How Did Paul Brockmann End Up With 55,000 Dresses? One Purchase at a Time

In the end, it still took a month, working nights and weekends. Paul built dressing rooms and welcomed the public into the warehouse. He has monthly sales now — three so far — with music and food and a social media presence managed by an outgoing young FIDM graduate.

Slowly, the dresses moved.

They sold to vintage-store owners like the lady from Salem, Mass., who bought $17,000 worth. They sold to companies like Urban Outfitters and ModCloth, who re-create retro styles with modern materials; they chop the dresses up and deconstruct the patterns. They sold to textile designers and to high school girls, for prom.

PHOTO BY STAR FOREMAN

Molly Morgan models a dress from the Brockmanns' collection.

PHOTO BY STAR FOREMAN

Paul and Margot Brockmann's dress collection now fills a warehouse.

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Unfortunately for the Brockmanns, however, they have not sold fast enough. At least not fast enough to keep up with the $2,200 a month it costs to lease the warehouse. The place looks as packed as it ever did.

Paul hopes to sell them en masse, in one fell swoop, ideally to a fellow connoisseur. Until such a buyer comes along, the idea of the dresses slowly trickling back out into the world, "being activated" again after their long hibernation, is small consolation.

Can Paul afford to keep paying to store them? "Not my call," says Louise, sifting through paperwork in the warehouse office one Saturday. "I would imagine at some point you have to ask yourself that question. What are you gonna do, put them back in a container? What are they gonna do for you there?" She sighs. "When we started hanging them up, I thought, how are we gonna get rid of all this? I don't know what I was thinking, either." She raps one finger on the desk. "So here we are."

In a minute, her father pops in unannounced. "What are you doing here?" Louise asks, startled.

"I need to go to the mailbox."

Paul offers that he did not buy any dresses this week.

"Are you sure?" Louise says.

A pause and then, "What do you mean, am I sure?" Paul leaves the room, then returns holding an envelope: the rent statement. "I shouldn't have come," he says, sadly.

Her mother, Louise admits, is a patient woman. "To have put up with all of this. I don't know if I would have been that supportive. If he bought 10 to 15 dresses every weekend for the past 50 years?"

Including storage costs, Louise estimates that the dresses represent a $1.5 million investment. Paul was a successful contractor. He did huge jobs, building university buildings, churches and custom homes. These days, though he's well past retirement age, he still works for Louise's company, doing tenant improvements. He cannot afford to stop. "And that hurts my heart," she says.

She does not understand why the dresses are so important to him, although she supposes pride is a factor. "My mom gets compliments every time she goes out," she says. "That must have fueled his constant search. Because what she wore was really a reflection on what he picked out."

The collective weight of 55,000 dresses is a heavy load. It feels almost like responsibilities have switched, Louise confesses. "That I'm a parent and they're my children." But she can't imagine not being there for them.

On a different day, Paul is walking around the warehouse, pointing out which dresses he loves. He might as well close his eyes and point. He loves them all. He picks one up and rustles its taffeta skirt. "You hear the swish?" he asks. "To me, that's about as elegant as it gets. You can't beat it."

Margot shakes her head and walks away from yet another dress she has never worn nor wanted to wear.

As Paul watches her disappear into the racks, a conspiratorial gleam enters his eye. "Listen to this," he whispers. Then in a louder voice, "You know, I could alter it. I could make it fit."

A small commotion erupts from among the dresses, followed by Margot's muffled shout: "We are not altering nothing!"

Paul laughs. "I love this type," he says, pointing to another dress at random. "This one right here. That is class."

The next monthly sale, on Aug. 24, is right around the corner. "None of it feels good," Paul says. "It's a lot harder to sell them one by one than to sell all of them. You sell all of them, you go through that one time. Here, 10 or 15? It repeats itself."

He regrets nothing. And so he must keep reminding himself to think financially, to let them go. "It's best to turn them loose. Much as I hate to."

It has been two months since he bought a dress, the longest he's gone in 56 years. Good timing perhaps. It had been getting harder to find his garment of choice. These days, a ballgown at a yard sale is a rarity rather than the norm.

In the future, if he buys, he swears it will be only one or two. And only if it is a truly outstanding specimen. Any more than that, Louise says, "I think my mother would shoot him."

See also: More photos from the Brockmanns' amazing collection.