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My Passion for Design
For nearly six decades Barbra Streisand has been one of the singular figures in American entertainment. From the cabaret to the Broadway stage, from television and film stardom to her acclaimed work as a director, from the recording studio to the concert hall, she has demonstrated that the extraordinary voice that launched her career was only one of her remarkable gifts.Now, in her first book, Barbra Streisand reveals another aspect of her the taste and style that have inspired her beautiful homes and collections. My Passion for Design is her account of the creation and consturction of her newest home—the dream refuge she has longed for since the days when she shared a small Brooklyn apartment with her mother, brother, and grandparents, and a culmination and reflection of her love of American architecture and design from the 18th to the 20th centuries. Whether she is seeking an elusive shade of blue for the paneling in a Federal lounge, tracking down a contemporary woodworker who was able to recreate the exquisite Greene & Greene style, or choosing the roses to harmonize with both the interior and exterior of a given room, Barbra's perseverance and attention to detail are remarkable—and remarkably engaging. She is a wonderfully witty storyteller as well as a knowledgeable and charming guide. My Passion for Design contains not only Barbra's own photographs of the rooms she has decorated, the furniture and art she has collected, and the ravishing gardens she has planted on her land on the California coast, but memories of her childhood, and insights into the development of her own sense of style. The millions of fans who have cherished her voice as a singer will find that she has an equally inimitable and compelling voice as a writer. Here is a rare and intimate private tour of the world of one of our most beloved stars, which will be welcomed by her fans and all lovers of the great achievements of American design.
295 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 16, 2010
22 people are currently reading
464 people want to read
About the author
Barbra Streisand
54 books389 followersBarbra Streisand is an American two time Academy Award-winning singer, film and theatre actress. She has also achieved some note as a composer, political activist, film producer and director. She has won Oscars for Best Actress and Best Original Song as well as multiple Emmy Awards, Grammy Awards, and Golden Globe Awards.
She is considered one of the most commercially and critically successful female entertainers in modern entertainment history and one of the best selling solo recording artists in the US, with RIAA-certified shipments of over 71 million albums. She is the highest ranking female artist on the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) Top Selling Artists list. She has sold approximately 145 million albums worldwide.[citation needed]
Streisand is a member of the short list of entertainers with the distinction of having won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony award.
She is considered one of the most commercially and critically successful female entertainers in modern entertainment history and one of the best selling solo recording artists in the US, with RIAA-certified shipments of over 71 million albums. She is the highest ranking female artist on the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) Top Selling Artists list. She has sold approximately 145 million albums worldwide.[citation needed]
Streisand is a member of the short list of entertainers with the distinction of having won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony award.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 90 reviews
April 30, 2011
How do you even begin to address the narcissism and folly that is Barbra Streisand, designer and builder? Probably the most positive thing you can say is that her grandiose schemes, accompanied by costly mistakes, kept a lot of people employed. Like the guys who had to "paint every gap black with a tiny brush" on her barn, because they realized in retrospect that boards shrink in colder weather, revealing the white Tyvek paper underneath. But no matter. Barbra loves that "about wood, that it contracts and expands. It's a living thing." (Actually, it's not, once it's been cut.) The handpainted wallpaper in her great room had to be done again and again, because it was handpainted, and each section was a tiny bit different. But she wanted them all the same, so back they went. The first time she built her pond, the builders lined it with rubber, which went against code. They had to rip it out and start again with heavy rebar. A set of rafters that stuck out of her mill house, connected to the water wheel, she thought were too long, so she had them lopped off. Oops, now they were too short. One of the large ceiling beams in her living room, she happened to notice, was two inches wider than the one next to it. She insisted they come out. No error was so small that it could be allowed to remain. It would have driven her crazy, looking at it!
There are two main problems with Barbra's design. Good designers have a unity of vision. A well-designed home will have a coherent look, not a mishmash of styles. Barbra loves a slew of styles, and she incorporates most of them in her main project ("the elegant barn"). (The beachfront property she owns in Malibu contains the elegant barn, constructed from the ground up; the mill house, built along with the barn; the main house, where she actually lives, purchased already built; and Grandma's house, named by James Brolin because it apparently reminds him of grandmothers, which she purchased in a rundown condition and rehabbed.) The exterior of the elegant barn is a red barn with a stone turret from one side (she wanted it to look like Connecticut), and white shingle-style from the beach side (supposed to look like Nantucket). Inside, the greatroom is vaguely Jacobean. There's a Gustav Stickley office, a Greene and Greene library, a Federal "lounge," a Charles Rennie Mackintosh Hall, a Georgian "display room," and a suite of Art Nouveau rooms. So Barbra's first problem is that she lacks a coherent vision. She wants to include everything. She has no ability to edit out incoherence and excess.
