Material girl
Madonna’s ever-changing look has been just as important as her music. On her 60th birthday, Jessie Collins highlights her standout moments
In 1984 the leg warmer ruled, as did ra-ra skirts and blue eyeshadow with everything. Then something happened. Suddenly, blasted into our living rooms was a cavorting punk bride, writhing around in a boat in Venice covered in pearls and crucifixes with fingerless gloves singing ‘Like a Virgin’. Within weeks, lace tops, fishnet stockings, rosary beads, bracelets, and bleached hair were everywhere. Madonna’s style impact was instantaneous.
Though the ‘Like a Virgin’ look was created in fact by stylist and jewellery designer Maripol, at just 26, the aspiring superstar, then on her second album, already knew how to market it.
“By the time ‘Like a Virgin’ came out, she was working with Benetton and her style at the time influenced the American store Macy’s to create a ‘Madonna Town’ where they stocked tulle skirts, fishnet tights and ‘Boy
Toy’ belts (infamously worn by Madonna at her first MTV Video
Music Awards appearance), which were like gold dust over here,” says Irish designer Helen Steele, who has dressed everyone from Cara Delevigne to Saoirse Ronan.
“I remember a pal of mine and I lusting after her older sister’s Madonna Boy Toy belt, which went down a treat at late 80s Catholic mass in Kildare!”
A true fashion magpie, Madonna found style inspiration from all over, taking cues from high fashion to underground culture.
“She was one of the first artists to truly marry music, fashion and art in a fascinating way,” says designer and presenter Brendan Courtney. “She championed ‘street’ artist Keith Haring amongst other new wave 80s artists who, like her, where subverting their mediums.”
And she pivoted quickly. Just a year after bursting on to the music scene in her good-girl-gone-bad bridal look, she was suddenly paying homage to Marilyn Monroe in her video for ‘Material Girl’, complete with textured glossy locks and a pink satin gown. As she evolved, she also increasingly began to collaborate with rising fashion stars of the time, with greater and greater success.
“The people she chooses to collaborate with are the right choice at that specific time,” says stylist Sinead Keenan, who has styled Ruth Negga, among others. “It’s always been one of her best skills. From the music producers she works with to brands she wears, she has always launched careers and put artists and designers in the forefront of either music or fashion. She taps into a zeitgeist and runs with it.” Steele agrees. “She has collaborated with Versace, Tom Ford, Dolce and Gabbana, Jean Paul Gaultier, Jeremy Scott, Rick Owens, Riccardo Tisci for Givenchy, Stella McCartney — and that’s just some of the designers. She has an amazing knack also of seeking out relative unknowns before they make it big.”
“Her relationship and collaboration with her stylist and costume designer Arianne Phillips over 20 years has been one of the biggest strengths behind the power of her image,” says Keenan. “Her ad campaigns and costumes with Dolce and Gabbana were a great fit in terms of her image and their sexy Italian woman aesthetic, all juxtaposed and contradicted with influences from the Catholic Church.
“I think her regular collaborations with Jean Paul Gaultier throughout her career have been the best. People always think of the conical bra from the Blond Ambition Tour when actually there’s been so much more. Gaultier’s bondage take on the equestrian themed costumes for the Confessions Tour were sublime.”
From her Monroe moment in ‘Material Girl’, Madonna quickly upped her style stakes in 1990, appearing in that now infamous conical bra, which at the time was a sensation. Her look was becoming increasingly sexualised but also more empowered, and was
designed to provoke and challenge.
“I absolutely feel she was a big part of next level female empowerment,” says Courtney, “being a woman and a sexual creature but being equal, I really feel that was her fight and her message.”
She still managed to co-opt emerging trends to create something mainstream too, offering a platform particularly to the underground gay scene at the time. “She took Voguing out of the ghetto a la Paris is Burning and made those kids superstars (albeit for a moment). They were gay teenagers repressed by their own culture so they created a dance form (with competitions) to glamourise and lift their impoverished and tragic lives,” says Courtney.
‘Vogue’ was certainly a turning point in terms of style. It ushered in a more sophisticated Madonna, with her appearance at the MTV Awards in 1990 in full Marie Antoinette garb a gamechanger in terms of performances. The followups to it, particularly her album Erotica, accompanied by the notorious Sex book, were hugely provocative at the time. On stage, she was often clad in bondage gear, complete with whip, scandalising each territory she claimed.
But the mid-90s brought a softening, perhaps born out of the negative reaction to the highly sexualised Erotica, and also perhaps influenced by the birth of her daughter Lourdes in 1996. Her first post-baby album, Ray of Light, was accompanied by a whole new look for Madonna, complete with almost hippie long hair and double denim.
“The album cover was shot by photographer du jour Mario Testino,” says Keenan, “and that Renaissance-inspired image of her in blue is still iconic to me. Throughout the album, she morphed from Mother Earth to gothic nomad in ‘Frozen’ and a bondage geisha in ‘Nothing Really Matters’.”
Madonna had found a new creative vein, and the style switch-up continued. After Ray of Light came Music, which found her going full cowgirl, tapping into a more rootsy feel in her sound, and also an Americana that proved instantly popular.
“Personally, one of my favourite ever looks was her collaboration with Dsquared2 for her cowboy look for the ‘Don’t Tell Me’ video on the 2000 Music album,” says Keenan. “I was obsessed! I even wore the look myself and had all the line dance moves.”
For Steele, her Super Bowl half-time appearance in 2012 was a standout moment. With costumes designed by Riccardo Tisci for Givenchy,
it was the most watched Super Bowl ever with 112 million people tuning in.
“I think it was one of the highlights of Tisci’s career so far. The work was inspired by archive Givenchy looks and each of the outfits were changed on stage. The all-over hand embroidered gold cape was so opulent — even his sketches for each look were divine.”
For Courtney, though, her golden years were still that early 90s period. “I love anytime where she has short hair — I think that is a really interesting statement for someone like Madonna but I suppose ‘Rain’ (from 1992’s Erotica) is my favourite look.”
One thing everyone can agree on, though, is just how important her legacy is.
“She is the original predatory empowered bad girl,” says Courtney. “She chose to behave just like a man of her era and it was shocking, thoughtprovoking and iconic.”