Grace Mirabella Auction to Take Place This February

Auctions at Showplace is slated to present 343 lots of fashion, art, and other objects previously owned by the late Grace Mirabella Cahan, former American Vogue Magazine editor in chief. The auction will take place on Feb. 10 in Astoria, a neighborhood in the Queens borough of New York City. Registration for bidding is now open.

Highlights from the sale will include a photograph of Coco Chanel by Horst P. Horst, artworks by Alexander Liberman, furniture by Karl Springer, clothing, jewelry and several awards the late editor earned throughout her career.

Mirabella served as the editor in chief of Vogue from 1971 to 1988. She died at the age of 92 in December 2021.

Following her time at Vogue, Mirabella founded her eponymous magazine, Mirabella, in 1989 with Rupert Murdoch’s Murdoch Magazines. Anna Wintour took over as the editor in chief after Mirabella’s tenure.

“You look back on a career — and I think it’s stupid to do that, I hate to look back, but you do — and I realized I never had any major disappointments. Really. And I look back, too, and I think, ‘Did I really do all that?!’” Mirabella said to WWD about her multidecade career in 2012.

Mirabella was a graduate of Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. An economics major, she began her career in retail with stints at Macy’s and Saks Fifth Avenue before joining Vogue in 1952 as an assistant. She quickly rose through the ranks, becoming an associate under editor in chief Diana Vreeland, who held the position from 1963 to 1971.

“What I’ve always cared about, passionately, is style. Style is how a woman carries herself and approaches the world,” Mirabella said. “It’s about how she wears her clothes and it’s more: an attitude about living. Dressing up in the most expensive thing around has nothing to do with style. Style transcends money, fashion trends, ‘prettiness.’”