Paul Brockmann’s wife Margot is arguably the luckiest woman in the world. Over the five decades of their marriage, her husband has given her a staggering 55,000 dresses!
In the ultimate romantic gesture, Paul, now 78, gave Margot, 76, a new dress every time the pair went ballroom dancing, leading him to buy dozens of gowns every week.
Fittingly, the pair met at a dance back in the 1950s, a day that Paul says “changed his life”.
“Margot is the love of my life and has remained so to this very day,” German-born Paul writes on his website, www.55thousanddresses.com. “I followed her to the United States and was disowned by my own family for doing so.”
“[Margot and I] went ballroom dancing every week, and I wanted her to have a different dress for every dance.”
“I loved seeing her dance and began collecting dresses for her. I would envisage Margot dancing in the dress, the look of it, the sound of it, and buy dress after dress for her to wear when we danced.”
“The collection grew as I searched far and wide at estate sales, department stores, yard sales and antique shows.”
Sometimes Paul brought home up to 30 dresses in one day. Price and size was no obstacle either.
“If there was a dress that I liked, I could visualise what she would look like in it,” he writes. “And I had to have it. Even if it was the wrong size.”
“You know, it’s a crazy idea, but I kept thinking maybe my wife [would grow] into them, whether losing weight or gaining.”
Even Margot struggled to keep up with her husband’s fascination with the gowns, many of which have never been worn.
Paul says he was never one to notice designer names but he’s now discovering he scored vintage treasures that date back to the 1940s from designers such as Oscar de La Renta and Vera Wang.
Sadly, after a bout of ill-health and increasing storage costs – the dresses take up six shipping containers – the pair has been forced to sell the collection via their website.
But diehard romantic Paul isn’t letting everything go.
“I do have some of my favourites that aren’t for sale,” he told Huffpost UK lifestyle.
“From the very first one I bought my wife, to the one that makes the perfect swoosh sound.”
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