Barbra Streisand doesn’t care what you think of her fashion choices. The 81-year-old actress recalled once having a desire to pose in “no pants” and just a white shirt. Essentially “just legs,” she explained in a new interview. But at the time, she worried about showing too much skin. “I was too afraid to be seen that way at that time,” the Yentl star said. “Now I’m too old to care.”
The Funny Girl icon also looked back on her unconventional style early in her career. “I guess I looked different, I dressed different,” she told the New York Times for the interview published on December 25. “I 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.”
Barbra added that age simply shouldn’t factor into fashion choices these days. “People should express themselves and wear whatever they feel on any given day,” she said. “And that has nothing to do with age.”
The interview coincides with the recent release of her highly anticipated memoir, My Name Is Barbra, which hit shelves in November. Barbra’s sense of style isn’t hurting her image by any means — in October of 2023, apparently overcome by her attractiveness, Alec Baldwin gushed over her. In the comments thread of a throwback Instagram clip of Barbra in performance, the 30 Rock star swooned, “My God. This is the hottest woman. Ever.”
In any case, the Mirror Has Two Faces beauty always knew she’d hit it big. In a November interview, she admitted as much while recalling working at a theater usher at the age of 16. “I got paid $4.50, I think it was, but I always hid my face because I thought someday I’d be well-known,” she told the BBC just ahead of the book’s release. “Isn’t that funny? I didn’t want people to recognize me on the screen and know that I once showed them to their seats.”