LONDON — Kerry Taylor Auctions is landing in the U.S. with a splash, selling the late Peggy Moffitt’s risqué monokini, and scores of other body-con designs by Rudi Gernreich, during online and live events that will take place from May 8 to 22.

The live auction will take place on May 21 at Mana Contemporary arts center in Jersey City, N.J., where Taylor has opened her first U.S. saleroom. The London-based Taylor, who specializes in vintage and contemporary fashion as well as single-owner auctions, said the new space has been a long time coming.

She was all ready to open in 2020, but COVID-19 delayed her plans. “I have so many museum buyers and private collectors based in America, and I feel like the sky is the limit. It’s such a big country, and it didn’t suffer during and after World War II. The Ladies Who Lunch still went to Paris and bought haute couture,” Taylor said in an interview.

She opted for Jersey City, rather than New York, because of the prices, and the Mana building, which is located at 888 Newark Avenue and houses artist studios, exhibition spaces and photography archives.

“It’s not quite New York, but I’m confident people will still come to see us,” said Taylor, who is in the process of putting a U.S. team together and has been working with FIT interns on the Moffitt sale.

A Sotheby’s veteran who opened her auction house in 2003, Taylor has been working her way around the world in pursuit of fashion, antique costume and European, Asian and Islamic textiles.

After Brexit, when trade between the U.K. and Europe became difficult, she opened a Paris showroom in collaboration with Maurice Auction and said the U.S. was a natural next step.

Taylor’s recent, record-breaking auctions include “Empire of Fashion: The Barreto Lancaster Collection of Napoleonic & Regency Dress,” “Martin Margiela: The Early Years, 1988-94,” and “Jean-Paul Gaultier: The Haute Couture Years — The Mouna Ayoub Collection.”

Taylor admits she “can’t resist a collection,” and this one in particular has captured her imagination. Taylor has been working with Moffitt’s son, Christopher Claxton, on the sale.

“Peggy was a performance artist — ‘I perform clothes’ she used to say — and she was obsessed with crazy clothes and the total look, whether that meant dressing like a peacock or a giraffe,” said Taylor, adding that Moffitt wore her arresting outfits well into the ’80s.

Moffitt, who died last August at age 86, always loved dressing up. A Los Angeles native and trained actress, she first met Gernreich when she was in high school, in 1954, and she was working at the Jax clothing boutique in Beverly Hills.

The two would go on to become one of fashion’s best-known double acts. Moffitt, with her distinctive five-point Vidal Sassoon haircut and harlequin eye makeup, acted as muse and model for the Austrian-born, L.A.-based designer famous for his avant-garde, provocative clothing.

They made international headlines when she modeled the designer’s monokini in 1964, with Women’s Wear Daily publishing the topless image. The design, meant to symbolize women’s freedom, sparked immediate outrage.

Lord & Taylor canceled its order, while other stores that opted to carry the monokini received bomb threats. The style was condemned by the Vatican, the Kremlin and the governments of the Netherlands, Denmark and Greece.

At least two American women were arrested for wearing it, but Moffitt always defended the swimsuit, one of many Gernreich designs that Moffitt’s husband William Claxton photographed her wearing. The monokini is lot number 11 in the sale with an estimate of $6,000 to $10,000.

Gernreich loved the female form and was a body-con pioneer. His mission was to free women from corsetry and underpinnings, and he created tubular knit dresses and unstructured swimsuits that followed the natural lines of the body.

Moffitt, who modeled in New York, London and Paris and appeared in the cult fashion films “Blow-up” (1962) and “Who Are You, Polly Maggoo” (1966), owned more than 300 pieces, many one-offs in custom color combinations that were never produced.

She loved them and never stopped wearing them, said Taylor.

While the Gernreich designs make up a large part of the sale, there are also creations by Pierre Cardin, Givenchy and Comme des Garçons, a brand with which Moffitt collaborated in her later years.

Taylor, who described Moffitt as a “truly great American fashion icon,” said the clothes “are as covetable and wearable now as the day they were made, and were diligently cared for during her lifetime. The collection represents a lifelong love affair with fashion and with [Gernreich] in particular.”

In 2013, Moffitt told The Times of London the fact that she was still wearing Gernreich’s clothes 50 years later was “as good a recommendation for someone’s talent as any. The times have changed, but his clothes still hold up for the way we live today.”

The 282-lot collection will be split into an online auction that runs from May 8 to 22 and a live one. Both sales will be open for public viewing from May 18 to 20 at Kerry Taylor Auctions New Jersey saleroom.

Estimates range from around $250 for a wool check dress by Gernreich to a a black jersey evening dress by Gernreich for Bill Cunningham.