Cyndi Lauper Says the Fashion & Music Industries ‘Squeeze’ Creatives: ‘How Much Money Do You Goddamn Need?’
Categoria: Musica
The iconic singer-songwriter wants her Bonhams auction lot to "inspire" and remind people of a time when pop stars and rockers took more fashion risks.
Por Billboard | 19/10/2026
For Cyndi Lauper , her Suitcase of Memories auction/exhibition currently open at Bonhams in her native New York City isn’t just a trip down memory lane – it’s a wake-up call. “The fashion stuff is very important to share because it’s inspirational. We spray-painted this, we put that together with safety pins,” Lauper tells Billboard after giving us and a few other outlets a personal tour of her auction block. “This is a great time to do this. Now that we’ve become so corporatized it’s good to look back at what we were. If you look back at rock n’ roll fashion in the ‘80s, it was a time of individual expression. In a time when we’re being forced into a square peg, it’s time to either remember or inspire.” The Suitcase of Memories lot — named after a lyric from her 1984 Billboard Hot 100-topper “Time After Time,” one of four top five hits off her blockbuster debut She’s So Unusual — is colorful, screaming proof of Lauper’s point. There’s DIY (the iconic True Colors skirt Lauper and Screaming Mimi’s owner Laura Wills made from ripped newspapers and magazines); couture (stage-worn Vivienne Westwood outfits); pieces of music history (the plaid dress she wore to the inaugural VMAs); and even hand-me-downs (those leopard-print PJs she wore in the “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” video were her grandmother’s). Plus, there are Gold records, mixing boards, shoes, furniture, dolls, handwritten lyrics and an explosion of accessories. Suitcase of Memories is open to the public through the live auction date on Thursday (Oct. 22); the online auction stays open through Friday (Oct. 23). For Lauper, whose outrageous, eye-popping looks helped define the ‘80s, fashion isn’t just part of her life — it’s family history. “[When] my family came over, the first relative was a seamstress. That’s how she made her money,” Lauper says of her Italian family. “Everybody sewed and could take a pattern and add to it. They could get hand-me-downs, look at you and measure and it would look like it was made for you. My mom, I can’t even get over how talented she was like that. My uncle was a cutter in the Garment District and became a sought-after pattern maker and then he became a women’s coat designer. I had to go to Fashion Industries [High School in New York] because they felt that was my lot in life. But I wanted to sing. I wanted to go to [High School of] Music & Art so bad.” Obviously, the whole music thing worked out for the Hot 100-topping, Grammy- and Tony-winning singer-songwriter who was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2025. And though a teenaged Lauper flunked out of Fashion Industries, her substantial impact on fashion since then nearly rivals her enormous influence on music. So when she rings an alarm about the state of the fashion industry, it carries some weight. “It’s big, gigantic corporations buying up little companies that are creative and the creatives are squeezed out. Or you take a guy like Alexander McQueen and then you make