimono…it’s the only one I know of.”

Mr. Steven Philip chatted, in an erudite, thoughtful and wittily honest manner, over zoom for an hour-plus about buying and building his collection, and why he’s now ready to sell at least some of it. What follows is a condensed version of that call. As for what’s next, Philip plans to use his remaining archive as an educational resource for young people looking to be inspired and informed about what makes great fashion; for him, it’s not just the design, but the uncompromising ethical stance that his favorite designers so often took. In other words: Fashion’s past can and should be instrumental in shaping its future.

Can we chat first about how you started, Steven? You began by selling vintage at Portobello Market in London, right?

Portobello at that time—this was 30 years ago—was a wonderful, wonderful place, and almost like a hornet’s nest for so many designers; you could find ideas right there from the 1920s through to the 1980s. I’d already done so many things in my life: I’d traveled with a friend who was a musician, been all over America, been all over the world. I’d been very fortunate but I’d come back from America and thought, what am I going to do for a living? It was the ’90s, and it was a very gray time. It was the time of minimalism; you’d be walking along Oxford Street, and it would just be a sea of gray coming at you. I thought, Where’s the color? Where are the laughs?

What did you start out selling?

I knew a lot of people that wore Vivienne Westwood, including myself. So I thought, I am going to do vintage Westwood. The Japanese market was craving so many things from her. I could buy it because people were growing up, they were having kids, everybody had moved on: The guy who once ran around with Spandau Ballet wearing a [Westwood World’s End] pirate sash didn’t want it anymore. There was a lot of [Westwood] around—the mini crinnies, the Harris Tweed tailoring, pieces from her Savages or Witches collections…. People would come by the stall and say, “Oh my god, you’ve got that Westwood from the ’80s!’ It wasn’t difficult to find, because a lot of it was still in London and I just kept searching and searching. Also, people were coming to me with bags: ‘I’ve got some Westwood. I hear that you’ll buy it.’ But we didn’t value it then as we do now. Nobody thought to keep things in acid free tissue paper; that things would end up in museums. And that was the wonderful thing about it. Now it’s almost expected. We all knew there was money in it, because that’s why I was reselling it. But not the prices that these pieces, 20 years, 30 years, later would command—$15,000, $20,000.

I love that even Malcolm McLaren borrowed from you!

Malcolm once came to visit me. I had this tiny studio apartment in Portobello and that’s when I was buying up lots of punk stuff and it was all in trash bags. So Malcolm is coming up, and I had never met him before, and I looked around, and I thought, my God, look at the state of this place. He came in, and he’s pulling things out of the bags, and I said, I’m really sorry. He said, ‘This is fantastic! They were never meant to be in acid free tissue paper. They were meant to be worn today.’ When he took them for an exhibition he was doing, he put the clothes on the floor, under glass, so you would walk all over the punk stuff.

I first heard about you via your business Rellik in Notting Hill, which was less of a vintage store and more of a legendary mecca for fashion that we all thought was unfindable….

A few friends and I set up Rellik, where we concentrated on the best of British. It was very successful and I enjoyed that for 15 years. I left as I didn’t want to find other things to sell; into other arenas just because they were in vogue, like ’50s dresses, so you’d have to sell those. It was going against everything I wanted to do. So I sold my share in Rellik, and then I moved to Brighton to put a studio together, I knew I could bring half my archives. You’ve got to remember, along the way I’ve bought and sold thousands of pieces. You buy and sell, buy and sell. But I always sold the rubies and kept the diamonds, actually; well, I also sold a few diamonds! The majority of what I have is from that ’80s period, but I have other pieces. I started collecting Japanese designers too; I have a beautiful collection of them. I’ve got a collection of everything actually.

Let’s talk more generally about the London fashion scene in the ’80s, because it was an incredibly fertile and, in relatively current parlance, disruptive time.

I came from Dundee in Scotland to London. Everybody thinks that Westwood was a London movement, but it was a British movement, even then. You’d have people coming from Manchester, from Liverpool, from Dundee, and you’d buy a piece and then go back home. I was going down to London now and again and enjoyed it, buying a piece of clothing. Once when I came down I thought, I’m going to stay here. London in the ’80s was amazing because I could touch the fashion.

