4290

Britney Spears' 2007 Green Umbrella

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:NA Estimated At:50,000.00 - 60,000.00 USD
Britney Spears' 2007 Green Umbrella

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Auction Date:2017 Aug 17 @ 18:00 (UTC-5 : EST/CDT)
Location:236 Commercial St., Suite 100, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
The dark green umbrella Britney Spears used to attack paparazzo Daniel ‘Dano’ Ramos’s Ford Explorer during her infamous meltdown on February 21, 2007. This moment was the public climax in a series of personal struggles involving Spears’s marriage, children, and potential substance abuse. Only days before, Spears had checked herself out of rehab and shaved her own head in what was described as a ‘blatantly self-destructive act’ in the press. After following her from estranged ex-husband Kevin Federline’s house to the parking lot outside of a Jiffy Lube on February 21st, photographers swarmed the pop star’s Mercedes and briefly stopped taking pictures at the request of Spears’s second cousin twice removed, Alli Sims, who was driving. However, the seething Britney exited the vehicle, grabbed this green umbrella from the back seat, and proceeded to smash Ramos’s car with it in rage. Part of the umbrella’s shaft is broken, as seen in the photos from that night. The incident immediately became front-page tabloid fodder, with the NY Daily News running the photos next day under the headline, ‘Britney’s Fury!’

Accompanied by three related publications—National Enquirer, Life & Style, and Rolling Stone—each featuring images of this event and by a letter of provenance from Ramos describing the incident, in part: “I was working on filming my documentary ‘Paparazzi: Full Throttle LA’…on the day Britney Spears attacked my SUV with a green umbrella…We caught up to the Pop Queen visiting her kids at Kevin’s home. She went to the gas station and I told her ‘we were concerned for her.’ We then went to Jiffy Lube and Britney’s cousin Ali Simms came out of the drivers seat and approached me and held my video camera down and told me ‘Guys please don’t, please…’ that’s when Britney Spears came out of the passenger side and grabbed the green umbrella from the backseat and came after all of us, then threw the umbrella down on the pavement.” Ramos recovered the umbrella and has kept it in his personal collection since that day. He plans to donate half of the proceeds to a charity of Spears’s choice.

As Mitchell Sunderland of Vice’s Broadly points out, the ‘umbrella incident’ has become a pop culture milestone seen as a turning point in the career arc that made Britney Spears an unintentional feminist icon: with this umbrella, she was literally striking back at the media after years of often sexist public scrutiny. She soon got the help that she needed, and has since reemerged with best-selling albums and a wildly successful residency in Las Vegas. This umbrella is a powerful symbol of the controversial relationship between celebrities and the paparazzi, and of Britney’s road to recovery before her eventual comeback.