Madonna at the Costume Institute Gala with Kanye, his girl, Justin T and Jessica B

From Amber Rose's Twitter:

Liz Smith on Why Madonna wore antlers to the Met Costume Gala and Jesus

wowowow.com

Sorry to oppress you about our friend Madonna but she seems to me to be one of rare ones making any news these days. (Falling off horses, trying to adopt impoverished children; it’s still front-page fodder.)

So I just had to ask a member of her inner circle: What was up with Madonna’s wacky outfit at the Metropolitan Museum Costume Gala last week? (Were those antlers on her head, or antennae to contact aliens?) Especially since she attended with her friend, young Jesus Luz, who looked sensational and was wearing a traditional black-tie tuxedo. The answer came: “Liz, she is never going to be what some of her fans want – a woman in classic glamour couture, all the time. She is on the edge, fashionwise, and every other way. Look, she was having fun that night. She wasn’t taking herself or her clothes seriously. Given her workload and a personality that never lets her rest, we’re always happy when she just has fun!”

I did put up online Robin Platzer’s incredible photograph from that night of 22-year-old Jesus with an accompanying comment on his good looks. The response to this picture was incredible! I think on the wowOwow.com site we had only one woman who bounded in to say we should be more serious and not waste everybody’s time. (Along with somebody asking if I was “on Madonna’s payroll.” Hmmmm … I guess I’m on Dolly Parton’s payroll, too!)

But I very much enjoy the beauty of young Mr. Luz. And Madonna’s own PR rep, the perspicacious Liz Rosenberg, went out of her way to e-mail me, after she saw my Flash: “Trust me, what you wrote about this heartthrob is a total understatement. This is truly the most gorgeous boy I have ever seen in my life and you can say you were the first to write about him because, baby, he’s a star!” This from a woman who reps not only Madonna, but Cher, Stevie Nicks, Michael Bublé, Josh Groban – she knows from stars.

So, again, we give you Jesus Luz. Man of the hour. And man of Madonna’s hour!

Quick Updates!

* More from the Costume gala - The NY Daily News, Gatercrasher reports that "Madonna spent her evening seductively dancing with at least five men — including Kanye — all while glaring at fellow A-Rod ex, Bethenny Frankel.

* Glamour trio! It was a POWER table at Monday night's Met Costume gala when Madonna, Rihanna and Victoria Beckham shared a table. While NO ONE knows what they were talking about Madonna was DEEP in conversation with Rihanna for 45 minutes.

* SEEKING ADVICE: The star-packed Costume Institute gala included tons of celebs, such as Jessica Biel, Kate Moss, Mary-Kate Olsen, Justin Timberlake, Anne Hathaway and ... Madonna. The Material Mom turned maternal toward another guest, Rihanna. A BZ spy overheard Rihanna seeking advice from Madonna on dealing with fame.The young R&B star asked the older superstar when ''things might die down'' after the firestorm of paparazzi and tabloid frenzy she's experienced in wake of her alleged beating at the hands of Chris Brown.

''Never,'' said Madonna without missing a beat. ''Unless you decide to give up you career and retire to a remote island someplace. ... Once you're in their sights, you're stuck with the [plural expletive].''

* Madonna, now the well-paid muse of Louis Vuitton, was working it nearby with a muse of her own, Jesus Luz. When Harvey Weinstein walked up, she introduced them. “Hi, Harvey, this is Jesus,” she said, pronouncing it gee-zus. “I didn’t pick the name.” “But it is kind of a bonus,” said a guest nearby.

* NY Post:



* Madonna was at the 50th anniversary for The Four Seasons restaurant on Tuesday. Other guests: The Dalai Lama, Bill Clinton and Mary J. Blige.

* Newspapers covering the gala event:

Thoughts on Madonna’s Ingenious Met-Gala Outfit

NY Magazine

Models, shmodels. Last night's Costume Institute Gala, as many papers this morning would have you believe, was all about Madonna. Screw the vintage Scavullo photographs of Lauren Hutton, screw Brooke Shields's infamous Calvins from the eighties, screw Gisele in her fabric scrap of a minidress, but most of all, screw Kate Moss's turban. None of those things matter when Madonna shows up looking like a cleaning lady moonlighting as a stripper who washed her Xanax down with one too many margaritas before she changed outfits. And it was a genius, if not very attractive, fashion moment for her and Marc Jacobs, who designed the Louis Vuitton ensemble. Because on a night dedicated to the world's most beautiful women, no one — especially a non-model — could win by trying to look the most beautiful. So looking a bit drunk before you actually got drunk wasn't a bad way to steal attention from Kate Moss and her paltry headpiece. And she got plenty of attention. Here's what some other news outlets thought of Madonna's very special ensemble.

