Diva detritus
For a famously private famous person, Barbra Streisand is parting with a lot of information lately. Like the fact she’s a size 6 in her girlfriend Donna Karan’s clothes. Or that she hung on to her used Oil of the Turtle brand cosmetics for more than 30 years. Or that she collects household tchotchkes that range from classy (Waterford crystal glasses) to cutesy (a green, 16-inch tapestry teddy bear dressed in a vest and off-white bow tie) to downright curious (a metal hair-washing pan).
It’s the stuff of a tabloid writer’s dreams, yet there it is, for sale to the highest bidder in the floodlit public forum of EBay. Launched last November, with all the profits going to charities, the auction has already raised upwards of $1 million. Streisand adds an item a day to the auction, with final prices ranging from under $100 to well into the thousands of dollars.
So what is this auction exactly? With 90% of the items coming from Streisand’s private rather than public life, that’s an interesting question.
Is it an estate sale? Yes, when she’s offering a Limoges egg, scale models of the sets from her film “Nuts,” or a sterling silver kiddush cup designed by artist Marc Chagall. But what about those strings of plastic Christmas lights, the bathrobe and the low-fat cookbooks, the miniature metal chair, the photo of a cat in a frame encrusted with sea shells, one of them broken? Yard sale. And that metal hair-washing pan? Garage sale.
In fact, for the next 18 months, adding an item each day, the singer-actress-activist-director-collector will sell hundreds of her personal things, one a day, in what amounts to a slow-motion garage sale.
Beneficiaries of the online auction include several programs that fall under the umbrella of the Streisand Foundation: after-school programs for disadvantaged children in L.A., as well as environmental and civil rights organizations.
“She’s opening herself up a little,” says Darren Julien, whose Julien Entertainment is running the sale. Indeed, thanks to EBay, we seem to know the following: Streisand seems to save everything. She has a fondness for Donna Karan clothes. She’s petite. She went through collecting phases that included vintage, Arts and Crafts, Art Deco and shabby chic. In the 1970s, she wore a lipstick color called fawn frost.
“I’m a little bit surprised that she had so much of her personal stuff on there,” said Roslyn Herman, a collector and dealer who lives in Queens, N.Y. Herman bought several items, including a worn pair of green evening shoes.
“It’s like she went out to her garage and found things she otherwise might have thrown out,” Herman said. “But this just shows that she’s a good businesswoman -- she’ll get a nice tax write-off, you know -- and a charitable person. She’s had this kind of glory in her life, and she gives back.”
Joe Bernardo, a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based ticket broker who recently paid $5,000 for Liza Minnelli’s bowler hat from “Cabaret,” said he began bidding the minute he heard about the Streisand auction.
“I’ve been a Barbra Streisand fan my whole life; of course I was going to buy something,” he said. After passing up the scale-model “Nuts” sets (“Where do you store those?”) he spent $400 on a leather notebook that Streisand kept with her in the recording studio while laying down tracks for “Yentl.”
“Why? Because it’s just incredibly cool to have around,” he said.
Bidding for Barbrabilia starts at $5. Some items, like a 1980 cookbook, go relatively cheap ($51 plus shipping and handling fees) with just 10 bids. Others, like the Chagall kiddush cup, bring $2,000 with 34 bids. Everything sells for well over the actual value, which Julien attributes to “The Streisand Factor.”
“She’s as highly collectible as Elvis or Marilyn Monroe,” Julien said. “She’s won every major award in the industry, and her fan base is huge.”
And passionate. They scoop up worn boots and used jackets, metal cache pots and Lalique crystal, ceramic pitchers and glass dresser trays, and they ask for more. Fans priced out of the big-ticket items in the early days of the sale e-mailed Julien and begged for smaller stuff they could afford. Out came ornaments and candles and that metal hair-washing pan. More are on the way.
So are career-related things like the dress Streisand wore when she met President Kennedy in the 1960s, and the customized van, complete with bed and kitchenette, that she used to travel in. These, along with numerous other career items, will be sold in a live auction on June 5 at the Pacific Design Center.
In the meantime, fans can bid and browse and, if they buy, communicate with Streisand. She sends them a certificate of authenticity that includes a photo of the item. They get to leave feedback.
“Perfect like buttah!!!” one reads. “I’m ferklempt!” another says.
Maybe even more ferklempt if the buyer knew that Streisand is watching.
“She logs on and follows the sale -- she’s flattered by what people are willing to spend on the items and what they’re saying to her in the feedback,” Julien said. “She’s one of the best clients I’ve had because she’s involved and she makes it fun.”
