Madonna

[MDNA]

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

 

[MDNA]

Happy birthday my queen.

 

[justaguy]

Vogue Italia February 1991



Madonna Come Marilyn
Photo Steven Meisel
Editor Anna Sui, Elizabeth Djian
Celeb Madonna
Hair Garren
Makeup François Nars



madonnascrapbook.blogspot.com

 

[URBAN]

I love that shoot. Marilyn with a mix of attitude and street. She was truly beautiful in this era.

 

[Phuel]

Oh my goodness... Thank you justaguy for that Meisel edit. I've only ever seen the cover and of course, that "Bad Girl" shot. Iconic. Face, body, hair, attitude and the cigarette. I particularly loved the giant ponytail hair. Perfection.

I remember reading she had referenced Valley of the Dolls for this look: Drunk, stoned, hitchhiking naked but for the Gucci heels and bag with a cigarette dangling from her mouth and snapped by Meisel and Baron. Legendary. The woman had bigger balls than anyone at the time. I love love love her Erotica/ SEX era. She never backed down from the witchburning of that period. No one has ever come close 23 years later.

The only stain on all that perfection of a defiant era was that embarrassing Fatal Attraction-wannabe movie she made. And she looked horrible in it as well.

 

[VogueGirl8910]

US Harper's Bazaar September 2003


"Madonna Now"
Model/Star: Madonna
Photographer: Regan Cameron
Hair: Luigi Murenu
Makeup: Lucia Pieroni
Manicure: Alice Hopkins


Scanned by Astrid @ imcmagazine.com

 

[MDNA]

Using a shoot from GAP ad campaign for september issue.

 

[MDNA]

Interview September 2015
Photographer: Madonna
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[MDNA]

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.”

wwd.

 

[MDNA]

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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[MDNA]

Geoffrey Mac


Gaspar Gloves


Lynn Ban


Michael Schmidt


Julia Clancey


Rachel Freire


Majesty Black

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[MDNA]

Sketches from Miu Miu.


A sketch from Cinzia Araia.

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[Phuel]

That Samurai costume looks like something out of Mortal Kombat LOL

Arianne's designs for M's tours always look so horribly cliche, even tacky. Weird, since her editorial and film work are usually so refined and strong. I always feel like she intentionally puts M in the stupidest looking costumes just to see if she can get away with it. And apparently she can. M would look stunning in one of Kat Mark's leather armors-- the one Kristen McMenamy wore in W's "Dame of Thrones" story would be absolutely perfect.

On a more impressive note, Jeremy's crystal-embellished flapper costume is really... impressive. There's a snap of M and her dancers in this costume on her Instagram and it does look beautiful in motion. Good going, Jeremy.

 

[dior_couture1245]

^^Yes! The flapper look seems to be super promising!! I'm also curious about the kind of teddy boy Prada looks...seems like it could be interesting. The Gucci looks, too, seem like they will be stylish and visually impactful on the stage.

But yes - that Samurai look seems so stupid. Madonna is just too petite to be wearing such cumbersome clothing...it really shrinks her. When the proportions are right on her she can look 5'10 easily...when the proportions are wrong...she looks her height.

 

[MDNA]

Yes Jeremy's flapper look is the most impressive one, we all expected something tacky from him. I thought those flapper costumes were from Prada when I saw that pic on her Instagram lol.

And Wang's design is BORING.

 

[dior_couture1245]

Well - first night of the tour in Montreal seems like a success! Have seen some Instagram videos and I am so unbelievably excited! I cannot wait till I see the show on the 19th! She's done it again!!!

 

[MDNA]

That samurai costume really looks clumsy on her.

There are some rumors about her bringing her tour to China for the first time, of course, not the mainland. I really hope she would come and so that I can finally see the queen.

 

[eugenius]

There's a snap of M and her dancers in this costume on her Instagram and it does look beautiful in motion. Good going, Jeremy.

You mean, you actually follow her awful Instagram page?

I'm determined to not look at any pics, read any reviews, or look up any track-listings until I see the show. I want to be completely, 100% surprised when she lands in Boston. Let's see how long that dream lasts.

 

[Phuel]

^^^ LOL I've only been peeking in in anticipation of the tour. I couldn't follow her on a regular basis. Oh God, no.

You know, the workshop videos are always more intense and elaborate, and just straight out more artistic to me than the actual show nowadays. Weird. What happened to that gypsy version of La Isla with its mournful but soulful flamenco harmonies? And what happened to the Koto drummers? I would love for there to be a full doc on the workshop. That, I would pay for.

It's never fair to judge any show by Youtube audience videos, but this show is lacking on those first impression. From Sticky to this, the Madonna of Blond Ambition, Girlie, Drowned World and Confessions seems to be gone. I'm shocked at how even her backdrop videos are so... lazy with this show. The opening video is... nice enough typical Klein perversity, but disconnected from the song performance, and style. And that opening is such an unfortunate mess. Her costume resembles someone just wearing a pile of clothes. And the stage just look so barren and uninspired. I really missed the dynamic of her with Donna and Niki-- the image of a gang. I thought-- and was hoping that Ayabambi would be that new posse for her, but they were only by her side briefly, otherwise she's drowned by her dancers whom all come across more as employees than her gang.

Surprisingly, the Prada-designed Rockabilly section was by far the most charming, charismatic, sincere and genuinely interesting visually of the show on first impression for me. I had my doubts about the plain designs initially, but they really work beautifully in this section. Her hair though... very Dawg the Bounty Hunter.... Would look so much better had she just put it up into a pompadour.

And she looks so radiant in that Jeremy piece. I'm blown away visually by her presence here. Too bad the section the piece was a part of was so flat. That finale was such a WTF moment LOL LIke "K, bye" LOL

I'm glad you're still excited dior, but I don't think I'll be going. That's three strikes for me, M.

 

[Phuel]

That samurai costume really looks clumsy on her.

There are some rumors about her bringing her tour to China for the first time, of course, not the mainland. I really hope she would come and so that I can finally see the queen.

Isn't she scheduled for Hong Kong this time around?

I would think she would be opposed to playing in still Communist China, but she played Moscow... Chances of her playing mainland China could still be a possibility if there's a 2nd leg to the tour.