• The L.A. Times thought Madge looked "ready for Neverland ... like the love child of Tinkerbell and Captain Hook." The paper asks if Madonna's hat was wackier than the one Sarah Jessica Parker wore to the Sex and the City movie premiere in London. We'd say so, but what say you? [Dish Rag/LAT]

• The London Times said the ball "ensured many new entries into the best and worst-dressed celebrity lists," and cited Madonna as the "worst offender." Her bunny ears made her "look more like a glamorous cleaning lady than a fashion icon." [Times UK]

• British Marie Claire noted without comment that Madonna's outfit "brought out her 80s side," and suggested the pop star used it as a distraction from the difficulty she's having adopting Mercy James from Malawi. The magazine also notes that Jesus Luz, who attended as Madge's date, looked "super suave." [British Marie Claire]

• The Insider writes that many "what the hell were they thinking" looks walked the carpet last night. André Leon Talley's was the worst, but Madonna looked no less ridiculous, they argue, in her "Alice in Wonderland Louis Vuitton mess." [Insider]

• The Daily Mail proclaims Madonna, Rihanna, and Stella McCartney the worst fashion disasters of the night. "[Madonna]'s bizarre mini-puffball outfit, thigh-high dominatrix style boots and starched fabric headdress from Louis Vuitton's Autumn/Winter 2009 collection saw her veer into the realms of pantomime as she looked less like a Material Girl and more like a bonfide A-list fashion disaster." Surprisingly, this paper was one of the few that still noticed Madonna's "rippling muscles." And some of us still remember Madonna as the original First Arms. [Daily Mail]

Madonna Wears Anna Hu Haute Joaillerie to Costume Institute Gala

Yahoo!

NEW YORK, May 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Madonna wears Anna Hu Haute Joaillerie to the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute Gala on May 4, 2009 to go with her Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton dress. The pieces worn are as follows:

• Anna Hu Monet's Giverny Garden Collection - "Edelweiss" Diamond Cross, D color Diamonds, about 6 carats.

• Anna Hu Monet's Giverny Garden Collection - "Icy Grapes" Earrings, Natural colored sapphires, emerald, ruby, and diamonds, about 28 carats w/ Pear-Shaped Drop Emeralds.

All eyes on Madonna at the Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion Costume Institute Gala

allaboutmadonna

Madonna attends ‘The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion’ Costume Institute Gala at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.






All eyes on Madonna at costume gala

New.com.au

MADONNA is the centre of attention at a costume gala in New York.

Jesus Luz Won’t Appear in the Louis Vuitton Campaign, Enjoys Dinner Dates With Marc Jacobs’s Fiancé

NY Magazine

Contrary to rumor, Jesus Luz won't appear in Louis Vuitton's fall 2009 ad campaign with Madonna, Vuitton designer Marc Jacobs told us at Cipriani Wall Street during the 2009 Parsons Fashion Spring Benefit last night. (Okay, sometimes we get things wrong.) Reporters routinely hound Jacobs with questions about Madonna’s man candy. “I don’t know why!” he said, laughing. “Why is everyone asking me about him? He’s not modeling for me. I don’t do menswear.” Madonna, however, is, and Jacobs said they’d just been working together that day. “I think it was a great shoot,” he said. “She’s the ultimate professional and she and Steven are amazing. I love working with her. There’s no one better.” He refused to divulge the concept of the campaign.

But if Jesus hasn’t yet earned a spot in a Vuitton campaign, he has earned a place as good friend to Jacobs and his fiancé, Lorenzo Martone. “We’re friends and we have dinner sometimes,” said Martone. “I guess as a Brazilian that’s in New York and is in this industry, I have some hints and advice to give. You know, he’s starting a very big modeling career and he has a lot of potential. So he asks me my opinion about some people in the industry — photographers and that. And I tell him.” Where do these advice-giving sessions take place? The Waverly Inn, of course. “We don’t really have a hangout,” said Martone. “We’ve been having a lot of dinners at the Waverly or other places in the West Village on our street. I’m trying to get him to know downtown, which is younger and fresher than the Upper West Side.”

M confirmed for Costume Institute gala next Monday night

Fashion Week Daily

(NEW YORK) At the Parsons Fashion Benefit last night, alum Marc Jacobs was in high spirits, and not only because he's eagerly awaiting Monday night's Costume Institute gala, which he will host alongside muse Kate Moss. As for his illustrious table? It's going to be full of good friends. "Madonna...Victoria Beckham...I'm trying to think, now I can't remember!" Jacobs told The Daily. "Anne Hathaway...Winona [Ryder]...Rachel Feinstein, John Currin...and Rihanna!"

Louis Vuitton photoshoot is taking place today, as revealed by Guy Oseary

Guy Oseary Twittered a few hours ago: on my way to Madonna/Louis Vuitton shoot.. part deux!.

It's also rumored that the cover art of up-coming greatest hits collection will be shot during this shoot.

Official: Madonna and Louis Vuitton Part Deux

Madonna.com

Madonna will once again be the face of the upcoming Louis Vuitton campaign for their Autumn/Winter 2009 collection.

Following the extraordinary success of the Spring/Summer 2009 ad campaign, Louis Vuitton, its creative director Marc Jacobs, and Madonna, are proud to announce they will be collaborating for a second consecutive season.

The iconic pop star will be photographed by Steven Meisel in New York City, under the art direction of Marc Jacobs.

The first images of the campaign should appear in the August issues of fashion magazines.

Quick Updates!

* Made in Brazil: "It has been confirmed that Madonna will be the face of Louis Vuitton again for fall, and rumor now is that Jesus Luz will be featured on the men's campaign. My sources had told me that he was shot in New York by Steven Klein for Dolce & Gabbana, but I have also heard yesterday that he shot the Louis Vuitton campaign, and that apparently there is already a second shoot scheduled. "

* Madonna Tribe: Madonna's "Filth And Wisdom" has been released on DVD in Finland yesterday, April 16th.
The directorial debut by the Queen of Pop was distributed theatrically in the country last year. Here's a look at the DVD cover:

Madonna May Wear Bunny Ears for Louis Vuitton Fall '09 Campaign

StyleRumor.com

The Material Girl will once flex her pilate-sculpted body for the Louis Vuitton 2009/10 Fall campaign. Looks like Marc Jacobs may have had Madonna in mind for the fall collection: who else but Madge can do Chic Coquine & Bourgeoise so well?

