'Over there is my grandmother’s pyjamas': Cyndi Lauper puts personal items up for auction
Cyndi Lauper, 73, retired from live performance last year. File picture: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders
Before Cyndi Lauper rose to fame as one of the most singular pop breakouts of the 1980s, she was queen of the cash register at the edgy Manhattan boutique Screaming Mimi’s. The vintage emporium is still a downtown staple, but a little of its spirit comes uptown this month with Cyndi Lauper: A Suitcase of Memories, a two-part auction of her fashion and personal items at the New York auction house Bonhams.
On a recent Thursday morning in New York, the singer is sporting seafoam green hair and is in good spirits as she leads a private tour of the collection. It is an Aladdin’s cave of outfits from her five-decade career, with clashing prints, jutting tutus and statement headwear in every colour you can imagine.
As she strides around in her platform creepers, she gives a few final notes to the Bonhams team. Is that rainbow fan at the right angle? And can we confirm more mirror balls are on their way?
“Over there is my grandmother’s pyjamas,” she says, walking over to a mannequin that displays the leopard print sleepwear Lauper wore in the video. The ensemble was originally purchased from her family’s favourite mail order catalog.
“Frederick’s of Hollywood gave people in Queens a glimpse of glamor and sexiness,” she says. “You know, they’re flannel pyjamas, but come on — they’re leopard!”
Born in Queens, Lauper was raised as part of a large family who worked in New York’s Garment District as cutters and seamstresses. After leaving home at the age of 17 armed with not much more than a toothbrush and a copy of Yoko Ono’s book she honed her eclectic style while working at Screaming Mimi’s in between singing at downtown local clubs.
“I went to art school but I didn’t finish,” Lauper says. “So what happened is this, I guess.”
Lauper captivated a generation with performances which combined music with art and fashion, selling more than 50 million records. Her fantastic debut became the first debut album from a woman to produce four top-five singles upon its release in 1983.
Hits like and followed, as well as new ventures: she co-founded the True Colors United foundation in 2008 to benefit homeless LGBTQ+ youth and, in 2013, won a Tony award for her score.
After retiring from live performance last year, Lauper says she is enjoying the chance to take stock. Leading us past the metal bra and headdress from her video and a red plaid dress she wore to the inaugural VMAs in the early '80s, she seems nostalgic for the freedom of the decade.
“It was a time where there was a little bit of a wildness,” she says. “We’ve been corporatised — we kind of have braces on our brains. You know, it would be nice if you could think for yourself sometime.”
As well as ephemera such as handwritten lyric sheets, the exhibition features a Raggedy Ann doll from the video and a multi-colored spotted couch that could have come from the set of
“I did this to inspire people,” Lauper says of the show. “To inspire us who are older to remember the individuality of creativity, and to inspire the young to discover that creativity is individual.”
Lauper is a great storyteller — I could listen to her anecdotes for hours — and as no-nonsense as you might expect from a born-and-bred New Yorker. As we admire the singer’s newspaper skirt from her album art, a guest asks Lauper if she worried the fragile-seeming skirt would fall apart. “What do you mean? No,” she replies crisply. “It was a photoshoot. I was good.”
Last year, Chappell Roan wore a replica of the newspaper skirt while inducting Lauper into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Lauper says Roan is the one of the few current stars whose creativity she relates to.
I can see that with Roan’s edginess and use of colour. “It’s not just that,” Lauper tells me in a conference room later that morning, adding she sees songs like as landmarks for LGBTQ+ representation. “It’s how she wrote about a lifestyle and made it normal. And then the clothes, sure.”
In 2022, Lauper released a new version of her abortion rights song to protest against the US supreme court overturning Roe v Wade. “If we don’t have control over our own bodies then we have no real freedom,” she said at the time. “We need to mobilise. We need to let our voices be heard.”
She sees the exhibition as coming at a “great time to have people inspired and come alive again” as the midterms approach. Despite gentrification squeezing out artists from the city, she says “the good news is that, because of [New York mayor Zohran] Mamdani, the billionaires might be moving out, giving us our city back”.
In 2023, Lauper gave her blessing for Nicki Minaj to sample in a song from Minaj’s album; Lauper joined her on stage for a performance a few months later. Given Minaj’s recent alliance with Donald Trump, does she feel differently about the collaboration now?
“No,” Lauper says flatly. “First of all, I don’t believe in cancellation. And second of all, the fact that she did musically — it’s a political thing anyway, babes.
“Girls just want to have fun. They’re entitled to a joyful experience in this world. Like it or not, we’re here. We’re not going out in the rice fields any more. Yes, rise up and put your foot down, and she did. I don’t know what she’s doing now. But I still don’t think you cancel people, because otherwise there’s no room for discussion.”
Lauper says she learned the importance of breaking bread with those across the political spectrum through her advocacy work. “If you want people to listen to you, you need to listen to people,” she says. “If you don’t let people evolve, what are you doing?”
The exhibition shows how Lauper’s own tastes evolved too. In the '90s, she became increasingly drawn to sculptural pieces from Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen, styling designer pieces with a DIY twist.
For 1994’s album, she paired an electric blue Dolce & Gabbana shrug with a bowler hat that she spray-painted and decorated with feathers to match. “I wanted it to look like art,” she said, pausing by the ensemble as she wraps up the tour. “I remember that because it was another invention.
“That’s what makes it exciting,” she says. “That a young person would look and go, ‘I could do that.’”
- Cyndi Lauper: Suitcase of Memories, Part I is a live auction at Bonhams New York on October 22. Part II runs online until October 23
