Cyndi Lauper Puts Her True Colors Newspaper Skirt and First-VMAs Dress Up for Auction at Bonhams

The skirt Cyndi Lauper wore on the cover of True Colors was built from newspaper, and it’s about to go under the hammer. Her Suitcase of Memories show is open to the public at Bonhams in New York through Thursday (Oct. 22), when Part I of the sale goes live, and the online Part II stays open through Friday (Oct. 23), Billboard reports. The title comes from a lyric in “Time After Time,” her 1984 Hot 100 No. 1.

Part I has 21 lots, per Bonhams, including the red plaid dress she wore to the first-ever MTV Video Music Awards in 1984, a green fringe “Wood Bark” ensemble by Vivienne Westwood from 1986, a framed RIAA award for one million sales of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” and a “Time After Time” shoe assemblage she made herself this year. Galerie puts the full collection at more than 300 lots. Artnet lists estimates of $800 to $1,200 for the plaid dress and $1,000 to $2,000 for the newspaper skirt, which was newly restored.

The fashion stuff is very important to share because it’s inspirational. We spray-painted this, we put that together with safety pins.

Cyndi Lauper, Billboard

She said it after giving Billboard and a few other outlets a personal tour of the sale, and the tour turned into a warning. “It’s big, gigantic corporations buying up little companies that are creative and the creatives are squeezed out,” she said. Her example was a designer like Alexander McQueen being made to do 12 shows a year. “Once you homogenize everything there is no more creative. That’s the danger of all of this,” she said. “How much money do you goddamn need? You’re already a billionaire.” It lands in a month when Saint Laurent, McQueen and Calvin Klein each announced the exit of a creative director.

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It’s also an art-school argument. Lauper, a one-time art major, told Artnet that Jackson Pollock was a big influence. “That was inspiration, using color that would explode,” she said. “You could wear it, you could dance on it, you could live in it. You know, living art.” Pollock has his own moment right now, re-hung beside Lee Krasner at the Met.

The leopard-print pajamas from that video are in the sale too, and Billboard says they were her grandmother’s. Lauper kept some things back, including a coat she bought in 1985 that she will “never, ever part with” and a piece of furniture from the same video, but a few items “slipped right through” when others helped clear her closet. “After a while, you can’t be tied down and hold onto the past,” she said. “You should share it.”

At last year’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction, Chappell Roan honored Lauper wearing a replica of the newspaper skirt, Artnet notes, and called her the “woman who redefined what a pop star could look like, sound like, sing like, and be.” The original is on the block Thursday.