Has there ever been a time when Barbra Streisand’s star hasn’t been shining? Well before she appeared on the cover of InStyle’s very first issue (below), Streisand’s legendary voice has entertained millions and given us plenty of hits to keep on repeat in our playlists—from 1966’s “Woman in Love” to 1985’s “Somewhere.
” To call her powerful vocals a comfort is an understatement. Lucky for us, we have Streisand’s newly released Partners, which just became her 10th No. 1 album (and made her the first artist to earn a No. 1 record in each of the past six decades). In this new collection, she’s teamed up with quite an eclectic (and mega talented) set of singers.Streisand has done duets before (“You Don’t Send Me Flowers” with Neil Diamond and “I Finally Found Someone” with Bryan Adams come to mind), and Partners revisits some of her biggest hits with the likes of Billy Joel, Lionel Richie, and Stevie Wonder, and also features her first studio-recorded duet with son Jason Gould. Fittingly, the first track on the album is a recording of the timeless “It Had to Be You” with Michael Bublé. Yes, Babs, it did!
We revisited our own archives in honor of Streisand’s new compilation. Read on for excerpts from the very first InStyle cover story from June 1994—Streisand talks about the country home she renovated as a labor of love.
No one would ever mistake her for a country girl. Even if you didn’t know she was born and raised in Brooklyn, or that she got her start singing in Greenwich Village nightclubs, or that she first earned star status in a very New York Broadway play, her name conjures up the image of the ultimate urbanite: savvy and sophisticated, perfectly polished.
Streisand is passionate about decorating and, by her own account, brings a sprinter’s sense of urgency to her projects. “I can’t wait for decorators,” she shrugs. “I just get visions in my head.” After she and [Jon] Peters added a loft to the main room, for example, she says, “I thought it would be pretty with everything white. I love doing that, you know, the lace with the wood, balancing something very fancy and something very crude. There was an ugly couch that Jon bought, and I threw pieces of white embroidered cotton over it. In other words, I furnished the loft in a week.”
For all of Streisand’s self-professed perfectionism and troves of valuable objects, it’s the well-worn rag rugs, rough-hewn cupboards and rustic pottery that have worn well with her. “I couldn’t live in the Deco house,” she says. “It was cold. I never felt right there.” But the Barn was something else, “just so homey and comfortable. You have to remember we had young children. Christmas mornings, I would make bagels and hot chocolate and the kids would get up and the tree was right there.
“The Barn,” she says, “is my favorite.”
Visit our gallery of Barbra Streisand’s ever-evolving looks through the years!