She flirted with Brando and even Prince Charles. She was romantically linked to a string of Hollywood hunks – equivalent to Warren Beatty and Ryan O’Neal.

However there are not any attractive boudoir scenes in Barbra Streisand’s exhaustively detailed memoir, “My Title Is Barbra.” As an alternative, the multi-talented star — singer, actress, producer, director, philanthropist — devotes a number of consideration to her wardrobe, documenting it web page after web page, down to each element. A glowing sequin.

Rising up, the self-proclaimed “Skinny Malink” from Brooklyn cherished her burgundy sweater with picket buttons, “which set her other than the opposite youngsters on her first day at camp. Separate.”

Her near-fetishistic reminiscences propelled her into her teenage years, when each greenback she earned working as a nanny or cashier at a Chinese language restaurant was spent on garments. Particularly a lace-trimmed skirt and high printed with tiny pink and white checks, and matching sneakers — “low-top pink flats that confirmed off my toes.”

Lengthy earlier than there have been superstar stylists, Ms. Streisand, 81, realized to type her look, seemingly on the premise that if she could not use her appears to be like to challenge glamor and overt intercourse attraction, she may rely on her custom-made, off-center type.

“I believe I look completely different, I costume otherwise,” Streisand mentioned in an e-mail final week, a part of a uncommon interview that marked her first time focusing totally on trend. “I by no means comply with present types. I’ve different pictures in my thoughts. I am impressed by interval motion pictures, work in museums, and Sarah Bernhardt, who I first noticed as a young person. (Sarah Bernhardt’s) stunning Mucha poster.”

As a “good Jewish woman” from Flatbush, she was painfully conscious of her otherness. “Nobody may have a look at me and assume, ‘That woman ought to be a film star,'” she wrote in her memoir. “I’ve a small head, a crooked nostril, a mouth too large, and eyes too small. Do I even assume I am attractive? No.”

However as an alternative of hiding this distinction, she took full benefit of it and insisted on downplaying her sexuality. Early on, she carried out in boyish sailor shirts, quaint Victorian fancy shirts straight from the thrift retailer, and a masculine-feminine mixture of males’s tweeds and skimpy tie-front shirts.

In 1960, she made her debut on the Bon Soir, a Greenwich Village piano bar, carrying what she described in an interview as “a turn-of-the-century high-neck, long-sleeved Persian vest embroidered with silver thread, and a Easy black garments.” skirt. “

The following night time, she strutted onto the stage carrying a combed Victorian jacket tied with a pink ribbon and Twenties pink satin sneakers that, she now recollects, “solely value $3 at a thrift retailer.” Greenback”.

The important thing, she says, is: “I do not like the normal robes that almost all nightclub singers put on. As an alternative, I used menswear materials – black and white herringbone tweed – to design a vest, paired with a white chiffon shirt and an identical Tweed skirt, flooring size, aspect slits, lined in crimson. I’ve been carrying a model of that outfit ever since.”

Vogue editor Diana Vreeland was impressed by Ms. Streisand’s putting creativity. “Whereas others had been joking, she noticed one thing in me,” Ms. Streisand wrote in her memoir. “She referred to as me a method icon lengthy earlier than I imagined myself on a best-dressed checklist.” (She did make the checklist twice.)

She did her finest to stay as much as that picture, sitting entrance row at Chanel in a Jaguar coat and matching tablet field, and taking to the stage in her signature empire robe.

“I’ve all the time liked the high-waist type, the place the material falls to the ground,” she mentioned final week. “It matches my physique and provides me room to breathe after I sing.”

As her fame grows, her temperament turns into increasingly elegant, and her confidence enhances her unscrupulousness. A confirmed obsessive, she mined her personal wardrobe for a lot of of her movie roles, together with Days of Our Lives and The Prince of Tides.

She wished to sketch her personal {custom} designs for Invoice Blass, Arnold Scaasi and their vaunted ilk. In 1998, for her marriage ceremony to actor James Brolin (sure, they had been nonetheless a pair), she instructed her buddy Donna Karan to decorate her in an empire robe, regardless that Ms. Karan satisfied her to don a lace tulle confection that pooled at her toes.

overbearing? Choosy? Ms. Streisand heard all of it. “Nicely, possibly I used to be somewhat hands-on,” she wrote in her memoir.

She was a relentless perfectionist, however she additionally had her share of gaffes—notably her notorious wardrobe malfunction. To her horror, the glowing Scaasi pantsuit she wore to win her first Oscar in 1969 was see-through below the stage lights.

She’s weathered just a few barbs, too. When she confirmed up at President Invoice Clinton’s first inauguration occasion carrying a pinstriped go well with, a bust-baring tank high and a protracted skirt with a aspect slit, A author is nitpicking Writing within the New York Occasions, her band despatched out “troubling alerts” and “coy blended messages.”

Ms. Streisand stays offended. “I believe the author learn quite a bit into this outfit and it says extra about her than it does about me,” she mentioned in an e-mail. “As I write in my e book, ‘Why Girls Can’t Obtain and engaging, sturdy and Delicate, sensible and Emotional? ‘”

And costume their age? She could not perceive the idea. “Folks ought to categorical themselves and put on no matter they really feel like on any given day,” she mentioned. “It has nothing to do with age.”

Streisand recalled in an interview that just a few years in the past, she advised carrying only a clear white shirt and “no pants” for a canopy shoot for W journal. “Simply legs,” she mentioned.

Early in her profession, she was hesitant to specific her sexuality so overtly. “I used to be too scared to be checked out like that,” she mentioned. “I am too previous to care now.”

However it’s by no means too late to surrender on trend or cease constructing wealth. Ms. Streisand owns film costumes, Fortuny robes, classic clothes and vintage dolls.

“A few of these dolls are 100 years previous,” she mentioned. “They want a brand new pair of sneakers each occasionally, do not they?” She retains a set of those artifacts in an underground emporium in her Malibu property.

They play their half in a story that takes her removed from house. This weirdo from Brooklyn refused to have a lump on his nostril eliminated and has now reworked right into a swan. As one should.

“All of us grew up on fairy tales,” Ms. Streisand wrote. “Who doesn’t love a Cinderella story?”