When a celebrity's collection of art and furniture goes on the block, buyers are often dazzled by a sense of emulation, especially when that celebrity is a fashion designer with outrageously ornate taste. Such fans may very well have partly accounted for the success on Saturday of Sotheby's two-session sale of items from the late Gianni Versace's New York mansion. The catalogue, after all, featured full-page photos of these objects arrayed in said luxurious home. But Versace, lavish entertainer and friend to stars like Madonna, was known to be discerning about the quality of his art and antiques, and so the sale also lured collectors not seduced by his fame.

The sale totaled $5.9 million, well above its high estimate of $5 million. A whopping 442 lots were offered in two sessions on Saturdaymdash; only 49 didn't manage to find buyers. There was active buying from private collectors, the trade and interior designers alike, according to Sotheby's vice president and the sale's specialist Elaine Whitmire. (Four years ago, Sotheby's brought in $10.2 million selling items from the fashion designer's Miami residence, Casa Casuarina, where he was murdered in 1997.)

Despite all the furniture and decorative art, the sale's top selling lot was nevertheless a painting. The late Frank Moore's 1995 oil on canvas America, which features a large Holstein cow against an elaborate cityscape and comes with an unusual frame of gilt straw, soared past its $30,000 high estimate to make $284,800 from a telephone bidder. This set a record for Moore's work at auction. Another painting by Moore, Stretch, brought $180,000 against a high estimate of $20,000.

Yet another artwork to make the list of top ten lots was a collage on paper laid down on canvas by the Italian artist Alighiero Boetti, which went for $96,000 against a high estimate of $60,000. Sotheby's had put the big-ticket paintings works by Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Roy Lichtenstein and Julian Schnabel in its major spring sales of modern and contemporary art two weeks ago, where they totaled $12.5 million. (The Lichtenstein painting alone, the Blue Nude that once hung in Versace's entrance hall, brought in $5.2 million.)

But the signature style throughout Versace's five-story Upper East Side townhouse (now for sale at $30 million through Corcoran realtors) was a juxtaposition of contemporary artworks with 18th and 19th century, as well as modern, furniture and decorative art. The top price for a piece of furniture at the sale went to an Italian 19th century micromosaic table, which sold to the international trade for $251,200, more than tripling its high estimate of $70,000. Examples of Versace's taste in contemporary furniture were four sleek patinated metal "sleigh" beds of brushed steel by Julian Schnabel, each estimated at $20,000-30,000. One was withdrawn, two came in at $30,000, the third at $35,000.

Among the many Neoclassical pieces that sold was an Empire style ormolu, patinated bronze and marble console after a design by Charles Percier which sold for $96,000, nearly quadrupling its high estimate.

Other highly touted items in the sale were pieces of Versace-designed jewelry. Three gold and diamond rings, one of which went for $90,000, the other two for $84,000, all sold within estimate.

Sotheby's Versace extravaganza is not quite over. More pieces from his contemporary art collection will be auctioned at the house's major contemporary sales in London on June 23. The sale is to include three Basquiat/Warhol collaborations.

The next fashion designer sale at Sotheby's New York will be from the collection of Geoffrey Beene, who dressed Paloma Picasso and Jacqueline Kennedy, among others. It will take place on September 23, about a year after his death.