William Vintage of London Broken Into, Ransacked

He hasn't said a word about whether there were cameras or leads on the thieves....I halfway wonder if they do and he can't elaborate on FB or Twitter.
 
What a horrible thing to happen! I hope he had cameras or whatever - one should think with that kind of merchandise they should at least have that or even better, an alarm system. I've read a lot on art robberies and all that's connected to that lately - mainly because I'm interested in art, and because a very-well known private art collection here in Zurich was robbed just a few years ago in quite a spectacular way. The two paintings that remained missing have been found and have returned only a few weeks ago. Anyway, I do see the similarities between art and vintage fashion like William obviously sells - you can't re-sell it because the pieces are too unique, and well known on the scene. Which does make one wonder, why robberies like that happen. With art it is often so that the thugs actually try to extort money from museums or insurance companies, or that they will use whatever they've robbed as pawns in drug deals and such. What I've read over and over again though is that the crazy rich collector who "orders" famous paintings to be stolen for him, is a myth.
Still, it does seem strange what people want to do with stolen vintage couture (a painting cut out of it's frame is still a lot handier if you want to hide it away for some time because you're hoping for ransom...). Maybe they really are crazy enough and still believe they can sell it. Vintage fashion may be trendy now, but a lot of people out there still know very little about it! Time will tell!

Karin
 
Karin, it's not exactly a myth. You're familiar with high profile cases because those are the famous, daring and high dollar situations, but art theft is a huge industry. It's estimated that about $6 billion (USD) of art is stolen every year. Very little of it is recovered, often because it isn't discovered missing until long after it's been taken (and sometimes only after the piece goes on the market --- the owner sees it listed in an auction and realizes "Hey! That's my painting!") The authorities simply don't know where much of it is, and if someone isn't holding it for ransom or trying to sell it, then someone with another purpose has it.

There really are crazies who just take things because they are obsessed. If you haven't read the story of Stephane Breitwieser, you should. It's fascinating --- and quite tragic when it comes to what happened to many of his stolen pieces. Maybe there's an equally obsessed vintage fan out there.
 
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