Her second problem, paradoxically, is that she's too matchy-matchy. Each room uses one or two colors. In one room with a burgundy and olive color scheme, "it was a challenge to find books I actually wanted that were bound in either burgundy or olive." Books always have to match the room's color scheme. In a blue room, there are only blue books. In her koi pond, she only has black and white koi. No orange. Each room that adheres to a historical style is too severely limited in range, like rooms in a museum. That's exactly what she wants, but it's not good overall design, unless you're the furniture curator at the Met.
Homebuilding for Barbra is basically set construction. When she wasn't satisfied with what architects were drawing and modelling for her, she hired movie people. She visualizes everything as a film shot. In the elegant barn's basement, she built a brick-paved "street" lined with shops and park benches. It's very cloying and Disney. She used doors, posts, and corbels from the Meet the Fockers set. Upstairs, she had the doors to her gym modelled precisely on doors she had seen in Gosford Park. (There was a problem - you could see some of the gym equipment from the ground floor, since the doors were mostly glass. She gave away every piece of gym equipment that was tall enough that it could be seen from below.) The mill house, with its water wheel, is very "ye olde." She strives for authenticity, but sometimes things just end up looking phony, like the stone placed at the bottom of plaster walls in the mill house, "as if the plaster that covered them had crumbled away over the years." Much of her landscaping is unbearably precious, from the wishing well and water wheel to the phony rusticity of the pond and stream, to the random white picket fences, to the stone-paved "wagon ruts" underlain with concrete that lead to the house. She can't resist antique signage, as long as it came from a Hamptons flea market: GARDEN, on a big arrow, right at the entrance to the garden.
Would someone, please, enroll Barbra in some type of biology class? In addition to her confusion about wood planks being alive, she wonders about roses: "I've often wondered where the scent comes from. Does it go up from the seed into the stem, mixing with earth and water? Are there little cilia that move it along?"
Some of the book's photos are terrible quality - out of focus, or enlarged beyond the appropriate pixel level.
She has as many photos of herself with Bill Clinton in her houses as with her husband ("in 1992 when Bill Clinton was elected president, I fell in love with America all over again").
Three stars because this degree of narcissistic excess is so fascinating. "At the Library of Congress, when they asked if I wanted to look at my own things, I said no. I just wanted to see Thomas Jefferson's drawings of the dome at Monticello."
--------------------------------------------------
I simply must know if everything in Barbra Streisand's life is that silvery blue color. Her laptop, her toilet paper holders, her Xanax bottle cosy?
There are two main problems with Barbra's design. Good designers have a unity of vision. A well-designed home will have a coherent look, not a mishmash of styles. Barbra loves a slew of styles, and she incorporates most of them in her main project ("the elegant barn"). (The beachfront property she owns in Malibu contains the elegant barn, constructed from the ground up; the mill house, built along with the barn; the main house, where she actually lives, purchased already built; and Grandma's house, named by James Brolin because it apparently reminds him of grandmothers, which she purchased in a rundown condition and rehabbed.) The exterior of the elegant barn is a red barn with a stone turret from one side (she wanted it to look like Connecticut), and white shingle-style from the beach side (supposed to look like Nantucket). Inside, the greatroom is vaguely Jacobean. There's a Gustav Stickley office, a Greene and Greene library, a Federal "lounge," a Charles Rennie Mackintosh Hall, a Georgian "display room," and a suite of Art Nouveau rooms. So Barbra's first problem is that she lacks a coherent vision. She wants to include everything. She has no ability to edit out incoherence and excess.
Her second problem, paradoxically, is that she's too matchy-matchy. Each room uses one or two colors. In one room with a burgundy and olive color scheme, "it was a challenge to find books I actually wanted that were bound in either burgundy or olive." Books always have to match the room's color scheme. In a blue room, there are only blue books. In her koi pond, she only has black and white koi. No orange. Each room that adheres to a historical style is too severely limited in range, like rooms in a museum. That's exactly what she wants, but it's not good overall design, unless you're the furniture curator at the Met.