There is no confirmation if Her Madge-sty will sport the coquettish “Bunny Ears” headband on or not.

The campaign will be shot by Steven Meisel jn about 2 weeks at the end of April.

Check out the Louis Vuitton looks below. We love them all but we have a special weakness for the “Bunny Ears” headband.

*******
anna_henstridge from Fanzine writes: :

thats all correct, and with m teaming up with meisel again for the photoshoot this month, they will sure have some cool visuals and theme in store for us.
*******
In related news, M is rumored to attend Costume Institute Gala on May 4th.

Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute Explores Role of Fashion Models as Muses of Recent Eras:

• Gala Benefit May 4, 2009, with Honorary Chair Marc Jacobs and Co-Chairs Kate Moss, Justin Timberlake, and Anna Wintour
• Exhibition dates: May 6–August 9, 2009
• Exhibition location: The Tisch Galleries, second floor
• Press preview: Monday, May 4, 10 a.m.–1 p.m.

The Godfather

Style.com

Over the years, Steven Meisel has developed an extraordinary body of work, an almost impenetrable mystique—and an uncanny knack for finding fashion's favorite faces.

By Jonathan Van Meter

Once, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away—early-nineties, supermodel-mad Manhattan—I went to a party at music producer Shep Pettibone's midtown apartment. It was a sultry July evening, and he lived in a penthouse with a huge terrace. The party had a decadent feeling: Everyone smoked; there were well-stocked bars inside and out; the crowd was by any definition a beautiful one. I got the sense that things would still be going on long after I had gone to bed.

At one point, I noticed that Steven Meisel and his tight little clique—which on that evening included a tall, cute blond guy and Naomi Campbell—were languidly slouching about, smoking. I had just run out of cigarettes, and so I turned and asked the group if I could bum one. Meisel, who had a bandanna covering his head and dark sunglasses on, did not even glance up.

The encounter—the first of many times in my life when I would not meet Steven Meisel—left an indelible impression, which was one of intimidating inscrutability. The fact that for so many years he has worn what amounts to a hip-gay-male version of a burka has only added to my perception of him as a creature of mystery. He is always covered up! Even when it's blazing hot out, he's got on some sort of headgear and layers of black clothing. It is a look that is designed to obfuscate and to keep people away. And it works.

Over the years, Meisel has become ever more reclusive, rarely going to fashion shows or parties, almost never giving interviews. There have been no retrospectives or gallery openings or lush coffee-table books published, nothing that would require him to face the public. His friends—to a one—say that he is shy and especially reserved around strangers, and they insist that his mysteriousness is not a cultivated affectation; it is just part of his nature.

"I think that he almost has to be that way to protect himself," says Amber Valletta. "He's so extremely sensitive."

Linda Evangelista, who is one of Meisel's closest friends, sees it a bit differently. "He's just private. He's not a media whore. I bet he had to be dragged kicking and screaming to do this story. But it's got nothing to do with being mysterious. Fame and glory are not going to bring him satisfaction in life."

Even Madonna agrees that there is, indeed, "a great sense of mystery" about Meisel—so much so that after all these years she feels she still doesn't really know him very well. "I know that I love him," she says. "You get sucked into his aura. He knows things."

She learned this from one of their first collaborations, which was for the cover of Like a Virgin. "Before I worked with Steven," says Madonna, "I just showed up in the clothes I was wearing, stood in front of the lights, and got my picture taken. With Steven, a team of people descended on me, started to undress me. Someone grabbed my hair, another grabbed my face, another started helping me try on various bits of clothes, and they all seemed to be speaking a language I didn't understand—the language of Steven Meisel."

To hear Madonna talk about working with Meisel is like being let in on a long-held secret. She goes on, "Steven had a vision. He had done his research. He had very specific references. I really respected the care that he took with his work, how seriously he approached it, but at the same time he has a great sense of irony. He made me feel like I was part of something important. He treated each photo shoot like it was a small film and insisted that we create a character each time we worked but then would make fun of the archetypes we created. He was the first person to introduce me to the idea of reinvention." Who knew that Madonna, the goddess of reinvention, learned it from Steven Meisel.

Meisel's nearly 30-year career as a fashion photographer has been distinguished by two things: his unusually collaborative relationships with women and an almost perverse dedication to constant change, which, come to think of it, is a good description of fashion itself. In his work for, among others, this magazine, Italian Vogue (for which he has shot every cover since 1988), and innumerable fashion-ad campaigns, he has mastered so many different styles—from stripped-down studio shots of models in action to high-concept social satires, from lush couture shoots to high-glam camp—that it can be difficult to pin down whether there is a distinctive Meisel style at all.

"One of the reasons the world has been slow to recognize his contribution is that he is an absolute chameleon," says Charlotte Cotton, the photography curator of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Cotton, who considers Meisel the commercial photographer of our time, says he belongs in the pantheon of image-makers with Avedon, Penn, and Newton. "It's a remarkably risky position to take. It's like starting from scratch every time you go on a shoot, because it's based on whatever influences you've cherry-picked from the culture at that moment."

In preparation for this month's exhibition, "The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion," Harold Koda, curator in charge of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute, has been poring over Meisel images from the eighties and nineties. In doing so, he has realized that there are a couple of things about a Meisel photograph that come close to a signature. For one, Meisel is a true postmodernist. "He samples only those things from the past that can be electrified by a contemporary aesthetic," says Koda.

