This week, Sotheby’s rolls out the red carpet for The Art of Glamour, a landmark auction of historic vintage haute couture and ready-to-wear from the personal collection of Palm Beach resident Alixandra Fitzwilliam-Tate Baker, Baroness of Gray. For the first time, the public is invited into the closet of one of fashion’s most discerning—and dazzling—private collectors.

Tom Ford’s off-white evening gown with matching cape made iconic when Gwyneth Paltrow wore an identical version to the 2012 Academy Awards and Vogue labeled it “one of the greatest Oscar gowns of all time”.

Spanning more than 100 select pieces from the Baroness’ collection of nearly 3,000, the sale is both a curated chronicle of couture history as well as a tribute to the transformative power of fashion and the enduring legacy of haute couture as art.

Bidding opens June 2 through 16, with a public exhibition at Sotheby’s New York starting June 6. On offer: museum-worthy gowns, yes—but also pieces meant to be worn, lived in, and admired. Think rustling silks, glittering embroidery, and silhouettes that could make a grand staircase blush. It’s a greatest-hits collection from couture’s golden era: Dior, Balenciaga, Chanel, Givenchy, Madame Grès, and Yves Saint Laurent all make an appearance. And so do their former muses—many of these garments once belonged to fashion’s brightest stars, including Audrey Hepburn, Maria Ellington Cole, and Rosamond Bernier.

Audrey Hepburn’s haute couture pink silk-crêpe sheath by Hubert de Givenchy, Fall-Winter 1966-67.

“There are few fashion collections in the world that can make you gasp in sheer astonishment—and Baroness Alixandra Fitzwilliam-Tate Baker’s does exactly that,” says Lucy Bishop, Sotheby’s Fashion Specialist. “Stepping into her purpose-built wardrobe vault is like stepping into a dream—taffeta rustling, jewel-toned silks shimmering, and couture that belongs in a museum nestled next to devastatingly glamorous ready-to-wear. This is a collector’s dream—and a vintage lover’s fantasy.”

If it all sounds impossibly grand, well, so is the woman behind it. Born in the U.S. but descended from European nobility, the Baroness’s ancestral barony dates back to King James II in 1445. Her titles may be historic, but her sensibility is modern and exacting. She holds degrees from Marymount Manhattan and the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, and trained in haute couture embroidery at École Lesage in Paris. Her take on couture? “The visual poetry of the past.”

Now based in Palm Beach, the Baroness is as known for her needlework as her nobility. She appears at society events in vintage Oscar de la Renta or custom Balestra—never flashy, always flawless. But don’t mistake refinement for restraint. The collection includes plenty of theatricality: opera capes, embellished tulles, silhouettes, and a decadence born not of trend, but of taste. It’s a wardrobe for a life well-dressed—and well-lived.

In a fashion landscape drowning in logos and normcore, this collection is a love letter to couture as legacy. If fashion is a form of storytelling, The Art of Glamour tells a tale worth bidding on.