Homebuilding for Barbra is basically set construction. When she wasn't satisfied with what architects were drawing and modelling for her, she hired movie people. She visualizes everything as a film shot. In the elegant barn's basement, she built a brick-paved "street" lined with shops and park benches. It's very cloying and Disney. She used doors, posts, and corbels from the Meet the Fockers set. Upstairs, she had the doors to her gym modelled precisely on doors she had seen in Gosford Park. (There was a problem - you could see some of the gym equipment from the ground floor, since the doors were mostly glass. She gave away every piece of gym equipment that was tall enough that it could be seen from below.) The mill house, with its water wheel, is very "ye olde." She strives for authenticity, but sometimes things just end up looking phony, like the stone placed at the bottom of plaster walls in the mill house, "as if the plaster that covered them had crumbled away over the years." Much of her landscaping is unbearably precious, from the wishing well and water wheel to the phony rusticity of the pond and stream, to the random white picket fences, to the stone-paved "wagon ruts" underlain with concrete that lead to the house. She can't resist antique signage, as long as it came from a Hamptons flea market: GARDEN, on a big arrow, right at the entrance to the garden.
Would someone, please, enroll Barbra in some type of biology class? In addition to her confusion about wood planks being alive, she wonders about roses: "I've often wondered where the scent comes from. Does it go up from the seed into the stem, mixing with earth and water? Are there little cilia that move it along?"
Some of the book's photos are terrible quality - out of focus, or enlarged beyond the appropriate pixel level.
She has as many photos of herself with Bill Clinton in her houses as with her husband ("in 1992 when Bill Clinton was elected president, I fell in love with America all over again").
Three stars because this degree of narcissistic excess is so fascinating. "At the Library of Congress, when they asked if I wanted to look at my own things, I said no. I just wanted to see Thomas Jefferson's drawings of the dome at Monticello."
--------------------------------------------------
I simply must know if everything in Barbra Streisand's life is that silvery blue color. Her laptop, her toilet paper holders, her Xanax bottle cosy?
November 7, 2014
Caveat: I am not a big Streisand fan, nor a big fan of home decorating books, so it was purely accidental that I ordered this book from the library. And once I got it, well, really, it's mostly a book full of pretty pictures of a house in Malibu overlooking the ocean with a few pictures of James Brolin (still handsome) and a lot of pix of the diva herself. So why not enjoy it. I gave it 4 stars for the following:
1. Streisand did an ab fab job of building, renovating, restoring, landscaping a property which could have contained another mcmansion, but instead is a beautiful New England farmhouse and barn complete with babbling brook.
2. Bless her heart: with all her money and power she still had tons of trouble getting the contractors and worker bees to do her bidding. In my youth I would have thought she was at fault for being too picky. As an old homeowner my sympathy is entirely with her. They think she's a bitch simply because she wants the plans followed and when they deviate she catches them on it. One builder after another think she should be satisfied with "Almost" instead of "Exactly". When we had our pool redone a few years back and they painted it black instead of Mediterranean blue, the contractor told me:"well, no one is going to get it perfect for you". And it's always like that with every job, so I was both relieved and furious at the same time to realize it's really not about money or power. It's about getting the job done right.
3. I loved that she was able to incorporate so many different styles in different rooms and not have the place look hodgepodge, but rather it was so much more interesting than a place which was strictly modern or all craftsman.
4. It was fun.
1. Streisand did an ab fab job of building, renovating, restoring, landscaping a property which could have contained another mcmansion, but instead is a beautiful New England farmhouse and barn complete with babbling brook.
2. Bless her heart: with all her money and power she still had tons of trouble getting the contractors and worker bees to do her bidding. In my youth I would have thought she was at fault for being too picky. As an old homeowner my sympathy is entirely with her. They think she's a bitch simply because she wants the plans followed and when they deviate she catches them on it. One builder after another think she should be satisfied with "Almost" instead of "Exactly". When we had our pool redone a few years back and they painted it black instead of Mediterranean blue, the contractor told me:"well, no one is going to get it perfect for you". And it's always like that with every job, so I was both relieved and furious at the same time to realize it's really not about money or power. It's about getting the job done right.
3. I loved that she was able to incorporate so many different styles in different rooms and not have the place look hodgepodge, but rather it was so much more interesting than a place which was strictly modern or all craftsman.