The other quality that characterizes Meisel's work is a strange kind of precision. "The thing that looks like Steven is an obsessiveness with an almost chilly perfection," says Koda. "Even if the models are meant to look tousled, they are perfectly tousled," he says. "There's never a moment where there isn't this intrusion of the photographer into a very controlled image."

He brings up Meisel's infamous Versace campaign, shot in over-the-top mansions in Beverly Hills with Amber Valletta and Georgina Grenville, who are made up and posed to look like the most glamorous sixties Stepford wives imaginable. "I think that's Steven at his best, when he has inserted his own imagination of reality into the photograph and it becomes this kind of hyperreality," says Koda. "I really see a directorial role in the way he takes photographs."

If Steven Meisel is like a film director, then his movie stars are, of course, the supermodels. The term was coined by an agent in the 1940s, but if we are to give one person credit for our idea of Supermodels, capital S, that credit would have to go to Meisel. Christy, Linda, and Naomi—no last names necessary. Of course, there were famous models before, but none who permeated every aspect of the culture—and embodied it—in quite the same way.

As Koda says, "He really is a kind of a Svengali in terms of being able to take a range of beautiful women and transform their particular look into the look of the moment. And he has the business savvy to be able to create careers."

I spent a goodly part of my winter tracking down many of the women Meisel "made." Naomi rang from a car as a fellow named Yuri drove her around Moscow (she yelled at him only once during our talk). I interviewed Linda while I was sick with the flu. (She offered to have chicken soup sent over.) Christy almost didn't call me at all, because she was busy studying for her master's degree in public health at Columbia University. I found Carolyn Murphy living nearly off the grid somewhere in Southern California; Liya Kebede in New York; Coco Rocha in Australia; Amber Valletta in Santa Monica. Stella Tennant called from Scotland, and Kristen McMenamy from a closet in her house in London, where she had to hide so her kids couldn't hear her.

The first thing you realize is how similarly articulate, funny, and intense these women are. The second thing you notice is that they all view Meisel as the opposite of inscrutable—as a nurturing father figure. "He makes you feel so safe," says Linda. Carolyn Murphy describes Meisel as a "proud papa. He pays attention, and you know that he's really interested in you." Valletta says, "He always inspired me to care about what I was doing."

McMenamy believes that Meisel empathizes with women, models in particular. "I think pretty much all models have got a hang-up about one thing or another. I have a huge hang-up about my looks. I was always the outcast growing up. When I first worked with him, he made me feel beautiful and comfortable. And there's this certain magic in that he makes you feel part of the team. He makes you feel as important as he is."

"He has this incredible gift for being able to find the diamond in the rough," says Liya Kebede. "He sees you when you first arrive on the set and you look unpolished, and then he finds the girl inside."

All of the women say that they "owe their careers" to Meisel. "It's a very strange thing," says Stella Tennant. "He's a bit like my fairy godfather, I suppose." She laughs. "But it was like that! You shall go to the ball! And you shall be on the cover of American Vogue! Because that's quite a power to have. There are other photographers who have it to some degree, but I don't think any other photographer can project a model so far and so high into the business." Meisel's most recent muse, Coco Rocha, agrees: "If he says it's so, it's so. And that makes your career. He's the Godfather of all models."

Full disclosure: I have never met Steven Meisel. I have been to a few of his photo shoots over the years, where he works literally behind a scrim. A couple of years ago, I think I might have clapped eyes on him as he scurried from the designated hair-and-makeup area (where I could hear gales of laughter coming from Pat McGrath and Garren) and then ducked back behind the curtain. At a Linda Evangelista shoot I went to, he was working inside what seemed like a black box. I could hear his voice, a barely audible murmur, as he gave Linda direction or expressed his pleasure over something she was doing with her upper lip or her hand.

When I first contacted his office, he agreed to a phone interview, which we decided should be an hour long. We picked a Tuesday at noon and then, weirdly enough, stuck with Tuesdays at noon for several weeks, like it was ironclad and I was his shrink whom he couldn't bear to see in person.

Meisel was surprisingly forthcoming on the phone—willing to entertain pretty much any question. But he was also brusque and impatient—sort of perpetually annoyed with the idea of doing an interview at all. Because he has such a thick outer-borough New York accent, I sometimes felt as if I were talking to a cranky but very funny old Jewish grandmother. I noticed that he seemed to want to take control of the interview; for example, he would answer one of my questions and then ask himself a follow-up question. And then answer it! At other times he completely relaxed into the process and just talked.

I began to enjoy this unusual process, partly for its novelty but mostly for its strange intimacy. There's something lovely and old-fashioned about talking on the phone once a week for a month. Who does that anymore?

Turns out Meisel does. "I used to spend hours on the phone with him," says Anna Sui, who has known him since they went to Parsons together in the seventies. "He loves that." Turlington also mentions their marathon sessions. "I would talk to him on the phone as I would to a girlfriend in high school, both watching the same TV show, talking through the whole thing."

It's clear that, as with everything he does, Meisel likes to be in charge. He insisted on taking me through things chronologically. If I jumped ahead in time, he would stop, put a mental marker on the subject, and then address it when we'd arrived at the appropriate place for it in his story.

Steven Meisel was born in Manhattan in 1954, but he was essentially raised on Long Island. His parents, Sarah and Leonard, moved him and his sister, Robin, to Port Washington when he was about three. (When I ask if his parents are still living, he says, "Still alive! Still married!") Leonard is 95 ("still cantankerous!"); he is of Russian-Jewish descent; Sarah, who is Irish-English, is 85 and still comes into the city once a week to have lunch with her son.

