Alexander Wang, Alessandro Michele & Jeremy Scott design for "Rebel Heart Tour" | the Fashion Spot

Alexander Wang, Alessandro Michele & Jeremy Scott design for "Rebel Heart Tour"

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Madonna Taps Gucci, Moschino for Rebel Heart Tour Costumes

Throughout her long career, Madonna has enlisted the world’s top designers, most famously Jean Paul Gaultier, to collaborate on the costumes for her globe-trotting tours.

She’s again recruited a murderer’s row of fashion talent for her latest, the “Rebel Heart” World Tour, named after her 13th studio album of the same name.

On Wednesday, she revealed exclusively to WWD the designers who made the cut, including Jeremy Scott and Alexander Wang. And add Madonna to the Alessandro Michele fan club: the Gucci creative director also pitched in.

Just like she’s been teasing her setlist on Instagram for months — yes, “Vogue” and “Holiday” will make appearances on the tour — Madonna has also been posting snippets of looks she’s been working on with her longtime costume designer, Academy Award-nominated Arianne Phillips.

Ahead of the tour’s opening in Montreal on Sept. 9, she is revealing the full list of designers today: Fausto Puglisi, Prada and Miu Miu, Swarovski and the Lebanese designer Nicolas Jebran are the others. She’ll show sketches at a later date.

The pop singer’s predilection for some of these names has been evident for a while: she wore Scott for Moschino to the Costume Institute gala in May, on the red carpet as well as to various after parties, for instance. And she was also in full Moschino regalia in her last video, “B**ch I’m Madonna,” where Wang made an exuberant cameo. Before that, she was spotted around town wearing the platform moon boots from Wang’s fall 2015 show, practically straight off the runway.

Curiously, Versace, in whose 2015 advertising campaign Madonna appeared, is not involved in this tour. Phillips, who has been nominated for two Oscars, including her work on Madonna’s own “W.E.,” is marking her sixth tour with Madonna and will also contribute costumes.

Some of the other designers, though, like Michele, are more surprising, underscoring the singer’s knack for spotting new talent.

Long before pop acts fraternized with fashion designers, it was Madonna who asked Gaultier in 1990 to design costumes for her famous “Blonde Ambition” World Tour. He delivered the now iconic coned bra and the two have since collaborated on several tours, on 2001’s “Drowned World,” 2006’s “Confessions” and 2012’s “MDNA,” which included a reinterpretation of their best-known garment.

Previous tours included costumes from Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel, Dolce & Gabbana, Prada, Christian Lacroix — he designed the crystal-studded corset that opened the “Reinvention” Tour in 2004 — and Riccardo Tisci, who designed the costumes the singer wore during the halftime show at the 2012 Super Bowl.

“People say everything has a limit,” Tisci told WWD at the time, “but limits do not exist with Madonna.” With today’s news, that still seems to be the case.
wwd.com
 
Thanks for sharing, MDNA[! I saw photos/sketches somewhere recently. If I remember where, I'll share!
 
I'm most curious as to what Allesandro will bring to the tour. Rebel Heart is gonna be epic.
 
Allesandro's predictable Gucci mess.



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instagram/madonna
 
^^That dress is perfect for Oktoberfest. It's just tacky in the worst possible way. At the same time that leather jacket is charming in a way, I mean it's like a definition of overloading with details but still it's good.
 
That dress is giving me Desigual tea right there while the jacket, though precious, is borderline Ed Hardy.
 
Why is Arianne allowing this sudden turn towards extreme garishness in Madonna's look?

I guess M really is a stubborn b*tch… -_-
 
first look: Madonna’s ‘rebel heart’ tour designer costume sketches

The costume designer Arianne Phillips was in London in late February when she heard through the grapevine about a designer who was just beginning to get people’s attention: Alessandro Michele.

The 42-year-old Roman had just shown two collections in quick succession after his appointment as Gucci creative director and suddenly found himself the toast of the fashion world.

Meanwhile, Phillips, an in-demand costume designer for the movies, a veteran of Tom Ford’s “A Single Man” and an Academy Award nominee for “Walk the Line,” had just started preparing for her biggest project of the year: the months-long, all-consuming head trip known as a Madonna world tour.

In a nice bit of kismet, or a psychic connection, Michele himself was somewhere in Florence working, unprompted, on a gift for Madonna when Phillips reached out to Gucci to contribute costumes to the tour.

“The energy was just out there,” Phillips says.

When Madonna opens her “Rebel Heart” tour on Sept. 9 in Montreal, she will do so in Michele’s Gucci. And Prada and Jeremy Scott’s Moschino and Alexander Wang and Fausto Puglisi. Pop stars “collaborate,” to borrow an overused phrase, with designers all the time, mainly on red-carpet appearances.

But few can command at will, or use as prominently, marquee designers like these quite like the Material Girl, a unique position she’s enjoyed ever since she made a certain Parisian enfant terrible synonymous with a cone bra. More so than her peers, or her wannabes, Madonna has made high fashion an integral part of her music videos and tours, bestowing on designers the full force of her megawatt celebrity. Has anyone else worn Givenchy to the Super Bowl? When she calls, designers listen.

