Feeling queasy about this trade in the clothes of the stars

I regularly hear Gay Byrne in advertisements extolling the exhibits at a museum for the ‘icons of fashion’ – clothes which were worn by Audrey Hepburn and references to the clothes of Michael Jackson. 

It makes me wonder when I hear the adverts whether I am the only one who gets a slightly queasy feeling about where museum exhibits end and exploitation begins.

Certainly, it is something which has come to the fore in recent weeks where sales of such items seem to have found a lively market. From one news item which I saw, it would appear that former film star Debbie Reynolds has cornered a whole section of this growing trade because, years ago, she figured that these items might appreciate in value.

Unless I am mistaken, the market years ago began with the sale of items related to Judy Garland and her playing of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. I distinctly remember those signature red shoes that walked down The Yellow Brick Road all those years ago.

I have to tread a little warily here for I am someone who has traipsed, like millions of others, through places like Madame Tussauds, the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace and all the other museums where the circumstances and the daily lives of the great are recalled and an integral part of the displays is the splendid clothing worn by kings, queens and film stars.

I have spent hours queueing at the Tower of London to see the extraordinary apartments, the suits of armour, the jewellery, and portraits. Indeed, I once went down the Thames by boat on the journey to see the magnificent Hampton Court Palace . . . I travelled that way on the Thames, seeing modern landmarks like the Battersea Power Station, because I wished to bring back memories of seeing the traffic on The Thames as shown in A Man For All Seasons.

I have to say that, though in the case of Madame Tussauds the likenesses are remarkable, I found that in many instances there was ‘something missing’. Of course, the figures, the faces, the clothes and all of the finery were exactly right . . . but the faces just seemed to lack that indefinable quality.

One would imagine, for instance, that in the case of someone like Tony Blair the waxwork image would be relatively easy to do . . . but, then if occurred to me, what the figures lack is the animation in the eyes. Truly, the eyes are the windows to the soul. And, in the case of Tony Blair, there was that one eye which seemed, betimes, to take on a life of its own!

My hesitation about the thriving business of selling off the clothes of the great who are no longer with us, comes from an inability to dismiss the thoroughly miserable lives which were led by the likes of Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland, the latter dead at 47 and umpteen times married.

Here, I am dating myself . . . but people of a more modern era might look at the sale of that Michael Jackson jacket in the past few weeks for close on two million dollars.

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.