Cyndi Lauper talks fun, fashion, freedom: ‘braces on our brains’

Cyndi Lauper is parting with a lifetime of stagewear and personal keepsakes, and the sale doubles as a tour through the instincts that shaped her image. Before she became a defining pop voice of the 1980s, she ran the register at Screaming Mimi’s, the downtown Manhattan vintage shop whose influence still colors her wardrobe. That spirit travels uptown this month in Cyndi Lauper: A Suitcase of Memories, a two-part auction at the New York house Bonhams covering her fashion and personal items. On a recent Thursday morning in New York, the singer greeted visitors with seafoam green hair and high energy, guiding a private walkthrough of the lots. The collection resembles a treasure trove of five decades of outfits, packed with mixed prints, flaring tutus and bold headpieces across every shade imaginable. Moving through the room in platform creepers, she paused to give the Bonhams crew a few last instructions: was the rainbow fan angled correctly, and could they verify that additional mirror balls were en route?

Grandmother’s Pyjamas and a Queens Childhood

“Over there is my grandmother’s pyjamas,” she said, approaching a mannequin dressed in the leopard print sleepwear she wore in the Girls Just Want to Have Fun video. The set had come from her family’s preferred mail order catalog. “Frederick’s of Hollywood gave people in Queens a glimpse of glamor and sexiness,” she says. “You know, they’re flannel pyjamas, but come on – they’re leopard!” A Queens native, Lauper grew up in a big family whose members worked as cutters and seamstresses in New York’s Garment District. She left home at 17 with little beyond a toothbrush and a copy of Yoko Ono’s book Grapefruit, then developed her eclectic look while working at Screaming Mimi’s and singing at local downtown clubs. “I went to art school but I didn’t finish,” Lauper says. “So what happened is this, I guess.”

A Career of Firsts and a New Generation

Lauper drew a generation in with performances that fused music, art and fashion, and has sold more than 50m records. Her debut, She’s So Unusual, became the first debut album by a woman to yield four top-five singles after its 1983 release. True Colors and I Drove All Night followed, along with new paths: she co-founded the True Colors United foundation in 2008 to help homeless LGBTQ+ youth, and in 2013 earned a Tony award for her Kinky Boots score. Having stepped back from live performance last year, Lauper says she is glad to have a moment to look back. Passing the metal bra and headdress from her True Colors video and a red plaid dress worn to the inaugural VMAs in the early 80s, she sounded wistful about the era’s license. “It was a time where there was a little bit of a wildness,” she says. “We’ve been corporatized – we kind of have braces on our brains. You know, it would be nice if you could think for yourself sometime.” Beyond ephemera such as handwritten lyric sheets, the exhibition includes a Raggedy Ann doll from the Girls Just Want to Have Fun video and a multi-colored spotted couch that could have come from the set of Pee-wee’s Playhouse. “I did this to inspire people,” Lauper says of the show. “To inspire us who are older to remember the individuality of creativity, and to inspire the young to discover that creativity is individual.” Lauper is a captivating raconteur — her anecdotes could hold a listener for hours — and as blunt as a lifelong New Yorker tends to be. While the group admired the newspaper skirt from her True Colors album art, a guest asked whether she had feared the fragile-looking piece might come apart. “What do you mean? No,” she replied crisply. “It was a photoshoot. I was good.” Last year, Chappell Roan wore a replica of the newspaper skirt while inducting Lauper into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Lauper says Roan is among the few current stars whose creativity she connects with — evident in Roan’s edge and use of color. “It’s not just that,” Lauper tells me in a conference room later that morning, adding that she sees songs like Pink Pony Club as landmarks for LGBTQ+ representation. “It’s how she wrote about a lifestyle and made it normal. And then the clothes, sure.”

Politics, Collaboration and Refusing to Cancel

In 2022, Lauper released a new version of her abortion rights song Sally’s Pigeons to protest against the US supreme court overturning Roe v Wade. “If we don’t have control over our own bodies then we have no real freedom,” she said at the time. “We need to mobilize. We need to let our voices be heard.” With the midterms approaching, she sees the exhibition as arriving at a “great time to have people inspired and come alive again.” Even as gentrification pushes artists out of the city, she says “the good news is that, because of Mamdani, the billionaires might be moving out, giving us our city back.” In 2023, Lauper approved Nicki Minaj sampling Girls Just Want to Have Fun on a track from Minaj’s Pink Friday 2 album; a few months later, Lauper joined her on stage for a performance. Asked whether Minaj’s recent alliance with Donald Trump changes how she views that collaboration, Lauper is unmoved. “No,” Lauper says flatly. “First of all, I don’t believe in cancellation. And second of all, the fact that she did Girls Just Want to Have Fun musically – it’s a political thing anyway, babes. “Girls just want to have fun. They’re entitled to a joyful experience in this world. Like it or not, we’re here. We’re not going out in the rice fields any more. Yes, rise up and put your foot down, and she did. I don’t know what she’s doing now. But I still don’t think you cancel people, because otherwise there’s no room for discussion.” Lauper says her advocacy work taught her why it matters to break bread with people across the political divide. “If you want people to listen to you, you need to listen to people,” she says. “If you don’t let people evolve, what are you doing?” The exhibition shows how Lauper’s own tastes