You rarely hear people talk about Comme des Garçons and describe it as “quite simple, subdued wearable base layers.”

Or comment that “as people age and their bodies change, a lot of Comme des Garçons is very forgiving of that.”

But that’s how Alex Baddeley, director and auctioneer at Kerry Taylor Auctions, describes the breadth of what collector and vintage dealer Octavius La Rosa is putting on the block on Sept. 15 in London.

The Australian, who currently possesses about 4,000 pieces of Comme des Garçons, selected 265 items for the sale, including 18 lots from the brand’s inception in the 1970s and seminal outfits from designer Rei Kawakubo‘s first Paris runway shows in the ’80s.

These include a black polyurethane raincoat with knot details, expected to fetch between 500 and 700 British pounds, and an austere wool pantsuit from her fall 1982 “Pirates” collection, estimated to sell for 800 to 1,200 pounds.

Items with more fireworks include a multitartan ensemble from spring 2006 and a wistful, delicate creation from the fall 2005 “Broken Bride” collection that left the audience in tears.

Baddeley marveled that La Rosa “understands the breadth of this brand in a way that few people do, which has allowed him to create a collection that, on the one hand, is museum quality in its appeal, but also fastidiously academic in its scope.

“He’s genuinely really passionate about the subject,” Baddeley added. “You know he’s not just collecting things purely from a business point of view. He loves this stuff.”

Indeed, when La Rosa finally flickered onto the screen of the Teams meeting in late July, he was dressed in a dazzling, colorful striped Comme des Garçons suit and relating how he was the very first person in line when the Met’s Costume Institute hosted a Rei Kawakubo retrospective in 2017.

(Incidentally, he’s never met the Japanese designer, but he waved at her at the Costume Institute show and she bowed at visitors at one point.)

La Rosa said he’s parting ways with the crème de la crème of his personal collection to help fund the evolution of his Dot Comme business, based out of his Melbourne store for the past 15 years. He plans to move it to a larger location in September. He also operates a web store.

Last June, he opened a permanent Paris outpost at 1 Rue de l’Abbaye, and he plans to open a second location as a resource for fashion historians, designers and museums, with a rental service layered on at a later date.

“I’d love to do some some exhibitions as well,” he noted.

La Rosa said he secured most of his Comme finds on online auctions, but he also has scored big time at some thrift shops in Japan.

“That was many years ago.…It’s much harder these days,” he commented. “I started out buying [Comme des Garçons] to wear, of course, but also I’ve always been a collector. I love organizing and categorizing things, and so I kind of just blended the the two together.”

According to Baddeley, Kerry Taylor Auctions set a world auction record for a Comme des Garçons design last June when a “major museum” paid 65,000 pounds for a deliberately tattered sweater and skirt from the fall 1982 “Holes” collection.

He expects the oldest items from La Rosa’s collection to attract the fiercest bidding and highest selling prices. The sale also includes looks from Kawakubo’s acolyte Junya Watanabe.

The auctioneer cited heightened interest in Japanese design. “Even with vintage pieces, they still feel remarkably new to people,” he said. “These pieces retain the genius of their design, and so the appeal seems to be really broad.

“A lot of fashion has become quite boring, and with Comme des Garçons, it has never been safe. So whenever you wear it, you’re going to feel different and special.”

Baddeley also flagged burgeoning interest in fashion auctions, which are proliferating and attracting more individual collectors, and not just dealers and museums.

“Especially with single-owner sales, we have a much greater ability to tell a story, to curate things in a certain way, and I think that creates something even more special,” he remarked.