By: Hunter Ding

Star Wars is a highly celebrated film franchise. It has a vast fan base, years of movie production, and includes several spin-offs. Props, Costumes, or most anything from the original films would be extremely valuable to a devoted collector. And such an item would present itself in a film and television memorabilia auction in Los Angeles. The Princess Leia dress from Star Wars: A New Hope, was put on auction with a minimum bid of one million dollars. It was expected to bring in two million, and with good reason, because it was an extremely significant film icon. However, it fell just short of the required price, the highest bid being $975,000. As a result, the gown was unsold and continues to accept post-auction bids.

The dress was featured in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, during the final scene when Princess Leia crowns Luke Skywalker and Hans Solo heroes of the rebellion. After the creation of the movie, it was transferred into the hands of a British crew member to keep as a memento. A friend of his took it to a party, where it was then stained with food, wine, and (somehow) blood. It was then left to collect dust in an attic in London. So, when it was retrieved and had to be restored to museum-level excellence, the textile conservators working on the restoration of the dress had their work cut out for them. And in the end, the dress was restored with “archival precision”.

However, the revived state of the dress and the success of Star Wars as a whole weren’t enough to secure a sale, even while many other film items at the auction were purchased far above their estimated prices, like the clown doll from the horror movie Poltergeist, fetching 656 thousand dollars and a spider-like head prop from John Carpenter’s horror movie “The Thing from Another World” retrieving 587 thousand. The highest bid on the dress was well below the minimum asking price, and therefore the sale was not assured. However, the dress continues to accept offers. “It may be sold after the auction in a private-treaty sale. Or maybe re-offered again in a future auction,” says Propstore, the company behind the auction.

There are many possibilities for this dress, because of its reputation as a very celebrated film icon. It hit very close to the asking price of one million dollars and, being a renowned dress from a celebrated film franchise, there’s a large likelihood that it will be obtained by someone devoted enough to collecting–and there are quite a lot of those people. But, given its cultural significance for the movie industry, it’s also probable that it will end up in a museum display case. Either way, it’s unlikely that its future will end up bleak.