“She opened the door for all the pop girls out there today, many of whom I dress and who do respect her and give her props,” says Scott. “We all owe her a debt of gratitude.”

Plus, haven’t you heard her latest single? “She’s Madonna!” says Alexander Wang. “It goes without explanation, she’s iconic.” Michele adds simply: “I am crazy about her.”

A couple of weeks ago, Phillips was on her way to Nassau Coliseum on Long Island, N.Y., where Madonna is rehearsing, to work on costumes that were still not quite finished. Wang, for instance, was making alterations to his look, a long-sleeve mini in basketball mesh, because of last-minute changes in the production. Gucci had its last fitting a week later.

“For her, the performance comes first. She has to be able to dance and move and feel comfortable in it,” Wang says.

“[Madonna] doesn’t really finalize any of the designs until 100 percent of the choreography is set,” Phillips says. “It’s a real back-and-forth conversation and it’s a brutal process for most fashion designers. You’re hanging in the balance while all the practical aspects are worked out, like the choreography and the quick-changes.”

Not that Phillips sounds concerned. She’s gone through five of these marathons, each one larger than the last — this one has 28 performers; an average of 10 costume changes for 20 dancers, six for the background singers, four for the band and Madonna’s own eight full looks — and she knows it always comes down to the last minute.

By now, she’s been working on the tour on and off since December, when she organized her design team. She didn’t reach out to designers until April, when a working set list and the show’s usual four-act structure began to take shape.

Madonna’s conduit to the industry, Phillips is a longtime insider who can play the boss’ eyes and ears on the street and intuit her wishes. It was her job to design most of the show and then figure out the flourishes, which old collaborators to leave out and which new ones — accessories designers Lynn Ban and the Brit Rachel Freire — to bring into the fold.

“A stylist is like being a yenta. My job is finding out what’s relevant and what’s appropriate for the story Madonna’s trying to tell,” Phillips says.

She took the reins of the first act — a Joan of Arc-inspired section similar to the Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott-lensed cover art of the “Rebel Heart” album — and devised a series of costumes referencing liturgical fabrics and a recent exhibition of samurai armor at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Dancing nuns on stripper poles also make an appearance during this act. It wouldn’t be a Madonna show otherwise.

Miuccia Prada, who created original Prada and Miu Miu footwear for previous tours, was asked to design costumes as well this time around for the show’s second section. Her response? Rockabilly
meets Tokyo.

“Nothing we do is literal. Everything is a mash-up,” Phillips says.

It’s in the third act, the Latin quarter if you will, that things get really twisted. Puglisi and the Lebanese designer Nicolas Jebran created more of the same matador-inspired looks that appeared in the music video and live performances of single “Living for Love.” But then, there’s the showstopper: Michele.

After finding out about him, Phillips inhaled his first two collections for Gucci: “I was completely blown away. I love his hand. His clothes are lyrical and feminine and they tell stories. I didn’t know him, but I felt there would be this synergy to have them together.” Boy, was there.

Michele imagines Madonna in full-blown “La Isla Bonita” mode, a mysterious gypsy wrapped in her fringed manila shawl, hiding behind her flamenco hat, lace and jacquard bodysuit and multicolor skirt.

“That’s a real highlight,” Phillips says breathlessly. Michele might have been working on his spring show simultaneously, but he had to make time for Madonna: “Now that I have had the chance to see her working, I truly understand why she is so grand!” he says, just as breathlessly.

To end things with a bang, Madonna enlisted Jeremy Scott, fashion’s resident club kid, for the party section. She has worked with Scott intermittently since the early Aughts, but perhaps picking up on his ascendance in the public eye since his appointment at Moschino — not to mention his relationship with Miley Cyrus, et al — she brought him back into her orbit to work recently on several high-profile looks, including ones for her “b*tch I’m Madonna” music video.

“Madonna is often like a director,” he says, comparing her to younger pop starlets. “She has a vision and you get behind her to achieve that vision.”

Scott’s mandate was to come up with an homage to Harlem-flapper-meets-Paris-in-the-Twenties and several weeks after their joint appearance at the Costume Institute gala, he had the look: a blinding finale dress employing thousands of Swarovski crystals because, Scott says, “no showgirl would be complete without crystals.”

Phillips has finished recounting all the costumes and late nights in the run-up to the opening when she arrives on Long Island. Before she goes in, she pauses to savor the spectacle of that Moschino sparkler.

“We don’t need a disco ball,” she says. “We have Madonna in costume.”
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A sketch from Alexander Wang.


A sketch from Arianne Phillips.


Sketches from Gucci.


A sketch from Moschino.


A sketch from Prada.


A sketch from Fausto Puglisi.
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Geoffrey Mac


Gaspar Gloves


Lynn Ban


Michael Schmidt


Julia Clancey


Rachel Freire


Majesty Black
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Dressing Madonna: Gucci’s Alessandro Michele reveals (almost) all

Suzy Menkes interviews Alessandro Michele, Madonna's new costume designer for the Rebel Heart tour.