All those ’80s designers…Vivienne Westwood, John Galliano, Judy Blame, Richard Torry…I mean, I could keep going on. Christopher Nemeth, who used cut up postal sacks for his first collection. All of this was so exciting. Nobody I knew wore Saint Laurent then. You wore Saint Laurent if you were going to [the aristo nightclub ] Annabel’s. The ’80s was the only time that I know which was all based on these young people.

Tell me about your decision to sell some of your collection.

I’d been buying so many pieces at auction, because the auctions were changing as well. They were moving with the modern times, particularly because of one auctioneer, Kerry Taylor, who was with Sotheby’s, and then set up by herself. She was the first person to sell Westwood, among others, and she was right to do that. We had to look to the future, think about what are going to be the new collectibles. So, when I moved down to Brighton, it was me back with my kids, back with my children, and I was still the hunter and gatherer, I’d go to any place for a piece. I was known as Steven Westwood at one point, for God’s sake! [Laughs] But that line of Yves Saint Laurent’s, these things are only passing through your life. I always felt that too many pieces, when I would go and buy them, would have been in wardrobes for 20 years and more, or hidden away. And I believed that other people should see and share them. When I turned 60 a year or two ago, I thought, this is the time.

I was looking at the catalog for the auction you’re part of, which has 147 lots from your collection. What amazed me was how many of those lots were complete looks. That’s particularly impressive, as so many people back in the day bought a piece here and a piece there—and then wore them to death.

The reason that a lot of people looked at my collections is that I wasn’t a collector where I had had one blouse from YSL, or one jacket from Chanel in 1986 or something. That doesn’t appeal to me. A Westwood Pirates shirt, just by itself, doesn’t appeal to me. What always appealed to me was the jigsaw, that’s what I call it, and I’ve always been looking to find that missing piece of the jigsaw. So, what I wanted was the pirate suit: the brocade jacket, the brocade trousers, the waistcoat, the squiggle shirt, the squiggle sash, the hammerhead toed boots—not the pirate boots. And to get all that together, when you’ve completed it, that was my excitement, that was my thrill, because that’s the way designers would see it when they were putting it on the catwalk. I always wanted the whole look.

You mentioned jigsaw, so are you only ever putting things together, rather than buying them as full looks?

Well, you’ve got to build it. You’ll never buy things as a full look, well, very rarely. I mean, I found a full pirate outfit once, but they hardly ever come up like that. I sold it through Kerry, oh God, 14 years ago for $12,000. But this is a great story. This sums it all up. I sold a John Galliano ensemble from his Afghanistan Repudiates Western Ideals collection that he did in 1985, and Kerry estimated it as $10,000 to $12,000. This was about six years ago. Now, that suit broke a world record and it sold for £72,000. The Met bought it, by the way—and they were bidding against another museum.

Everyone asked me how much it cost me to buy it. Putting it together it was 10 years of my life. I went to New York for the shirt. A girl had it, and she had planned to sell it to someone else, but then changed her mind. I was going to New York anyway, not specifically to get that shirt, and I had £2,000 in cash in an envelope with me. When I went to see her, I said, look, I’ve got money with me right now, and she said, OK, I will sell it. I had to do a lot of hard work to get that look together, and it took me 10 years to do it.

I have to say—though we hardly needed reminding of it—that the Westwood you have underscores just how singularly talented and visionary she was.

With Vivienne, I wanted to do a line of her work that was important to me. I wanted to start, not at the very beginning [of her career], Let It Rock, because that wasn’t me—that’s the one moment that’s missed out. It’s very difficult to get pieces from it. So I started from my world, what I had been drawn to, so Sex, then you’ve got Pirates, then Savages, then Hoboes, then Witches…the Keith Haring stuff.

