Glenn Close Auctions Her Costumes for Charity

Are you a “Damages” fan? Fancy yourself one of Cruella DeVille’s furry fashions?   Glenn Close is auctioning off the clothes she wore as Patty Hughes and many other characters to raise money for her charity combating the stigma of mental illness.

It’s a first for me. But I took this step as a means to fight for awareness of something from which millions suffer — the toxic stigma and discrimination around mental illness. It’s a story I know well because its pain has touched lives very close to me.

Over the past 30 years, I have built up a significant costume collection — from Jenny’s Field’s handmade nurses uniform from “The World According to Garp” (my first film) to the evening gown covered with 10 pounds of beads in which I swept down Norma Desmond’s staircase in “Sunset Boulevard;” from Alex Forrest’s black leather coat to Cruella DeVil’s astounding frivolities; from Albert Nobbs’s bowler hat to Patty Hewes’s brilliant reinvention of the power suit.

Bidding goes through July 19.