In June 2019, a shabby but otherwise unremarkable parcel arrived at the London home of Geoffrey Rayner and Richard Chamberlain. The collectors of 20th-century design had waited months for the package – so long, in fact, that they had almost given up hope of ever receiving the silk dress inside.
The pair’s mission to locate the garment had begun almost a decade before, in the depths of the V&A Museum’s library, where a 60-year-old copy of Glamour magazine alerted them to the design’s existence. In the small print of a four-page article, an image of a dress in the same, distinctive print was credited simply: “Bright Butterflies, designed by Andy Warhol”.
