Hot to trot
Madonna has reinvented herself again. Who couldn’t fall for girl, leather, whip and horse, asks Shane Watson on the Sunday Times.
“Say what you like about Madonna, we can’t stop talking about her. Every so often you think she might have lost her touch and fallen back on some overworked groove (the disco one, for example), but she has a way of taking the apparently obvious, pushing it, subverting it, making it all about sex and then twisting it some more until you’re not sure if it’s pastiche or porn. She’s been mocked for posing as a country squire-ette, complete with thoroughbred mount, ever since she made her home in England – her American audience, in particular, feared she had gone soft and posh.
Shame on them for not knowing her better. Madonna does nothing without an eye to the future of her brand, and this image is one she’s been itching to get to work on. Stallion and corseted lady rider is a look begging to be given the Madonna treatment. The image of the immaculately groomed upper-class filly astride her nervy pony, whip in hand, leather boots glistening, is the start of who knows how many sexual fantasies. From there it’s an easy step into the darker, pseudo-masochistic places that have become the material girl’s trademark.
And Madonna has given “horse power” her best shot – creating her own equestrian dominatrix with Victorian tailoring, Spanish details, a bridle chin strap and circus ringmistress fishnets. The look is a bit Night Porter, a lot Helmut Newton – pick this latest incarnation apart and it makes the disco leotard moment look like Sunday-school wear. It begins with stallions and domination and ends where it always does – with Madonna getting us all tapping our feet, longing for a rib-crushing black waistcoat and something (maybe a necklace?) with a giant snaffle. Ride on.
From The Sunday Times Style Magazine.