4. It was fun.
November 29, 2015
Who maintains the fro-yo machine in the basement? How much does it cost to keep a draftsman on staff to draw up one's random ideas? Where did the custom painted home gym end up? Do all the dolls come to life at night? So many unanswered questions. Also, James Brolin appears to only have a Stairmaster and a desk in the house, but he does get to have "rendezvous" with Babs in the Napping Room.
Original review:
Dude, she built a "vintage street of shops, including a sweet shop, a gift shop, a flower shop, and an antique shop" in her BASEMENT. Tell me you don't want to see pictures of that.
Original review:
Dude, she built a "vintage street of shops, including a sweet shop, a gift shop, a flower shop, and an antique shop" in her BASEMENT. Tell me you don't want to see pictures of that.
May 18, 2022
To read this was to embark on a kitsch odyssey, and it was--in pretty much every sense of the word I can think of--an astonishing one. I'm still too disoriented by the journey to tell you exactly what this book is, but whatever it is, it is definitely the most of that sort of thing.
January 26, 2011
I can't believe I'm reading this. And, furthermore, I can't believe how interesting it is.
May 5, 2025
I enjoy design and it was fun going through Barbra’s Malibu property with such detail. Her taste is certainly not mine, heavy drapes,lace, ruffles, antiques but we do both enjoy some of the same things … old quilts, pottery, dishes, books, gardening (oh the roses!). And that view. Heavenly
November 24, 2010
An inside look at Barbra's "barn" and gardens. It's not to my taste, mostly Federal, but still gorgeous. The rose garden is amazing, as is the expected attention to detail (she even includes pictures of the mistakes that *had* to be corrected). My favorite parts, though, are the "napping room" and the basement, which was made to look like a street of shops, and houses Barbra's extensive antiques collections (clothing, dolls, etc.), as well as a "Sweet Shoppe," with popcorn machine and candies. I like to think of her padding down there in the middle of the night. Except....this "barn" really is an outbuilding, and after 200 pages of it, you get to see the "main house." Seriously, the barn is a wonderland, and it isn't even where she lives?!?! I love her more than ever now.
June 12, 2023
The entire home, the architecture, the thought behind each facet of each room, each piece, each fascinating collection.... made for such a neat, truly enjoyable read :)
August 7, 2025
truly enjoyed Barbra's passion for designing, investing in, overseeing all of these buildings on her estate. I too love lots of beautiful wood; I appreciate your love for a monochromatic palate. Amazing what she has done with 2 sides of her doors. Two antique wood I enjoy that she has not mentioned are birds' eye maple and rosewood. And her roses are absolutely fantastic. My personal favourite is the gorgeous red Black Magic. The design of the lap pool, bridge, stream fascinates me. I do not favour her art collection with the exception of the food paintings in the kitchen. I have several such food paintings in my kitchen having had botanicals there before. I used to love doll houses but now only enjoy viewing them. I would love to go enjoy the Gamble House in Pasadena. Favourite lines: "Objects were my friends. The skill and creativity that went into making these things beguiled me. Finding them became a challenge. I loved the hunt." (24); "I love looking at water. It's like a living painting - always in motion. I find it mesmerizing, meditative, relaxing" (66); "It's that blend that always fascinates me -the crude and the elegant....ITs just a way of seeing things in subtle tonalities" (101); "as I said in a speech for Women in Film in 1992: A man is commanding - a woman is demanding. A man is forceful - a woman is pushy. A man is a perfectionist- a woman's a pain in the ass." (109) the architects she mentions "they shared a common vision: a concept of architecture as a complete art" (140); "How many times have you bumped into a coffee table? Rounded corners are more humane"(146); "There comes a point when you have to compromise and sometimes the compromise leads to something better" (154); "I'm only a purist when it suits me" (162); This is my farmhouse kitchen. It feels warm and homey...the whole room seems to belong to a kinder, gentler era. (186). In her acknowledgements she adds "thank you to my husband for allowing me my obsession ...and for listening and looking and researching and driving and drawing and loving the process, too. I too appreciate my husband's support of my obsessions.
