Streisand, Ever the Director : She acts. She sings. She helps design her tour clothes.
If you’ve never paid attention to Barbra Streisand before, you’re in for a dousing now.
For the next week, there will be a virtual Streisand tsunami surrounding her six appearances at the Anaheim Pond starting Wednesday.
Is she going to wear the clothes she sketched and had made by pal Donna Karan?
Or is she going to make a switch in the middle of her concert tour and wear one of the three long, eggshell-colored empire dresses just sent over by Ray Aghayan, who has worked with her since her appearance on “The Judy Garland Show” in 1963?
And should you buy Streisand memorabilia at the Pond or at the Barbra Boutique at Bullock’s in Woodland Hills, the Beverly Center and Century City? In the collection Streisand helped design, there are official concert tour jackets ($400), “Barbra--Then and Now” commemorative photo T-shirts ($25), anoraks with embroidered tour logo ($140) and nightshirts emblazoned with a B ($25). The thinking behind this is that while the haves have concert tickets, at least the have-nots have Bullock’s.
“She was more involved in product design than almost any other artist,” says Mark Coopersmith, senior vice president of marketing at Sony Signatures, a division of the entertainment giant that’s taking advantage of pent-up demand for Streisand-imprinted merchandise. “She sat in on design meetings and gave us advice and sketches of how she wanted everything to look.”
Given Streisand’s penchant for directing, this isn’t a surprise. She has never been shy about expressing ideas.
From the moment she stepped into the spotlight more than 30 years ago, everyone knew the Brooklyn teen-ager was no conformist. When management suggested that she change her name to something easier to spell on the marquee, she made it more complicated by keeping her last name and dropping the middle A from Barbara.
For Streisand, 52, knowing what she wants and how she wants it done goes beyond directing her performances or personal merchandising.
It extends to her makeup, which she’s always done herself, including the infamous Cleopatra eyeliner that turned her looks instantly from odd to exotic.
It applies to her choice of onstage costumes, which have ranged from the gossamer gown she wore at a Central Park concert in 1967 to unusual choices for Oscar nights, including her peekaboo theatrics and bosomy gowns that would make Dolly Levi proud.
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The common denominator in anything Streisand does, buys or wears is that it’s original. It’s always Barbra.
Forget for a moment the lapse of good taste that compels her to wear her fingernails in a ghastly length rarely seen outside the manicure hell of QVC, as well as past unfortunate frizzy poodle perms.
Her fashion taste is usually innovative, and in the mid ‘60s, it even landed her on the International Best Dressed List.
Streisand the shopper and collector was famous for being a thrift-store junkie well beyond the years in which that was all she could afford. Now, she’s tucked all her beloved ‘20s and ‘30s vintage finds and movie costumes away in closets. And in March, she sold off some of her modern ornate gowns at the tail end of an auction of her decorative-arts collection at Christie’s that brought in $6.2 million.
Her current taste in furnishings runs toward American Arts and Crafts, which is a more pared-down style, and her present fashion direction is equally uncluttered and solid. Her clothes are streamlined, and her hair is toned down in a flattering straight blond pageboy.
Streisand sketched her costumes for the two shows she gave at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on New Year’s Eve, and she was so pleased with the results that she incorporated them into this tour, her spokesman says.
One costume is a long black velvet dress that shows off her shoulders, with a perfect brooch at the bust and sweeping insert of cream satin. Another is an ivory suit with a long slit skirt. The classic designs were inspired partly by a recent visit to Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, Streisand’s spokesman says.
Both outfits were stitched by seamstresses in the New York headquarters of designer Karan, Streisand’s close friend. Although Streisand has always liked to say she designs her clothes, these finished costumes are most accurately described as a collaboration between Streisand and Karan. “That’s how Donna describes it, and that’s OK with Barbra,” says Patti Cohen, Karan’s spokeswoman.
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Streisand has been buying Karan’s Collection--a sophisticated line of sleek sportswear separates found in top department and specialty stores--for many years, but their collaboration began with these comeback costumes.
According to her publicist, Streisand has been creating her clothes since she was a teen-ager.
“One of the outfits for the concerts illustrates how little things change,” says publicist Dick Guttman. The costume on her first album cover, a recording at the Bon Soir, a bar in New York’s Greenwich Village, Guttman says, “is a man’s vest of herringbone tweed over a long skirt with a slit (that is) not that different from the gray pin-striped wool ensemble she wore in her performance last year at the inaugural ball of President Bill Clinton.”
The ivory suit she wears in this concert tour is a similar style.
Streisand has such strong ideas on wardrobe that she’s even been known to advise Hollywood’s legendary costume designers on their business.
In the book, “Her Name Is Barbra: An Intimate Portrait of the Real Barbra Streisand” (Carol Publishing, 1993), author Randall Riese relays the story of when Streisand met with Irene Sharaff to discuss the costumes for the 1968 film “Funny Girl.” The star arrived with bags of shoes and antique clothing she wanted to wear as character Fanny Brice.
During “Hello, Dolly!” the two were at odds, the author says, when Sharaff went for historical accuracy and Streisand wanted flattering styles, including anachronistic straight sleeves instead of authentic leg-of-muttons.
Executives with 20th Century Fox Studio sided with Streisand, saying simply: “Give her what she wants.”
You can bet that was music to her ears.
The Way She Was
Barbra Streisand has always been a fashion trailblazer.
She was the first girl in the class of ’59 at Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, N.Y., to sport inch-long nails and “Cleopatra” eyeliner.
“I’d experiment with different colored mascara on my eyes (and) try out all kinds of different hairstyles,” she once told a Time magazine writer.
What path did she take between buying thrift-store clothes when she was a starving actress in the early ‘60s to designing her concert wardrobe today? Here’s a brief history of her sartorial missteps and successes.
Sheer Panic: Streisand accepts an Academy Award as Best Actress in 1968 for “Funny Girl” wearing a see-through Arnold Scaasi pantsuit, an outfit costume designer Edith Head called shocking. She trips over her black tulle bell-bottoms walking up to the stage.
Train Wreck: In “Hello, Dolly!” in 1969, Streisand labors through her dance steps with added weight on her shoulders: her 40-pound gold beaded gown. The unwieldy 2 1/2-foot train keeps tripping up the waltzing waiters in the chorus, and it’s removed during some of the takes. But the train is still there in the film, at the beginning of the scene.
Fur Ball: She wears a white mink bolero jacket with matching hat and muff to a gala with Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in 1970. A decade before, she wore a monkey fur coat when she performed in Greenwich Village. But that got tossed away with success.
Temporary Permanent: Before he became a Hollywood mogul, Streisand’s flame Jon Peters, the former beauty-salon owner, presented her with something she thought she’d never have: curls. She wore the corkscrews in the ‘70s and ‘80s, tightening them for the Peters-produced “A Star Is Born” in 1976.
Fits the Bill: Streisand sings at President Clinton’s inaugural gala in 1993 wearing a three-piece pin-striped evening suit she designed with Donna Karan. One newspaper report referred to it as “the peekaboo power suit.” More dramatic than the yard-long slit in her skirt was her diamond nugget necklace, a present to herself.
