‘What do you think of contemporary art?’ — the question that sparked Peter Simon’s extraordinary collecting journey

It is ironic that the catalyst for the fashion brand Monsoon began in a nudist colony in Ibiza. But there was a time, in the ramshackle yet glorious 1960s, when even the most hallucinatory aspects of the counter-culture could be manufactured into reality.

Peter Simon was in his early twenties when he escaped a stultifying career as a sales rep to become a long-haired hippy on the little Balearic island. His time was spent reading Karl Marx, wandering the artisan markets and contemplating the deep cosmic blue of the ocean.

When the money ran out, he returned to London, bringing something of that bohemian spirit with him in the shape of hand-crocheted shaggy coats. He sold them on the Portobello Road to girls from Chelsea, and their popularity inspired him to look for other handicrafts. ‘What really turned me on was hand-block printing,’ he says. ‘I was up for anything that was anti-industry or anti-corporate.’

The Beatles had recently returned from an ashram in Rishikesh, dazzling in their traditional Indian robes. ‘Why not go there?’ he thought. The trade winds were with him. He took the backpacker route through Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan to Rajasthan, where he learned about vegetable dyes and hand-loomed cotton, and how each colour needed to be overlaid separately to create intricate patterns. He returned to London with hand-block-printed clothes and opened his first shop in Knightsbridge in 1973.

Monsoon’s nomadic style brought something of the salt-blue skies and sun-scattered diamond seas of Ibiza to England’s grey shores. Jane Seymour, fresh from playing Solitaire in Live and Let Die, modelled its first collection, her undone hair and natural beauty chiming with Monsoon’s laid-back, holiday vibe. Before long, every suburban young woman in England could live out the fantasy of being a free-spirited Bond girl. By 1990, Monsoon was on its way to becoming a global fashion brand.

Having spent much of his career sifting through portfolios of textile designs, Simon had trained his eye in colour balance and composition, so when he began visiting contemporary art exhibitions in the mid-1990s, he was gratified to discover that he had a talent for recognising a good picture.

‘I was immediately struck by Howard Hodgkin’s works,’ he says. ‘He was a great colourist, and I loved the way he painted his picture frames.’ Four paintings by Hodgkin are offered in Monsoon: The Peter Simon Collection at Christie’s in London during Frieze Week in October, including the vibrant Florida Garden (1996-97).

Like Simon, Hodgkin was a regular traveller to India, and he credited the country with inspiring his striking palette: ‘Everyone needs a “somewhere else” in their lives,’ he once said. Other artists in Simon’s collection with a connection to India include Bridget Riley, who travelled extensively in the country in the 1980s. Her paintings reflect the visual rhythms, colours and intense heat, shimmering mirage-like on the horizon. The auction features three works by Riley, including Streak 2 (1979), which featured in major retrospectives at Tate Britain in 2003 and the National Galleries of Scotland in 2019.

As Monsoon Accessorize became a global business, with outlets in 84 countries, Simon began expanding his collection’s reach. He bought blue-chip works by Joan Miró, Piet Mondrian, Francis Bacon and Willem de Kooning, and developed a keen appreciation of home-grown modernists such as Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth. ‘I especially liked their use of colour and sometimes primitive, craft-like compositions,’ he says.

Simon also sought out art that resonated with the brand’s history. Alighiero Boetti, of the Arte Povera movement, had established a workshop in Afghanistan in the 1970s, where he employed women to embroider huge maps of the world. The artist was interested in Western systems of thought and how such classifications could be subverted. He invited the seamstresses to bring their own cultural history to the maps, which they did by decorating the borders in Persian texts that articulated the current political situation in Afghanistan.

The gallerist Thomas Dane says that ‘the pioneering, even nomadic spirit of Boetti’ is uncannily similar to that of Peter Simon: ‘In the 1970s, while Peter was wandering up and down the hippy trail with clothes and fabrics, Boetti himself was carrying tapestries made in Kabul back to Europe, rolled up in his backpack.’

In 1998, Simon travelled with Dane to Brazil for the 24th Bienal de São Paulo. ‘One work stood out for Simon that was to become the bedrock of the Monsoon collection,’ says Dane. Kimsooja’s Bottari Truck is a two-ton lorry filled with fabrics, which the Korean-born conceptual artist drove through Asia and Central and South America. ‘It reminded me of the bundles of hand-block-printed fabrics that would come on three-wheelers from the printing villages around Jaipur, to be tailored into creations by Monsoon’s designers,’ says Simon. The work came to symbolise the collector’s own journey and his sense of adventure.

It was also in Brazil that Simon met Beatriz Milhazes. ‘The visit to her studio proved to be an irresistible, decisive, colourful epiphany,’ says Dane. ‘Her paintings drift sensually through such diverse influences as Tropical Baroque, Piet Mondrian and Pucci designs.’

Dane considers the Peter Simon Collection to be ‘one of those truly affirmative, original endeavours’. It charts the collector’s journey from Ibiza through Afghanistan and India to South America, revealing the same restless curiosity and sense of adventure that inspired him to establish the Monsoon brand in the first place.

As Simon says in the video above: ‘If the collection was to tell a story, I think it’s about someone who was posed a question 35 years ago, “What do you think of contemporary art?”, who then crossed many borders and followed many paths, and the results are here.’

Monsoon: The Peter Simon Collection will be offered across Evening and Day sales (14 and 15 October 2026), in addition to an Online Sale (1-20 October). Viewing takes place from 26 September to 1 October (full exhibition), followed by a highlights exhibition, 8-14 October

Explore Christie’s 20th/21st Century Art London auctions, 14-21 October 2026