November 24, 2022
Although, I'm giving this gorgeous book 5 stars, I do it with a bit of sadness and sympathy. Ms. Streisand is a legendary talent, and remarkable woman who has had an equally remarkable life. However, the overwhelming excess of her home reminds me somehow of Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch. She has spent a lifetime acquiring a magnificent collection of antiques and one of a kind items, but in designing her home, she has obsessed over so much minutiae! She often mentions the poverty of her childhood, lack of toys or privacy in a tiny apartment. Even an amateur psychologist would say she's trying to compensate for all the things she never had. I applaud the research she did in order to make each element of her home authentic and tasteful. While the idea of her avenue of shops in her basement is a charming notion, it also underscores the fact that she has so much excess from decades of shopping the world, that she has no where in the vastness that is her home to use them.
Perhaps as much as the house itself, I admired the magnificent gardens and outdoor venues. I wish Ms. Streisand and Mr. Brolin great happiness in their pleasure dome, and pity those employees who have to dust all her treasures.
Perhaps as much as the house itself, I admired the magnificent gardens and outdoor venues. I wish Ms. Streisand and Mr. Brolin great happiness in their pleasure dome, and pity those employees who have to dust all her treasures.
November 9, 2018
I'm on the fence about giving this book four or five stars only because there were some things I did not like about it. Namely, her decorating style that involved dolls and clowns and so much...STUFF. I realize she's a collector and has some great pieces but I pity the person who has to dust all of her houses she has shown here.
I liked the idea of her having different kinds of stores in her basement. It was cute. Charming even. Maybe excessive, yes, but this is Barbara Streisand we're talking about.
Towards the end of the book, I lost count of how many structures on her property she actually has and built and redone. Each of them charming in their own, very different way.
I would never want to leave my house(s) if they looked like this! A great coffee table book to keep out, and the photos really are gorgeous.
I liked the idea of her having different kinds of stores in her basement. It was cute. Charming even. Maybe excessive, yes, but this is Barbara Streisand we're talking about.
Towards the end of the book, I lost count of how many structures on her property she actually has and built and redone. Each of them charming in their own, very different way.
I would never want to leave my house(s) if they looked like this! A great coffee table book to keep out, and the photos really are gorgeous.
March 22, 2021
The tone of the book is conversational. It truly feels as though she’s taking you on a tour through her different properties. She describes her design process as being the same as for her movie sets. She wants each place to feel authentic the time period and story associated.
As she takes us from room to room we learn not only the fictional story behind her property as a whole, but the context behind the design of each room of the houses.
Surprisingly, the book at times almost presents as a memoir not a design book. Barbra shares personal stories and behind the scenes of her life, including performances. She also sporadically explores the possible reasons for her extravagance and indulgences, and in doing so reveals an intimate side of her psyche.
As she takes us from room to room we learn not only the fictional story behind her property as a whole, but the context behind the design of each room of the houses.
Surprisingly, the book at times almost presents as a memoir not a design book. Barbra shares personal stories and behind the scenes of her life, including performances. She also sporadically explores the possible reasons for her extravagance and indulgences, and in doing so reveals an intimate side of her psyche.
March 9, 2023
I know a lot of “people” don’t care for Streisand as an entertainer. This masterpiece of this “coffee table” book takes you into a completely different side of the individual. She is smart (genius?), precise, knows what she wants and isn’t afraid to demand it. She has a special eye for decorating. It may not be to your liking, but she justifies all of her decisions (and admits her mistakes). The property is amazing and she is so generous to let her fans see what she has accomplished in making a fabulous (yes, I said it) setting for her family, her staff and her pets!
Full disclosure- I’ve been infatuated with this remarkable talent since I fist saw her when I was in 7th grade. My dream came true in 2016 when I saw her perform live at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
Full disclosure- I’ve been infatuated with this remarkable talent since I fist saw her when I was in 7th grade. My dream came true in 2016 when I saw her perform live at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
June 5, 2021
Barbra Streisand is one of the most talented people I can name. She does it all...sings! Acts, directs, writes, even writes music, even does her own stock market trading, and now shares with us another of her passions. Everything she touches is amazing. I love the photos and the way she’s so particular about everything. Five different homes on one property and they all have some kind of theme. But the “mall” in her basement was something totally unique. Being the simple person I am, it’s fun to look at what others have created. I like her farm kitchen and sitting room where she works. But her Barn is pretty cool.
July 24, 2025
I do not have the same taste as Barbara, though she is all over the place with her aesthetic, but I enjoyed the process of design. It did bother me when she would say some comment about being thrifty and reusing some curtains or some such, but then has an entire set of stairs ripped out-twice- because one little detail bothered her. I mean, clearly she can afford whatever she wants, but the smattering of conveniently placed comments about not being wasteful in the midst of this over-the-top project just rang hollow for me.