“It’s like you’re in a temple, going to meet the goddess, and then you discover that the goddess is a big perfectionist and an incredible woman,” said Alessandro Michele, Gucci’s creative director, about how he met Madonna in rehearsal in New York.

“She is tiny and beautiful,” Alessandro continued. “The thing I really loved about her was her eyes - the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen; super green-blue eyes - I think she must have had the same eyes since she was six years old!”

The passionate designer, who has rocked Gucci with his magpie spirit, mixing inspirations from decades and centuries past, was spotted by über-stylist Arianne Phillips as new fashion blood for the Material Girl's “Rebel Heart” world tour.

Full disclosure: I was the person who suggested to Arianne at Prada's “Iconoclast” exhibition in London in February that Alessandro could create a new romantic look for Madonna.

“Essentially, my job is to be an editor for Madonna,” Arianne said, whose list of designers to dress the tour includes Jeremy Scott at Moschino, Prada’s Miu Miu, Fausto Puglisi and Alexander Wang. But she was eager to include Gucci’s Alessandro.

“I became entranced by his return to craft, the personal and feminine aspects that he has brought into his embellishment to the austere, slick Gucci,” Arianne said. “It was like a return to beauty and incredibly inspiring.”

Sitting with Alessandro in the Gucci showroom in Milan this week, surrounded by the spring/summer '16 collection of intensely coloured and decorated outfits, wild with frescoes of flowers, he explained his thoughts about dressing Madonna.

“It was an idea to mix Spanish and Latin attitude with chinoiserie, in the exact pink you can see in that skirt,” the designer said, pointing to a floral outfit on the rail.

“I thought that if Madonna wore the chinoiserie - a skirt with a super-long fringe - it would be like the divas of the 1920s, when the exotic was mixing Japan and Spain together,” he said.

But these fantasies had to pass the eyes and experience of Arianne. She missed Madonna's “Rebel Heart” tour's first night in Montreal because she was in Hollywood with Tom Ford. She is working on his new movie, starring Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal - a film she had been waiting for since working on Ford's A Single Man.

“It's an interesting circle; Alessandro Michele first came to Gucci under Tom Ford, and played the soundtrack of A Single Man at his first Gucci show,” the award-winning costume designer said.

Back to Madonna. It was in awe and trepidation that Alessandro - who was promoted to Gucci’s creative director after years in the team behind the scenes - walked into the studio on the outskirts of Manhattan at 11 at night to come face to face with his idol.

“They opened the door, and she was having dinner - grilled salmon - and said, ‘Welcome to my restaurant - do you mind that I’m eating?’” Alessandro remembers. “Then she danced for an hour and a half or two. She was ready to work after midnight.”

I can imagine Alessandro sitting in the studio - as he was in front of me in the Gucci show room - looking like a Romantic poet, with his beard and his rings that he changes all the time, “ because I have a huge box full of Georgian and Victorian jewellery”.

But as Arianne knew and Alessandro was about to find out on his midnight visit to Madonna, the art of performance clothes is different from fashion style.

“When they asked me to design, I wanted to give her something super-romantic with the idea of an exotic, dancing Frida Kahlo with ruffles, colour, and a different kind of aesthetic,” Alessandro said. “I started with something super-huge, because I did not imagine she would actually want to dance with this dress.”

“And then she tried on the outfits, started to move to check that everything is good to dance in. She really is a performer – she doesn’t just want to look beautiful – she cares more about the performance. She is obsessive about how to communicate with her audience.”

He confesses that he was taken aback by her commitment. “I was completely shocked when I came to the rehearsals; it was in a place you would meet a real dancer, super rough, not a place for a diva, but a place for a real artist.”

The Gucci designer also discovered that he would have to create outfits not just for Madonna, but also for all the dancers, making it a marathon job.

“I tried to sketch in my office, to put together an aesthetic like I usually do,” Alessandro said, describing one outfit as “Asian, with flowers and ruffles from Spain, something from Mexico, colours and English embroidery.”

I interrupted Alessandro’s stream of words to ask when he had first registered Madonna and her work.

“I was about 15 - I was a big fan,” the 43-year-old said. “She was the first pop musician that I really loved. Because I was in love with the English music, like The Sex Pistols, I was a bit of a snob about pop. But she was the first one who tried to mix a certain kind of punk aesthetic – like black lace - and she put it together and tried to become a new superstar. She really wanted to be a diva.”

I wanted to find out more about Alessandro, this designer who seemed to have sprung from nowhere with so much knowledge of history – of fashion and otherwise. He told me about losing his parents, saying that “I had a very beautiful relationship with my mother - she was so funny and intelligent. She died when she was 69 but she was like 20.”

Madonna, for Alessandro, has that spirit of eternal youth. “She is 57 but she’s like a teenager, and if you’re like a teen in your mind you are alive forever,” Alessandro said. '”I have to say that Madonna is really open. She is surrounded by people that love art and she has a lot of people around her that are perfectionists. She is very intelligent – that is why she is still at the top after 25 years.”
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