Our founder, Karen Augusta, passed away on October 26, 2019 after a  courageous battle with endometrial cancer. During her life, she had dedicated her knowledge and talents to increasing the appreciation of fashion and textiles as an overlooked art form. She purchased, sold and appraised antique clothing, rare laces and textiles over a five decade career. A link to her obituary can be found here.

Augusta Auctions was created in 2000 to assist the family of Sue Varner (The Suzi's), in Farmville, Virginia. Karen and her husband developed the company to market Sue's historic clothing collection after her brutal ax murder. Karen and Sue were colleagues from the early days of the vintage movement. From this tragedy evolved America's premier company for auctioning vintage clothing and historic fashion.

Karen was a member of The Costume Society of America and The Textile Society of America. She served, for thirteen seasons, as a fashion and textile appraiser on the popular PBS series, Antiques Roadshow.

The guiding principles throughout her life were to treat everyone fairly and with compassion. She always went the extra mile to help others and make everyone comfortable. Her warmth and concern for people's needs was genuine.

Incredibly proud of her website and the information it contained, Karen constantly updated its contents as she learned something new. She viewed the site as a teaching tool and the best way to document the incredible pieces that crossed her path. She maintained her past sale archives, photo galleries and the searchable database and made them all available for free to fashion students and researchers around the world.

The staff of Augusta Auctions will continue to incorporate Karen's principles to guide the business as we expand into this new decade.