I bought Barbra Streisands new book My Passion for Design thinking looking inside her house would give me a window into Barbras private life. You dont really get to know the private Barbra, which is carefully guarded, but you get to review the major aspects of Barbras psyche with which we are already familiar -- the search for beauty, the obsession with details, the drive to convey her vision and a few new things.
I learned why her favorite color is burgundy (because a neighbor knitted her a burgundy sweater with wooden buttons when she was five and she felt unique when she was the only one with a burgundy sweater over her uniform at a summer health camp she was sent to for anemia). Needless to say her home has a lot of burgundy, which extends to the burgundy water irises in her pond.
She explains that her intense relationship with furniture may have come about since she had practically none when she was growing up in a little apartment in Brooklyn.
Barbra always had a style. But as soon as she had some financial success, she started developing her taste scouring antiques stores in New York, traveling to Versailles to see Marie Antoinettes bedroom and later collecting pieces by Frank Lloyd Wright, who validated her feeling that you should wear clothes that match your rooms. She decorated her New York apartment in Jacobean and English chintz, then Louis XV, then Americana. She filled an L.A. house with Art Nouveau and then Arts and Crafts. Her Malibu ranch was decorated with American folk art and Tiffany lamps. The woman likes to shop.
We may never get the autobiography weve been waiting for, but this book is La Streisands confessional about designing her elegant barn, combining Federal architecture and mahogany furniture with simple painted furniture and a love of rustic barns. It started with a chicken coop, she says. Yes, Barbra Streisand raises chickens, who lay aparticular shade (seafoam?) of green eggs. The barn is only part of the estate she lives on in Malibu. She also designed a Mill House with a water wheel and Wizard of Oz storm cellar, and a Grandmas House, designed around an old WPA-era red, white, and blue sign and filled with quilts. Thats where Id stay if I visited.As a director (and she took on this project after losing an opportunity to direct a film) she approached building a house like she would a movie, writing the script herself. First she created a story about the house and property in Malibu. Then she began adding the devilish details. She had the help of set and production designers and the finest artisans in the country if not the world. Everything was reproduced beforehand and inspected afterwards. If a beam was an inch off, the job was re-done right. Things that were a hair awry were NOT ok. Of course, we already knew that her attention to detail can be harrowing, but she does not apologize for being who she is.
The barn itself is an intense vision that Barbra has been incubating for a lifetime. Besides regular rooms, like the blue bathroom, the kitchen, the great room, there are more specialized rooms. A screening room with a 17-foot screen, a silo with a staircase made from welded steel that had to be lifted above the house with a crane and set inside (it fit, whew!). Theres a gym and a napping room and other rooms that pay homage to architects and designers: The Federal Lounge, The Mackintosh Hall, The Greene and Green Library, The Stickley Office. But the oddest design element is an underground street that features shops that display the overstock that Barbra has accumulated, for example, dolls and dollhouses, antique clothing. Theres even a gift shop where she can go to search for a gift for a dinner party and a place to wrap it, a root cellar for flowers, fruits, and vegetables, and other display rooms. The aspect of the barn project I like the most is that while the front of this house is like an oversized (Hollywood set production) Vermont barn, the back is white painted shingling with a wide California deck. Brilliant!In the end, though, what is troubling is that Barbra doesnt even live in the elegant barn. She lives in the main house. Its as if she built an extended museum to house all of her finds over the years and to enable her to continue her fanatic search for beauty by ordering things like a library table made in France. It really is more like a movie set, a place for her to walk through, sit, and leave. The woman contributes millions and more to charity, but its hard not to think about how self-indulgent her collection of things is unless the complex becomes a museum some day where people can observe superb craftsmanship and lovely antiques.If youre not heavily invested in your passion for design (and speaking of heavy, you could get carpal tunnel reading the book if youre trying to hold it) you might want to spend your money on seeing Barbra in Little Fockers instead.Judy Kirkwood is getting rid of favorite furnishings in an attempt to create more space in her life.