Though he didn't appreciate it at the time, he was introduced to a sort of glitzy nighttime world at an early age. His maternal grandfather was Nat Simon, the songwriter whose standard "Poinciana" was a hit for Bing Crosby. Meisel's mother was for a while a big-band singer; she went to Hollywood for a screen test, hoping to sign a contract with one of the film studios, but Leonard didn't like the idea, so she quit and became a housewife. ("My grandfather never forgave her," says Meisel. "He always hated my father.")

Leonard worked for London Records. "Artists would come from Europe, and my father would take them around the city to concerts and radio stations," says Meisel. Tom Jones once stayed at their house for four days. Leonard would sometimes take young Steven to Jilly's, where they would see Frank Sinatra at the bar, or to the Copacabana, where he remembers sitting so close to the stage the night the Supremes performed that he could practically touch them. When the Beatles came to Shea Stadium in 1965, the Meisels went backstage and met them before the show. "Now I see that it was very glamorous," he says.

Meisel's cousin was Diane Rothschild, the legendary advertising executive. When Meisel was about twelve, she took him to an advertising shoot the fashion photographer Melvin Sokolsky was doing for a fabric company. What he remembers most is that he watched the models—not the photographer—because he knew who they were from his constant reading of fashion magazines. "I was obsessed even then," he says.

His mother and sister were stunners in their own right. Sarah, who took Steven along when she had her hair colored at Kenneth, was an icy-blonde beauty—in old photographs, she looks like she could have stepped out of a Meisel shoot. His sister, who shared her brother's dark good looks, let him experiment with hair and makeup and photograph her. He went shopping with them every Saturday to Saks and Bergdorf and then later to boutiques like Paraphernalia and Abracadabra on the Upper East Side. "I had to go to the stores!" says Meisel. "It seemed like the world that I was looking at in the magazines come to life."

Meisel soon figured out that he wanted to attend the High School of Art & Design, on East Fifty-seventh Street. It was quite a scene. In the back of the lunchroom there was a table where, according to Meisel, "the groovy crowd" sat. Meisel eventually worked his way into the group, one that included the model Pat Cleveland, future Warhol superstar Donna Jordan, and none other than Harvey Fierstein. "We called him Little Stevie," says Fierstein. "I was sort of on the very edge of the cool crowd because I had no business being there…trust me!" What about Little Stevie? "Oh, I think he was snapping at their heels," he says in that basso profundo. "I remember him as a dark-haired, very sweet Jewish boy."

Even in a school well stocked with creative oddballs, Meisel managed to stand out, says Cleveland, whom Meisel would photograph years later, most recently for the black issue of Italian Vogue. "He had this long, silky black hair down to the bottom of his derriere. He wore really tight little jeans and beautiful shirts. He wasn't wild. But, you know, when you see someone who is that beautiful, they don't have to be outrageous and loud. He didn't have to push his way into anything."

It was the end of the sixties, and he made a place for himself just as easily in New York's nightlife. A photographer friend of his sister's took him to Max's Kansas City when he was fourteen—he became nearly delirious on the phone one day as he recalled the lighting in great detail, as only a photographer could. That early exposure to the theatrical aesthetic of the demimonde has had a profound influence on his work. When he conjures glamour, as Charlotte Cotton points out, "his frame of reference could be a transsexual's glamour rather than the real Marilyn Monroe's glamour."

One also gets the sense that it was a period in which this famously controlling man cut loose. "Yes. I went to every single club, every single hangout, every single after-hours drug place. There wasn't one thing that I didn't do; there wasn't one place that I didn't go to."

After high school, Meisel went to Parsons to study fashion illustration. Along the way, he worked at Halston for a summer, his very first job, where he met Stephen Sprouse, who became a lifelong friend (until his death in 2004); they bonded over their disdain for the older designer. "Everyone would be called into this room, and he would stand there like…like…Kay Thompson. 'Think Pink!' Oh, he drove me crazy." Worse yet, Halston designed a uniform for his young charge to wear: a black ribbed short-sleeved shirt and black slacks. "He would yell at me and say, 'Don't just sit around, Pocahontas! You have to do something!' "

In 1974, Meisel, drawings in hand, went literally across the street from Parsons to Fairchild Publications, where Women's Wear Daily's offices were, and met with the art director, who hired him. Ben Brantley, André Leon Talley, and Bonnie Fuller all worked there.

It was here that Meisel met the fashion illustrator Kenneth Paul Block, the closest he has ever come to a mentor. "He taught me so much about everything," says Meisel. "He would sit there with this long cigarette holder and a polka-dot bow tie, always a sports jacket, immaculate. He never lost his temper. He had so much style, so much class, so much chic." Block would sometimes draw Meisel, whose androgynous good looks allowed him to stand in for a woman. (In Block's fantastic book, Drawing Fashion, which came out in 2008, there is a spread devoted to Meisel that is titled simply "Steven.")

While at WWD, Meisel started traveling back across the street to Parsons to teach illustration. A young student named Marc Jacobs tried to take his class. "I had seen Steven out and about in New York with his little entourage—Teri Toye and Stephen Sprouse and Anna Sui—but I didn't know him," says Jacobs. "But I was such a fan of his drawings and just thought he had a really great eye. I was very disappointed because the first night when I showed up, it was announced that he wasn't going to be teaching it, because he was off on a photography assignment for W. He had just started taking pictures."

