Don’t you dare rain on her parade.
Barbra Streisand opened up to the New York Times about her new memoir, “My Name Is Barbra,” on Monday, sharing why she decided to focus so much on fashion in the book and how it’s freeing at 81 to not care what people think about what she wears.
In the interview, the “Funny Girl” star said she thinks “people should express themselves and wear whatever they feel on any given day. And that has nothing to do with age.”
Streisand — whom Alec Baldwin recently called “the hottest woman ever” — said she was careful not to dress sensually in the early days of her career, explaining, “I was too afraid to be seen that way at that time. Now I’m too old to care.”
In fact, it was Streisand’s idea to pose pantsless — “just legs” — for the cover of W magazine in 2016.
While she might not have been wearing overly racy outfits in the 1960s and ’70s, the “Yentl” actress made a statement in other ways, sharing that she’s never “just went with the style of the day.”
“I had other images in my head. I was inspired by period films, paintings in museums and those fabulous Mucha posters of Sarah Bernhardt that I first saw when I was a teenager,” Streisand said.
When it came to her first performances at NYC piano bars, she came up with her own looks, like “a high-necked, long-sleeved Persian vest from the turn of the century.”
“I didn’t relate to the conventional kind of gown most nightclub singers wore,” she said.
And although her style has evolved over the years, the “Way We Were” singer has always remained true to herself, even using pieces from her own personal wardrobe in films like “The Prince of Tides.”
At the end of the day, Streisand said the way women dress shouldn’t impact what people think about them.
“Like I wrote in my book, ‘Why can’t women be accomplished and attractive, strong and sensitive, intelligent and sensual?’” she shared.
