Donna Summer’s Closet Pets Up for Auction

For nearly a decade after Donna Summer’s death in 2012, her Nashville, Tennessee, home was held as a shrine to celebrate the Queen of Disco’s decades-long musical career.

Beaded dresses she wore onstage remained in the upstairs closet, along with designer shoes; ephemera, such as an annotated design project for the cover of the “She Works Hard for the Money” album, were stored downstairs; and in the basement, there was an accumulation of colorful paintings, awards and gold discs.

Summer was never much of a talker about death and didn’t give instructions on what should be done with her possessions, her husband, Bruce Sudano, recently said (she died, aged 63, of lung cancer in 2012). It’s only been in recent years that Summer’s family has felt ready to fully rummage through her belongings in the Nashville home, many of which will go on sale through the auction house at Christie’s next month, the company announced.

“You walked into those spaces and they were almost a time capsule about your life,” said Brooklyn Sudano, one of Summer’s three daughters.

One of the items for sale is a silver cup that Summer used to take with her onstage, filled with caffeine-free Pepsi. Brooklyn Sudano recalled that when she and one of her sisters were accompanying her mother on tour in the 1990s, one of her tasks was to stir the soda inside the glass to eliminate the bubbles. (“She couldn’t sing if she was burping,” her daughter explained.)

A versatile singer-songwriter whose music spanned funk, dance, rock and gospel, Summer rose to fame in 1975 with the erotic sprawl of “Love to Love You Baby,” followed by the pioneering electronica “I Feel Love,” whose pulsating beat can be heard on Beyonce’s “Summer Renaissance”.

Christie’s announcement comes just ahead of HBO’s release of a new family-backed biographical documentary directed by Roger Ross Williams and Brooklyn Sudano. Chronicling Summer’s rise from cast member of a German production of “Hair” to international superstar, the film, titled “Love to Love You, Donna Summer”, is as much about her personal life as her career, discussing her struggles depression, physical abuse by a boyfriend, and her chapter as a born-again Christian.

The auction includes both glamorous and more mundane goods. On the glamorous side of the spectrum: a bright blue and green dress that Summer wore in the music video for her 1983 song “Unconditional Love,” a rhinestone-studded dress and bolero jacket she wore to a concert in 1995, and a collection of diva sunglasses.

As for the mundane — but perhaps intriguing for the most dedicated fans — the auction includes unused shoes and a dozen unused Louis Vuitton towels.

“There are people in the world who love her,” said Bruce Sudano, responsible for taking care of the diva’s assets. “We feel like we can’t just keep all these things to ourselves.”

The online auction, which Christie’s expects to raise between $200,000 and $300,000, begins June 15. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Save the Music Foundation and the Elton John AIDS Foundation, the auction house said.

One of the items, a poster from a 1998 concert in support of the nonprofit Gay Men’s Health Crisis, traces back to Summer’s sometimes tense relationship with LGBTQIA+ fans, many of whom boycotted her music in the 1980s after being helped drive its rise.

The documentary briefly touches on this story, with Summer’s husband recounting how a comment she made off-stage – “God didn’t make Adam and Steve, he made Adam and Eve,” Sudano recalls of what she said – deeply hurt many. gay fans. Summer worked to mend her relationship with her fan base, especially after New York magazine wrote that she had defined the AIDS crisis as a “divine decision” for gays, in a report she fiercely denied and led to her suing. the magazine.

The auction also includes about 15 paintings and manuscripts with scribbled lyrics, including the 1977 song “Now I Need You” written on Munich hotel stationery, as well as penciled editions of the lyrics to the hit “On the Radio”.

Brooklyn Sudano sifted through documents like these when putting together the HBO documentary, which she says reinforced her belief that her mother was not a pop star created by outside forces, but an artist deeply involved in creating the hits that made her famous. .

“People just saw her as a character,” she said. “I don’t think they really understood that she was an artist and had an active role in creating the Donna Summer that fans knew.”