Collectible Design's $33.5M Lalanne Auction Record
On 22 April 2026, while fashion houses across Milan were debuting editioned furniture at €4,800-and-up, Sotheby’s New York sold fifteen Claude Lalanne bronze mirrors as a single lot for $33.5M — and quietly redrew the ceiling that those same houses are now climbing toward. The price set a new collectible design auction record, the highest ever paid for a work of design at auction, and arrived at the close of a sale — The Collection of Jean and Terry de Gunzburg: Design Masters — that totalled $96M across 107 lots. The mirrors had hung, originally, in the Paris music room of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé. The buyers in Milan a fortnight earlier — Bottega Veneta Casa, Hermès, Louis Vuitton — were watching closely. ...