BBefore Cyndi Lauper became one of the most unique pop stars of the 1980s, she was the checkout queen at Manhattan’s avant-garde boutique, Screaming Mimi’s. The vintage store is still a downtown staple, but a bit of its spirit returns this month with Cyndi Lauper: A Suitcase of Memories, a two-part auction of her fashion and personal items at New York auction house Bonhams.
On a recent Thursday morning in New York, the singer sports seafoam green hair and is in high spirits as she leads a private tour of the collection. It’s an Aladdin’s Cave of outfits from her five-decade career, with clashing prints, statement tutus and statement headwear in every color you can imagine. As she strolls through her platform creepers, she gives some final notes to the Bonhams team. Is this rainbow fan at the right angle? And can we confirm that more disco balls are on the way?
“Over there are my grandmother’s pajamas,” she says, walking toward a mannequin displaying the leopard-print sleepwear Lauper wore in the Girls Just Want to Have Fun video. The set was originally purchased from her family’s favorite mail order catalog. “Frederick’s of Hollywood gave people in Queens a taste of glamor and sexiness,” she says. “You know, they’re flannel pajamas, but come on, they’re leopard print!”
Born in Queens, Lauper grew up in a large family that worked in New York’s Garment District as a cutter and seamstress. After leaving home at age 17, armed with little more than a toothbrush and a copy of Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit, she honed her eclectic style while working at Screaming Mimi’s, in between singing at local downtown clubs.
“I went to art school but didn’t finish it,” Lauper says. “So what happened was this, I guess.”
Lauper captivated an entire generation with performances blending music, art and fashion, selling more than 50 million records. Her fantastic debut album, She’s So Unusual, became the first album by a woman to produce four top-five singles upon its release in 1983. Hits like True Colors and I Drove All Night followed, as did 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 Kinky Boots.
After retiring from live performance last year, Lauper says she’s taking the opportunity to take stock. Passing us the metal bra and headpiece from her True Colors video and the red plaid dress she wore to the first VMAs in the early ’80s, she seems nostalgic for the freedom of that decade. “It was a time when there was a bit of madness,” she says. “We’ve been transformed into a society – we kind of have braces on the brain. You know, it would be nice if you could think for yourself someday.”
In addition to ephemera such as handwritten lyric sheets, the exhibit features a Raggedy Ann doll from the Girls Just Want to Have Fun video and a multi-colored spotted couch that could be from the set of Pee-wee’s Playhouse. “I did this to inspire people,” Lauper says of the series. “To inspire us who are older to remember the individuality of creativity and to inspire young people to discover that creativity is individual.”
Lauper is a great storyteller – I could listen to her anecdotes for hours – and as pragmatic as one would expect from a born and raised New Yorker. As we admire the singer’s newspaper skirt from her True Colors album cover, a guest asks Lauper if she was worried the flimsy-looking skirt might fall apart. “What do you mean? No,” she replies dryly. “It was a photo session. I was fine. »
Last year, Chappell Roan wore a replica of the newspaper’s skirt while inducting Lauper into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Lauper says Roan is one of the few current stars whose creativity she identifies with.
I can see it with Roan’s nervousness and his use of color. “It’s not just that,” Lauper tells me in a conference room later that morning, adding that she considers songs like Pink Pony Club to be benchmarks for LGBTQ+ representation. “That’s how she wrote about a lifestyle and made it normal. And then the clothes, of course.”
In 2022, Lauper released a new version of her abortion rights song, Sally’s Pigeons, to protest the United States Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v Wade. “If we don’t have control over our own bodies, we don’t have true freedom,” she said at the time. “We need to mobilize. We need to make our voices heard.”
She believes the exhibition comes at “a perfect time to inspire people and get back to life” as half-term approaches. Despite gentrification that has driven artists out of the city, she says “the good news is that, because of Mamdani, the billionaires might move out, giving us our city back.”
In 2023, Lauper gave Nicki Minaj his blessing to sample Girls Just Want to Have Fun in a song from Minaj’s album Pink Friday 2; Lauper joined her on stage for a performance a few months later. Given Minaj’s recent alliance with Donald Trump, does she now feel differently about this collaboration?
“No,” Lauper said flatly. “First of all, I don’t believe in cancellation. And secondly, the fact that she did Girls Just Want to Have Fun musically — it’s a political thing anyway, babies.
“Girls just want to have fun. They’re entitled to a joyful experience in this world. Like it or not, we’re here. We don’t go out to the rice fields anymore. Yes, get up and put your foot down, and she did. I don’t know what she’s doing now. But I still don’t think we 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 have to listen to them,” she says. “If you don’t let people evolve, what are you doing? »
The exhibition also shows how Lauper’s tastes evolved. In the ’90s, she became increasingly drawn to the sculptural pieces of Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen, styling designer pieces with a DIY twist. For the 1994 album Twelve Deadly Cyns, she paired an electric blue Dolce & Gabbana bolero with a bowler hat that she spray-painted and decorated with matching feathers. “I wanted it to look like art,” she said, stopping by the set as she finished the tour. “I remember it because it was another invention.
“That’s what makes it exciting,” she says. “Let a young person look and say, ‘I could do that.'”
Gn entert
