An evening gown embroidered with gold thread. A silk batik caftan. A wedding dress made for a beloved niece. The stories of women’s lives that each has to tell.

Australian fashion curator Charlotte Smith immediately fell in love with a collection of more than 3,000 dresses and accessories -- many designer originals -- she inherited from her American godmother, a renowned couture collector, six years ago.

“I’d never even considered vintage clothing before. Vintage clothing was used clothing, it was other people’s clothing,” Smith said.

“That was my initial impression and it remained that way until it arrived and I started pulling out the collection. It’s been quite an adventure.”

Now the collection, dating from 1790 to the present and including originals by Dior, Ungaro, Lucile and Chanel, has grown to 6,000 pieces and Smith has published two books chronicling stories of the dresses and the women who wore them, including the new Dreaming of Chanel.

Many of the tales were written down in a book by Smith’s godmother, Doris Darnell, that came to Smith along with the original collection. All are true.

Dreaming of Chanel follows Dreaming of Dior, both filled with drawings by fashion illustrator Grant Cowan.

Colourful illustrations of dresses and accessories are paired with brief written vignettes, by turns bright, bold, demure and romantic, to tell the tales of 140 outfits from the collection.

“I get asked a lot about why we didn’t want to use photographs; the reason being that we wanted to keep it beautiful and to keep that sort of nostalgic kind of fantasy, dream quality,” she said.

Parts of the collection have been displayed in temporary exhibits and may be seen at darnellcollection.com.