Freddie Mercury’s Final Performance Jacket Sells for $150,000
One of Freddie Mercury’s leather jackets with an especially poignant meaning stole the show at an auction held on the late rock star’s birthday.
Freddie Mercury, lead singer of the band Queen and one of rock music’s greatest stars, would have turned 80 on September 5, 2026.
British auction house Henry Aldridge & Son held an "Iconic Memorabilia, Collectors Items and Jewellery" auction the same day, which, fittingly, included a few pieces of Mercury’s fantastic fashion. The highlight of these lots was a stage-worn black leather biker jacket that sold for £111,000 (about $150,000), including a 23.5% buyer’s premium.
The jacket, made for the Jean Paul Gaultier 1987/88 “Rock Stars” collection, features white metal details, including a belt buckle, clusters of studs, and skull-shaped fasteners to the shoulder epaulets. Its place in Mercury’s mythology comes from more than being an example of the singer’s iconic style. He wore it for his final live singing performance, an appearance in Time the Musical at the Dominion Theatre in London on April 14, 1988.
The performance of Time the Musical was in support of the Terrence Higgins Trust, which was founded in 1982 and has since become the leading HIV charity in the UK. Mercury performed four songs, “It’s Only Rock ‘N’ Roll,” “In My Defence,” “Time,” and, in a duet with the musical’s star Cliff Richard, “It’s In Every One of Us.” This was one of Mercury’s few solo performances, without Queen members Brian May, Roger Taylor, and John Deacon. It has been described as “revealing a vulnerable, emotional side rarely seen in his larger-than-life persona” that “turned the Dominion into a temple of rock.”
Mercury had been diagnosed with AIDS in 1987, but would not publicly announce it until 1991, shortly before he died.
After the Time the Musical performance, Mercury gave the jacket to his friend Barbara Valentin, who appeared in Queen’s 1984 music video for the song “It’s A Hard Life.” She later donated it to the AIDSTakeCare Foundation Trust, which auctioned it online for a fundraiser in 2001. The Henry Aldridge lot includes letters from Valentin and AIDSTakeCare, a newspaper story about Mercury, and additional documentation.
The auction also offered two black-and-white silk scarves that Mercury wore for the video for the Queen song “I’m Going Slightly Mad” in 1991; a pair of his chestnut leather brogue shoes; and, in a glimpse of the man behind the microphone, a brown leather U.S. Air Force–style jacket said to be his favorite.
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