By the early eighties, Meisel intuited that fashion illustration was on its way out. "I needed to do more," he says. He started by snapping pictures of his girlfriends. One day, he met a girl shopping and asked if she would sit for him. She was Valerie Cates, the sister of Phoebe Cates, then a model represented by Elite. "So I would shoot Valerie and Phoebe on the weekends," says Meisel. The B-girls—the bookers—at Elite loved Meisel's photographs, so they asked him to do test shoots with other newly signed girls. Elite supplied him with film and processing, and Meisel began to hone his craft—while also learning how to make fourteen-year-old girls feel comfortable posing as women. From the very beginning, he did the hair, makeup, and styling all by himself. "I didn't know any different," he says.

An editor at Seventeen saw his pictures in a model's portfolio and called to offer him an assignment. His first magazine shoot was at a country house in Connecticut. "I took these sweet little pictures," he says. In quick succession he started shooting for W, Mademoiselle, Self, and then finally Vogue. "I was still at WWD, and teaching," he says. "And there was an editor at Vogue, Mary Russell, and she just loved my work. I went up to the offices and she introduced me to art director Alex Liberman, and he asked if I would go to Europe to do the collections." Meisel took some time off from WWD to go to Paris and Milan with a model he chose, Marisa Indri. "I didn't have any assistants; there was no hair and makeup. We would go to Saint Laurent, knock on the door, and they looked at us like, Who are these people? But we went into the different houses, they gave us the clothes; sometimes Marisa and I would go out on the streets. I would do her hair at their cabines, and she would get dressed." When he got back, Vogue asked him to do the New York collections. "We were in a natural-light studio, and all of a sudden we had hair and makeup. I said, 'Hmm. OK.' That was my first job at Vogue."

Before long, Meisel began working with Polly Mellen, and that is when things really began to click. "It was very, very exciting to work with her," he says. "The way that she treated models was unbelievable. To her, your model was gold. She was everything. Your girls felt that. They felt like stars." Meisel is a very good mimic. Here, suddenly, he does a dead-on imitation of Polly Mellen's singular whispery war cry: "You are work-ing with Tur-ling-ton to-daaaaaay." He goes on, "Sometimes, looking at the girl as I was working, she would actually cry. She was that moved. It was incredible! It was what I thought it would be. It was what I wanted."

With surprising swiftness, he established his very collaborative creative process, one that almost always involved inventing a narrative persona for his subjects. As Turlington says, "We started to work, honestly, three quarters of each month. I felt like a house model. We used to work at this place on lower Broadway. I'd come in every day and go into the makeup room and it was like, What are we going to do? What are we going to create today?"

Meisel remembers in glorious detail his first shoot with Linda Evangelista. "I had seen some European magazine that was absolutely nothing, and there was a little picture of her. I remember thinking, This girl has amazing line." He booked her for a Vogue shoot with several other girls. "I was working with François Nars and Oribe at the time, and they were like, 'Oh, this girl! We're crazy about her!' They were very inspired. François was painting her and painting her, and Oribe kept making the hair bigger and bigger. She came out and she glistened. It was like crystal, like champagne corks popping. That smile! Her gums! Her eyes just twinkled! I decided to shoot the story on just Linda, and we sent all the other girls home. We were just very, very inspired and in love."

The feeling was mutual. "It was the beginning of our story," Evangelista says. "I remember I heard something about how they loved my knees. As a model, you are never referred to as a whole person. You are dissected into little pieces. I thought maybe they were being sarcastic, because I got teased my whole life about my knees. There were also comments about my gums. I was like, 'My gums?' I didn't think that my gums would stand out." She laughs. "So, there you go. My knees and my gums."

The day of the photo shoot for this piece with all of the women Meisel "made" happened to fall on a Tuesday, which meant that we would miss our standing phone appointment for that week in February. And since I failed to persuade him to let me be a fly on the wall at the shoot—but, oh, how I tried!—I had to wait until the following Tuesday at noon to find out how it all went. "Chaotic but fine," he said when we get on the phone. "Fun," he added after a few seconds. "Nice to see everybody." Another long pause. "Lovely!" he finally shouted. "I mean, I love all of them so much, so it was great."

It must have been strange for this Svengali to have all of his women together in the same place. He says the day felt a bit like a reunion, replete with hugs and tears and the showing off of baby pictures. He was also struck by the fact that the younger girls had never met most of the older girls. "It was very sweet and very touching," he says. "Because for some of these women, modeling changed their whole life. It really, really did! For me to sit there and remember the sixteen-year-old girls that I met, some of whom came in with a tattered coat and $3, and then to think that now some of them are married to billionaires.…This job in particular has a tendency to change lives more than most."

It changed his life, too. He now splits his time (with a boyfriend he won't discuss) between a mansion in Beverly Hills—like one of those "sick" (by which he means cool) houses he used to stage those Versace ads several years ago—and "a big old prewar monster" on the Upper East Side. When I ask him what his Peter Marino-designed place in New York looks like, he says, "It's a major apartment. That's what I wanted. That's why I work so much: to give myself some of the things that make me feel comfortable. My drapes are heavy velvet. It's kind of a little…I don't know…Saint Laurent, a little Chanel. A lot of crystal, a lot of mirrors. One of the rooms has a mirrored ceiling. I know it sounds bad, but it's so working." He laughs. "To me, that's what growing up here…that's what my city is…or, was, all about." One almost gets the sense that if he himself could go to Kenneth, as his mother used to, he would.

