NEW YORK — Cher, who will part with hundreds of personal belongings at auction this fall, said she isn’t exactly bidding farewell to her persona.
“My old self is not going anywhere, it never is,” she said, laughing, during an interview Wednesday.
On the road not long ago, the entertainer decided it was time to do something completely different. Once back in her Malibu home, she decided to decorate her Sierra Towers apartment in West Hollywood. She went with shades of Swedish blond from top to bottom, save for a few dashes of different colored woods and pale gold accents. This was “a complete 180” for a lifelong Gothic lover known to rummage through Paris flea markets and London back alleys for her finds. That got her thinking about paring down her many keepsakes — from furniture and jewelry to show-stopping costumes.
Now Sotheby’s and Julien’s Auctions will put them on the block Oct. 3 and 4 at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills. Bob Mackie’s over-the-top creations, including some of the dresses he made for her to wear on “The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour,” will be among the main attractions. There also will be more than 700 lots of paintings, furniture and decorative works of art. The sale is expected to generate more than $1 million, with some proceeds benefiting the Cher Charitable Foundation.
However, she is being selective. The barely there outfit Cher wore for her 1980 hit “If I Could Turn Back Time” is a keeper, but a copy of that costume made for a 1989 performance will go under the gavel. One of her “Laverne” costumes from the comedy hour is being stashed and another will be auctioned. Asked which items will be the toughest to part with, she said: “It’s probably not the most expensive things. There’s a Jesus painting I bought in the back alley of a flea market in Paris. It was from a girls’ school. I’ve always loved it, and I still don’t know if I’ll be able to give it up.”
As for connecting with Mackie, Cher said Carol Burnett often mentioned him on the set of “The Carol Burnett Show.” He helped Burnett bring down the house by creating her hilarious curtain dress for a “Gone With the Wind” sketch. Mackie would later create many other lasting impressions with Cher on her own program, “The Cher Show,” as well as on the comedy hour she hosted with her late ex-husband, Sonny Bono.
Related Articles
You May Also Like
“I remember saying to Sonny, ‘If I ever have enough money, Bob is going to design my clothes,'” she said. “When we first started the show, we only had enough money to have him do my clothes, and nothing beaded. We could only afford beaded when the show was picked up. When I got my first beaded gown, I was crying on the floor. I couldn’t believe it.”
As memorable as that was and as often as she and Mackie collaborated, their initial encounter is the one that stays with her. “The thing that stands out is the first time I ever saw him. I was doing ‘The Carol Burnett Show’ and I’d been sent for a fitting. This guy walked in who was so unbelievably beautiful and I thought, ‘This can’t be Bob Mackie. He’s my age.’ I was 20 and he was this beautiful Adonis. He’d been in Greece, so he was brown and blonde.”
For decades, the Academy Award, Grammy, Emmy and Golden Globe winner has delighted fans with her extravagant and often risqué ensembles, but she insisted her offstage style is and always has been considerably more low-key. “I’m still in jeans and sweatpants. I’m a bum when it comes to walking around town. My grandmother, who is still alive, wears jeans, my mother wears jeans, my kids wear jeans — we all wear jeans.”
Cher declined to talk about her next big project. She would talk about a new album and plans to direct the movie she has always wanted to make — “a love story that is really about how no matter what people look like, they can be beautiful to each other.” Titles, at least for the time being, are incidental. “It’s written on a piece of paper somewhere,” she said. “I have scraps of paper all over my house. I get an idea and I just write it down.”
Cher said she has considered creating a signature collection “millions of times” and that continues to be “something I would entertain. I’ve always thought it would be so much fun. I design my own jewelry, all my houses, clothes and I’ll go to the shoemaker and pick things out….All the young girls are doing it, but the older girls deserve to have something. That’s the problem. I’m 60 years old, and there’s no way I want to do old-lady styles. There are a lot of women my age who still want to look cute, and have good bodies.”
But the star isn’t fretting over whether a design career will happen. “I believe what belongs to you comes to you, so if this belongs to me, it will come to me.”