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Ankara-based collector Ozgur Cift bought a pair of blood-stained ballet shoes linked to British musician Amy Winehouse for $3,900 at a Los Angeles auction, and that renewed attention to a lawsuit involving Winehouse's estate has fueled international interest and higher offers for the item.
The dramatic backstory of shoes, their inclusion in a £730,000 ($1 million) lawsuit between Winehouse's father, Mitch Winehouse, and her stylists, and the international offers made to the Turkish collector have drawn worldwide attention.
Ozgur Cift, who has been collecting personal items belonging to artists for about 26 years, said he primarily follows international auctions.
He said the ballet shoes were offered for sale by Winehouse's stylists at a Los Angeles auction in 2023, but the catalog included no information about the period they belonged to or any story behind them.
At the time, Cift said he purchased the shoes for $3,900, initially assuming they were similar to other ballet shoes previously sold officially by the family for charitable foundations.
Cift noted that what set this pair apart from others was its severe wear and the heavy presence of dried brown stains. He said the true story behind the shoes became clear only after extensive research conducted following the purchase.
According to Cift, Winehouse owned several pairs of ballet shoes during her short nine-year professional career and frequently wore them in daily life and on stage.
However, while examining the magazine, paparazzi photographs and video footage spanning the final five years of her life, he identified an exact match.
He said the shoes corresponded precisely to those worn in widely circulated images taken in 2007 after an argument with her husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, when Winehouse was photographed outside a London hotel. Those images, he noted, remained in the global spotlight for a long time and sparked intense public debate, elevating the historical and symbolic value of the shoes.
Cift recalled that following Winehouse's death, her father and estate administrator, Mitch Winehouse, filed a £730,000 ($1 million) lawsuit against close associates Naomi Parry and Catriona Gourlay, alleging the unauthorized sale of the singer's personal belongings for profit. The blood-stained ballet shoes were included in that legal case.
He said renewed international media coverage of the lawsuit has significantly increased interest in the shoes, leading to offers of up to half a million pounds from collectors and museums worldwide.
Despite this, Cift said he does not view the item merely as a commercial asset and prefers to share it with the public through exhibitions in different countries to honor Winehouse's memory.
Cift said his collection includes more than 100 personal items belonging to Winehouse. Among them is the red tartan corset she wore during her 2008 Brit Awards performance of Valerie, a piece he described as one of the most representative items of her visual identity.
He also holds a hand-drawn self-portrait created when Winehouse was 5 years old at Osidge kindergarten, bearing her earliest known signature, as well as the main microphone she used on stage.
Cift said Winehouse used the same microphone from 2007 until her final concert in Belgrade in 2011. After that performance, she traveled to Istanbul for a planned concert that was later canceled, bringing the microphone with her. Istanbul, he said, was the last city she visited before returning to London, where she later died.
According to Cift, the collection is not a simple chronological inventory but a curatorial narrative that traces the key turning points of Winehouse's 27-year life through the marks left on her personal belongings.
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