February 1, 2021
Read it on a recommendation from social media. There were some very beautiful parts of the book. But it was so much excess. I found it hard to imagine people actually being in some of the rooms. The gardens were beautiful. As RuPaul would say "Opulence; you own everything!"
May 13, 2022
Loved this book. Loved how she has such a passion for finding the right piece of furniture, painting etc. She says she doesn’t take no for a final answer, she researched everything.
Beautiful pictures. I loved the idea of the basement becoming shops.
Beautiful pictures. I loved the idea of the basement becoming shops.
November 22, 2023
Listening to Barbra Streisand narrate her memoir while also following the e-book version (which has the bonus of photos) made for a long deeply satisfying experience that I recommend. She recalls her career, life and times with honesty and grace.
February 19, 2021
Oy. What I wouldn't give to tour her homes. Or to go dollhouse shopping with her.
December 16, 2023
Nice pictures!
December 25, 2023
It was so beneficial to have read Barbra’s autobiography prior to reading this one. All of her creative powers are on incredible display here.
January 13, 2024
A good follow up to Barbra’s memoirs.
April 2, 2024
Coffee table type book with stunning images of Barbra’s “Malibu Barbie” home.
December 24, 2024
A luxurious afternoon read through Streisand’s beloved Malibu compound. Total vanity project, but appreciate the hard work this Queen has put in to obtain such nice shit.
December 30, 2024
Beautiful book, her attention to detail is what I expected from this person. I've read it cover to cover and browsed it many times.
February 20, 2011
In this beautiful book full of gorgeous photos, the author takes the reader on a journey, sharing the many stories that led to the creation and design of each home and each room. Every home and room is designed to take advantage of the exterior world, including the ocean views, which are extensions of the interiors.
Beginning with the various houses on the compound, like the Mill House, The Barn, Grandma's House, and the Main House, we get to experience, along with the author, the research she did; how she brought pieces from storage that had been in other homes; her treasure hunts to shops and flea markets; and the relics from her own past, including her performing events. One thing I learned from this book is that Streisand saves just about everything, recycling her treasures and collections into whatever home is hers at the time.
My favorite parts of the book were the little tidbits she shared that made her seem like a real person you could sit down and have tea with. Things like her love of juxtaposition: the crude mixed with the elegant; rough things mixed with smooth things; and her passion for certain colors. We also get to enjoy the tales of how she patiently sought out the wondrous treasures she eventually brought to each of the homes.
The designs spring to her from her visual memories of things seen in the past. Finding craftsman and builders required a great and painstaking journey toward discovering just the right ones. Sometimes things had to be redone a few times, as the move from vision to design to fruition can have unexpected outcomes.
This glorious journey is a testament to the author's passion and love of design, as well as her devotion to detail.
My favorite of the houses was Grandma's House, a smaller guesthouse with cozy rooms and small-scale furniture covered in quilts.
Another aspect I enjoyed a lot was the basement of The Barn, which was arranged like city streets, with shops. The shops ranged from antique clothing stores to doll stores, and the streets were very true-to-life quaint meandering pathways.
"My Passion for Design" is a treasured collectible that I will enjoy over and over, turning the pages and relishing the images. It will be like revisiting favorite places and reexperiencing treasured moments. Five stars!
Beginning with the various houses on the compound, like the Mill House, The Barn, Grandma's House, and the Main House, we get to experience, along with the author, the research she did; how she brought pieces from storage that had been in other homes; her treasure hunts to shops and flea markets; and the relics from her own past, including her performing events. One thing I learned from this book is that Streisand saves just about everything, recycling her treasures and collections into whatever home is hers at the time.
My favorite parts of the book were the little tidbits she shared that made her seem like a real person you could sit down and have tea with. Things like her love of juxtaposition: the crude mixed with the elegant; rough things mixed with smooth things; and her passion for certain colors. We also get to enjoy the tales of how she patiently sought out the wondrous treasures she eventually brought to each of the homes.
The designs spring to her from her visual memories of things seen in the past. Finding craftsman and builders required a great and painstaking journey toward discovering just the right ones. Sometimes things had to be redone a few times, as the move from vision to design to fruition can have unexpected outcomes.