I was very proud to go through the timelines of her career. There was nothing I missed. And the great corsetry pieces — and let’s add some of the ensembles. Wonderful ideas. The beautiful tartans. The blown-up prints which were based on old Hollywood and 1930s Rolls Royces. Oh my God, there’s some amazing things that she created in the ’90s.

When the world was going flat, Vivienne was going high. When the world was going baggy, Vivienne was going tighter. Some of the corsetry, some of the work involved in some of it and the tailoring involved in it: It’s just beautiful. And she needs to be recognized for that.

You mentioned going high: You have several of the platforms in your sale, which became infamous when Naomi fell wearing them….

The models found them difficult. So Vivienne would walk in them just to show that you could. Now, those platforms are not plentiful. They now go from anything from £5,000 to £10,000. The last pair was done in 2000. [In the sale] there is a pair of boots in particular, black, elevated, super-elevated, almost fetish, with stitching like a sewn-up closure over a mouth. There was only ever one pair made for a men’s show. Nobody knows where that pair went. But the woman that purchased these, she bought many special things from Vivienne, and she wanted a custom pair, because she’d seen them in the show. If my collection was all shoes, I’d want them, as they are the only pair.

What might be one of your favorite Westwood moments in this auction?

Lot 64, from the Anglomania collection. I’ve got a great memory of this show. You must watch it. We put a little bit of it on Instagram, where you see Linda [Evangelista] walking. That was a great moment. She ruled that catwalk. She cut up everybody else and she went back up and back down again. It was Vivienne letting the models do their own thing. Like Martin Margiela, when the models would go in for the show and they’d say, how do you want me to walk? Like you’re going to the shop. There wasn’t any of that at the big houses, where you had to walk this way, or you had to walk that way.

Let’s talk about Galliano for a moment, because the pieces you are selling are also jaw dropping. I’m tempted to plunder my savings for that kimono from one of his earliest collections, The Ludic Game! Back in the day, I saw a shot of it from the runway show, where it was worn by model Lizzie Tear, tied at the waist with string, in, I think, Blitz magazine, and I was obsessed! I know you’re also selling the knit dress with the champagne cork buttons which is also super rare….

I never thought I would get that. But many, many years ago, I tracked one down, and squirreled it away. I didn’t realize there were only ever four of them. Someone you might know has the short one, but we don’t know of any others. It was very rare to pick that up.

I was also thrilled to see that you had someone like the late John Flett, whose work was so brilliant, but we see so little of it. It’s sad that he is barely remembered by the fashion world.

What John Flett created in that short time was amazing. I have eight, 10 pieces. So I decided to put two in this sale. I think if you go on Instagram, you’ll see my favorite. It’s a gray pinstriped suit. The cut on it’s just amazing. To buy that, I don’t know, I think it’s estimated at £400 to £600, but to buy it even at a grand is nothing.

If you were interested in the ’80s, buy that bit of John Flett, because you’ll never ever let it go, if you’re young today. That’s another thing. I’d like new collectors to start. And you don’t have to collect everything that I collected. But if you’re going to look at British fashion, you kind of get Galliano for the money. You kind of get a Westwood. But why would you not want John Flett? Why would you not want Christopher Nemeth? Why not Richard Torry? Or Sue Clowes?

Was it hard to part with any of what you’re selling?

You’ve got to understand it’s like any of the collectors or archivers, I sold many things to make the money. You do try and keep the best. But the secret for me or the excitement was building that up. The jigsaw is now complete. So it’s time for me to dismantle the jigsaw. It doesn’t mean that everything’s going, I’ll just have a small selection. I’ll never sell my Leigh Bowery jacket. And so I’ll still be able to have, oh God, eight pieces of Westwood and definitely 20 Galliano quite easily. But for me, if I didn’t break it up now, I’d never move on and I want to move on.

To anyone who wants to start collecting, what would be your advice?

If I could say on a financial side, if you’re going to collect something, you’ve got to have all the parts. If you’re happy with having one piece, two pieces of this, that’s great.But if you put it all together, as it was in the show, financially it will be worth your while. Also it will be worth your while spiritually. Just because it’s exciting to do it.