Roberta Flack’s Bulgari collar leads no-reserve jewelry auction

Roberta Flack’s Bulgari collar is the kind of jewel collectors treat like a small archive: 18-karat yellow gold, cultured pearl, diamond, pink tourmaline and peridot, 185.5 grams of metal, and a 15 1/2-inch length that gives the piece the presence of a true collar rather than a delicate necklace. In a no-reserve auction, that combination of maker, scale and documented ownership matters more than celebrity alone.

Julien’s Auctions will offer the necklace in Roberta Flack: Style, Art & Music | No Reserve, a live sale set for May 14, 2026, in Gardena, California, with online bidding available ahead of the room sale. The house says the offering includes more than 500 items drawn directly from Flack’s personal archive, ranging from Oscar de la Renta gowns and stage-worn ensembles to correspondence, original artwork, gold records and personal mementos. That breadth gives collectors a crucial test: the strongest estate lots are not simply owned by a famous name, they are anchored by clear maker attribution, period styling and a paper trail that ties the object to the artist’s life.

The Bulgari collar checks those boxes. Bulgari’s signed high-jewelry work has long appealed to collectors because the house name carries market recognition, while the materials here, yellow gold, cultured pearl, diamond and colored stones, place the piece firmly in the kind of polished, late-20th-century luxury that holds up well when condition is strong and documentation is intact. For buyers weighing celebrity jewelry, the real question is whether the object would still matter without the name attached. In this case, the answer is yes: the collar has the heft, craftsmanship and house provenance to stand on its own.

Flack’s cultural record adds another layer. She died on February 24, 2025, at age 88, after announcing in 2022 that she had ALS. Her legacy includes becoming the first solo artist to win Record of the Year in consecutive years, for The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face in 1973 and Killing Me Softly with His Song in 1974, a distinction that still marks her as one of the rare artists whose fame crosses from music into collectible history.

The sale also carries a direct charitable purpose. All proceeds will benefit the Roberta Flack Foundation, which Flack founded in 2010 to support animal welfare and help children, especially girls of color, with education, especially music. For collectors, that makes the auction more than a celebrity dispersal. It turns Flack’s wardrobe, jewels and papers into a measured study of authorship, taste and legacy, with the Bulgari collar leading the lot because it offers all three in one object.