Of course, the passage of time has meant other changes. The man who is obsessed with retouching to the point of plasticine immortal beauty has complicated feelings about aging. In some ways, his reclusiveness has the whiff of the Hollywood star who cannot bear to show her no-longer-gorgeous face. "Would I rather look 20 again?" he asks. "Uh…yeah? I think anyone who says no would be crazy. It's difficult. It's also difficult physically. I don't have the stamina I once did." He pauses. "But the other stuff? What are you going to do? I love plastic surgery. I haven't had any, because it's very hit or miss. Even with the best doctors…there's no guarantee." Here Meisel asks himself a follow-up question. "OK, am I getting plastic surgery?" And then answers it. "I don't think so."

A few people suggested to me that one reason Meisel did not want to see me in person might be that he has become self-conscious about his weight. At one point, when I ask him if he has any vices left, he answers with one word—"food"—which seems to confirm this theory. "This week I even tried hypnosis," he says, laughing. "Still, I see the cookie!"

More than anything, one senses that he misses the time when he was closer in age to his subjects. "What am I going to talk about with a teenage Russian girl who barely speaks English?" he complains one day. It occurs to me that perhaps Meisel doesn't like to be interviewed because it's hard for him to dredge up the past. "I definitely don't live in the past," he says. "I definitely live in the present. I know people probably think of me as just living in the past. I do like certain periods in fashion. But I don't live in the past at all. I'm very much now and tomorrow. But when I go through old pictures, yes, I cry. It's not a sad cry. It's a melancholy one, but mixed with happiness, too."

Photo: For his self-portrait, the photographer gathered together the superstars, past and present, whose careers he launched. Clockwise from left, Carolyn Murphy, Liya Kebede, Kristen McMenamy, Coco Rocha, Jessica Stam, Amber Valletta, Linda Evangelista, Gisele Bündchen, Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, Karen Elson, Natalia Vodianova, Guinevere Van Seenus, Stella Tennant, and Agyness Deyn.

"The Godfather" has been edited for Style.com; the complete story appears in the May 2009 issue of Vogue.

Quick Updates!

* 2 articles about Madonna's new townhouse on the UES: NY Post, Observer.


M's new townhouse on the UES

* It's rumored that Steven Klein recently shot Jesus Luz for the new Dolce & Gabbana ad campaign.

M attends the after party for the New York premiere of "Valentino: The Last Emperor" at The Oak Room in The Plaza Hotel - 17/03/09

With Gwyneth and Valentino and Giancarlo Giametti and other celebs:






Photos: allaboutmadonna, Splash, The Mirror, picapp

M to launch fashion line?

Yahoo!

Madonna has set her sights on conquering the fashion world for a second time - the pop superstar is reportedly set to launch a new line with designer Christian Audigier.

The singer created her own clothing collection - M by Madonna - with Swedish high street chain H&M in 2007.

And now the Holiday hitmaker is now said to be working on a high fashion range with Audigier, according to the Daily Mirror.

The publication reports that Audigier has offered the star a six-figure deal to design a collection for him, which will include tattoo-inspired t-shirts and diamante-encrusted T-shirts.

Why Madonna Wore the Beckham Dress... and more

W Magazine

Costume designer Arianne Phillips, the stylist behind "Blame it on Rio," has been collaborating with Madonna for more than a decade, from the star's geisha-inspired period to her Patty Hearst look for American Life. Phillips, who also masterminded the clothing for Madonna's two previous epic photo portfolios for W (2003's "Madonna Unbound" and 2006's "Madonna Rides Again"), talked to us about the looks she chose for their latest collaboration.

The black zippered dress is so prominent in the story. What made you choose it and what did its designer (Victoria Beckham) have to do with it, if anything?
I initially chose this dress for the classic 50s-60s slim silhouette, which was what I was after for our story. I was also intrigued since it is from Beckham's debut collection -- I liked the "story" of one pop star to another. And I was pleasantly surprised at the high quality of the dress. The fabrication, details and fit are very well thought out.

Tell us about that graphic sequined dress. All the credit says is that it's vintage and from The Way We Wore, the vintage store in LA.
The dress is reminiscent of our initial inspiration for the shoot, the 1963 Jeanne Moreau film The Bay of Angels. It's from the select archives of Doris Raymond, the owner of The Way We Wore. Madonna had specifically requested I include some vintage 50s and early 60s garments to mix with the contemporary designer fashions, and Doris is my "go to" person for vintage. She has an amazing eye and unique sensitivity to vintage.

What are the sunglasses Madonna wears in so many of the shots?
I believe those are D&G. We loved them.

What's with the little lace gloves?
With styling I find it's always about balance -- not over accessorizing, while still being able to create a character. There was a finished, formal quality to the way women dressed in the 50s and 60s. Their outfits were complete with hat, gloves, jewelry and hosiery, and there was a modesty and femininity to the way women dressed. I found that the little lace gloves finished her character perfectly, as they're both demure and provocative.

What's up next for you?
I designed the costumes for Tom Ford's directorial debut, A Single Man, starring Colin Firth and Julianne Moore, which is forthcoming this fall. Right now I'm helping refurbish and create some new looks for Madonna's summer tour extension and I'm getting ready to attend the women's collections in Paris.

Madonna attended a private fashion show in L.A.

contactmusic.com

M exits the offices of Christian Audigier after attending a private fashion show. Los Angeles, California - 20.02.09.

Madonna T-Shirt for Comic Relief - Red Nose Day '09 Charity

The Herb Ritts shot of Madonna has been customised on a tshirt by Stella McCartney for the Comic Relief - Red Nose Day 2009 charity. This scan is fromUK magazine Grazia, '09 February. Wore by Sienna Miller and Keira Knightley.