This glorious journey is a testament to the author's passion and love of design, as well as her devotion to detail.
My favorite of the houses was Grandma's House, a smaller guesthouse with cozy rooms and small-scale furniture covered in quilts.
Another aspect I enjoyed a lot was the basement of The Barn, which was arranged like city streets, with shops. The shops ranged from antique clothing stores to doll stores, and the streets were very true-to-life quaint meandering pathways.
"My Passion for Design" is a treasured collectible that I will enjoy over and over, turning the pages and relishing the images. It will be like revisiting favorite places and reexperiencing treasured moments. Five stars!
June 19, 2016
This book had been on my wish list since 2010 when it was released. It is a great bargain on Amazon at $4.26. I had a most delightful Friday evening after working all week by savoring this book. I read it from cover to cover. The beautiful photography was done by Barbra. As she states in the book she has been poor and she has been rich. Her father died when she was nine, she, her brother and her mom moved in with her grandmother. She never had a doll as a child but took a hot water bottle and filled it with water and her grandmother made clothes for it. She was a very shy child but loved movies and theater at a young age. She is quick to tell you she is a perfectionist which puts a lot of pressure on a person. Her attention to detail is utmost which you will quickly discover in the book and drove me crazy. She took a quote from someone (can't remember), "Detail is the difference between something being ordinary or extraordianry". She also states her need for instant gratification which she thinks may have something to do with losing her father at a very young age. She began collecting at the age of 15. She planned this house for many years and it took over 5 years to be built. I like Barbra more because her sense of humor, her genorosity, her strong belief in reusing things or passing them on are depicted in this book. She is a woman who knows what she wants, how she wants it and is determined to get it. If I had the means to do what she does I'm sure I would. Our tastes are nothing alike, I'm more a warm and cozy type gal but found the book to be very enjoyable and a beuatiful coffee table book!
June 1, 2011
This book is a tour of Barbra Streisand's home compound on the California coast at Malibu. It includes a "barn" (now a home) and a main house--both beautifully decorated with rooms in various styles, such as art deco, arts and crafts, federal style, a style that is centered on patchwork quilts, etc. Streisand's eye for design is surpassed only by the resources she has to invest in her vision, and these are lovely homes where many people could b accommodated. I was interested in her "basement," which is a sort of mall, with an antiques store, a vintage clothing store, a candy store, a cold room--places for her to display her collections and some costumes from Funny Girl and other movies. A short bit at the back of the book was fun in that it reveals where the TV is in some of the rooms--often "beautiful homes" spreads don't reveal that detail, even though we know people have televisions. A fun book to get from the library and flip through, although my repeated thought while doing so was "who has to dust all this stuff?" I noted that the blurb on the cover makes special mention of Streisand's support of numerous charities, perhaps lest we think she is being overly extravagant or blowing her money on excess. Perhaps these homes could one day be museums, where people could take a real (not just photo) tour--they appear to be of that quality.
December 18, 2011
The book actually gave me a headache!! But I loved it. Very inspirational. She discloses many personal things in a conversational way that the public probably did not know, so she comes across warmer than when you see her in interviews. The book itself is very high quality (she did a lot of the photography) and would be a treasure to own. A portion of the proceeds goes to her heart research charity and Sinai Medical Center. A very beautiful, well-written, knowledgeable, entertaining book depicting building her home and displaying her many collections. The one thing I think she is missing is the introspection as to the reasons WHY she does the things she does; e.g. the way she is. She gives some insight to that from her childhood revelations which make it very obvious to me. I just hope she can make other people's dreams come true, the way so MANY people did hers. I could definitely live in the gardens.
January 12, 2015
Beautiful interior and exterior photos of her gorgeous homes. This is beyond a typical interior design book because it was written and photographed by Barbra herself and she tells in a very personal way how she designed and built her "barn" house. It is a glimpse inside her world where she can create whatever she wants and she wants a lot. She is a perfectionist to the extreme and makes no apologies for it. I kept feeling sorry for anyone who worked with her on these projects. She mentions several times how she went through teams of carpenters or different architects because they couldn't deliver her vision. The excess of the place is something to behold. She has a "street" of shops built under her house with a gift shop and wrapping room, a candy store, ice cream parlor, flower shop, antiques shop. . . It goes on and on and each shop was built to perfection. A lovely book to either enjoy for the pictures or to read cover to cover.
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