It will mark her biggest tour yet with 90 shows and will include her first concerts in Australia in nearly 20 years, as well as many markets she has never played before. This tour will play 32 European markets, including London, Rome, Milan, Paris, Barcelona and Berlin, before hitting North America with 45 shows.
Madonna will change outfit seven or eight times during the concert.
The Material Girl’s parade of costume changes includes outfits from longtime collaborators Jean Paul Gaultier and Jeremy Scott, shoes from Prada and Miu Miu and pieces from Alexander Wang. Dolce & Gabbana made suits for the band and background vocalists, Fausto Puglisi created menacing bandolier vests and rams head masks for the backup dancers and even J Brand whipped up custom-made jeans.
Bras and panties — including one heart-shaped style from Madonna’s new intimates line Truth or Dare — are incorporated into some numbers, as are shoes from the new Truth or Dare footwear line, at retail this fall. A somber, elegiac version of the usually peppy “Like a Virgin” will be sung by Madonna in an Agent Provocateur bra.
“It’s a real journey from the first act to the fourth, and the way she constructs her shows is like a theater piece,” said costume designer and stylist Arianne Phillips, who oversaw the entire wardrobe design for Madonna, her backup singers, musicians and 22 backup dancers. Scott, for his part, has been camped out in Tel Aviv this week, working till the last minute on some costumes.
The original Gaultier design is worn during the “Vogue” number and includes a white shirt, black
tie, opera-length black gloves and a rigid skeleton corset. The getup references the iconic pink bustier-with-pin-striped suit look the designer created for Madonna’s 1990 Blond Ambition world tour, widely considered a pinnacle of both of their careers.
“We played with the ideas of a suit and a corset. But the corset is now like a cage,” explained Gaultier. “What I have done this time is a nod to the conical bra corset of the Blond Ambition tour but reinterpreted in 3-D, in patent leather on the outside with metallic leather on the inside. It’s all about masculine and feminine, Madonna and Jean Paul Gaultier classics reinterpreted for 2012.”
The designer and Phillips also re-created some archival Gaultier pieces for Madonna’s dancers, as an homage to his long relationship with the iconic singer. Gaultier was also responsible for the kinky equestrian and “Saturday Night Fever”-inspired looks of Madonna’s 2006 Confessions tour, and she once walked his runway with her nipples exposed.
“I love Madonna. She is the only woman I have asked to marry me. She refused, of course,” added Gaultier. “But when she asked me to do a costume for her for this tour, I couldn’t refuse.”
Prada created high-heeled shoes for the male dancers in the gender-bending “Vogue” performance, which includes imagery of the Vogue magazine logo on massive video screens.
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| A Joan of Arc-inspired look fashioned from metal mesh and Swarovski crystals. |
Source: David Lipke for WWD
