Make sure you stay true to who you are
This smart post by StyleNotes blogger Maggie Alderson is definitely worth a read:
No, I don’t know why she’s wearing sunnies, either. Madonna was at the Gucci award ceremony for women in film at the Venice Film Festival and seems to be indoors, so it’s hard to understand why she felt the need to keep her shades on. But I’m so glad she did.
Why? Because it’s a bit nuts and I want Madonna to be bonkers and weird. It’s her job.
I love this whole outfit, which is a one-off georgette blouse, sequinned skirt and art-deco-style jet bead belt, designed for her by Gucci’s Frida Giannini. It’s the only one I’ve seen her in for months that I’ve really liked. And the only one that works with her slightly too long hair.
Now, I don’t like making pronouncements about what a woman over a certain age should or shouldn’t wear. And Madonna’s not exactly ancient – she’s only a little older than me (ha ha).
But when the hair is also dyed to a beach-babe blonde, I find the length thing troubling. It lays a woman open to the 1666 nightmare – when you look 16 from the back but you’re 66 from the front.
What makes this all the more weird (but this time not in a good way) is that Madonna used to work the trashy home-bleached platinum-blonde look with perfect irony. She practically invented it. Now she’s more of your contrived unnatural “natural” blonde and, combined with the length, I am not really loving that.
But with this dress – and pulled back from her brow – it really works. She looks fabulously goth and it’s a proper statement. A lot of outfits I’ve seen her in recently have had a creepy demure look to them; all goody-goody Peter Pan collars and Mary Jane shoes (albeit soaring platform stiletto versions).
Combined with the hair, it’s verging on Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? territory and we really don’t want our Mads to go there. She means too much to us all.
Even at the Vanity Fair Oscars party in Feb when she rocked a suitably outrageous look in black lace, fur and fishnets, the hair was all straightened and horrid, like Jennifer Aniston having a bad hair day in 1995.
Everything about this outfit signals a return to form. She looks bossy, badass and everything we want her to be. The sunglasses make the Victorian high collar ironic.
Another thing I love about this dress is the long sleeves. Not because Madonna – unlike just about every other 53-year-old woman on the planet – needs to hide her upper arms; she really doesn’t. But neither does she have to keep showing us she doesn’t need to hide them.
The recent outfits revealing large areas of her admirably toned body give the impression she thinks she has something to prove and she so doesn’t. She will always be The One; the first female pop star who took charge of her own success. That she is now the Material Woman rather than the Material Girl matters not one jot.
So come on Ms Ciccone, chop off your hair, slap some cheap drugstore bleach on it and show us you’ve still got your edgy blonde ambition.
And now I’m going to watch the Don’t Tell Me video on YouTube to remind myself why I love her so much.
From theislanderonline.com.au.
Read Maggie Alderson’s blog at maggiealdersonstylenotes.wordpress.com.
(AP Photo/Luigi Costantini).