Order the shirts at the Red Nose Day website


Scan: Madonnalicious

Inside Madonna's wardrobe

Times Online

From New York club kid to Evita – Madonna’s reinventions have been at the centre of her success. As a collection of her stage costumes goes on show, we try on some of her most famous garments – and Lisa Armstrong considers the semiotics of those bras, bustiers and sequins.

Even if you are as one with Lily (“Madonna is the most overrated person in pop history”) Allen, there is something satisfyingly perverse about seeing her clothes become, in these topsy-turvy economic times, the stuff of investors’ dreams. At any rate, two venture capitalists, with an eye to future riches, have spent the past two years tracking down her more memorable outfits, chasing up documentation to corroborate their provenance (you wouldn’t believe the number of fakes out there) and batting away rival collectors in the bidding wars.

The fruits, so far, tally some 250 items of clothing, plus another 50 or so pieces of Madonna ephemera, including awards, although perhaps they won’t prove so ephemeral. “I’m by no means a Madonna freak,” says Chetan Trivedi, one of the VCs, “but when you look at how wide her demographic is and how long she has been at the top, Madonna’s clothes start to look like a better bet than the stock market.” This is a point not lost on the Material One herself, who has a warehouse in Los Angeles where she stores the pieces she’s kept post-1993.

What makes this collection more visceral than most are the traces of the woman who wore them – make-up smudges on a beret, perspiration stains on one of the corsets worn in rehearsals. For the moment, the collection resides in the vaults of Coutts, but soon it will be unleashed in an exhibition. And for anyone with an interest in popular culture, it’s worth a look. Madonna’s assault on the world can’t properly be viewed outside the prism of the clothes she wore while mounting it. From the early scavenged props, through the dark Marlene years, when Madonna gender-bent and flashed more parts of her anatomy than seemed compatible with her status as a world superstar, to the pastel Juicy Couture jogging suits of the early Mummy years, from Geisha Girl to Braveheart, Latino sexpot to Marie Antoinette, voluptuous Marilyn to a 50-year-old leotard-toting, designer-bandage-sporting defier of gravity, fashion has been integral to her identity.

No one can accuse her of idleness. In 25 years she has developed a new kind of body to aspire to, one that arguably hands women power over their shape; extended the shelf life of gyrating female performers by two decades and counting; pushed female sexual boundaries to places that chart-topping female singers had never seen the need to drag them (granted, this wasn’t always a pretty sight); invited the gay scene to the mainstream party; experimented with most genres of pop and rock; defied social mores (then embraced them); and subjected herself to more image changes than a serial witness protection scheme participant.

Naturally, this was all entirely self-seeking – and not especially original. Arguably, her most creative fashion legacy, pieced together from fragments worn by Martha Graham dancers, the street and Madonna’s idiosyncratic twists, was the first public incarnation, made famous in the Like a Virgin video, then indelible in Desperately Seeking Susan. This rag-tag look endeared because it was accessible and yet distinctive, achieved without money. It captured an aspect of the Eighties that tends to be overlooked: the decade’s optimism, verve and spirit of DIY.

The other style moments, like her musical output, are generally the fruits of gifted larceny. She didn’t invent conical bras, any more than she came up with the concept of androgyny.

But she knew the right time to wear them – after the prototypes had been perfected, but before they’d lost their power to shock or surprise. And yet for all the thrusting and sexual provocation, she has never really been a (straight) man magnet. She’s way too terrifying, particularly during her gynaecologically obsessed period.

But if you’re a woman, if you’re gay, if you’ve ever enjoyed one of her songs or thought she looked nice dressed up as Eva Perón, if you’re one of scores of designers, from the global big shots to the unknowns, whom she patronised and subsequently put on the map, then you’ve been under the Madonna influence. Resistance may just be futile.

The exhibition Simply Madonna is at the Old Truman Brewery, London E1, from February 21 to March 31

Material Girl, 1985

Hiring a kitschly pink satin strapless dress for the video of Material Girl, Madonna openly plagiarised Monroe’s scene in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. But where Monroe was part gold-digger, part adorable naif, Madonna is entirely knowing. This was a platinum blonde whose eyebrows were deliberately left a contradictory shade of charcoal and whose body was beginning to look as though she could go several rounds in the ring. Given that workout regime, Monroe wouldn’t be the later Madonna’s chosen screen reference – Dietrich would, and not the fleshy young Dietrich of the Lola era.

Attempting to put a twist on Anita Loos’ satire on materialism, Madonna, hair slickly waved, interspersed scenes from the 1953 movie with a new story that showed her playing an actress being wooed by a Hollywood director who has to pretend to be poor in order to win her (unmaterialistic) heart. Hah! Ironically, it’s Monroe who emerges as the more subversive.

Sex, 1992

Jean Paul Gaultier had been playing with cone bras through the Eighties, and Yves Saint Laurent had tinkered with them 20 years earlier. But no one expected anyone to wear them, until Madonna commissioned Gaultier to design the costumes for her Blonde Ambition tour in 1990.

This period saw Madonna’s exhibitionism reach potentially corrosive extremes, culminating with Sex, the explicit picture book she released in 1992. Flaunting its artistic credentials – the photographs were taken by Italian Vogue’s Steven Meisel – Sex was a puzzling and shocking detour from a superstar who, so it seemed, didn’t need to strip off and get gynaecological. Sex sold out, but along with 1993’s Body of Evidence, in which Madonna played a woman trying to kill a man by having sex with him, it almost finished her career. A period of relative restraint followed.

Evita, 1996

Madonna’s formidable lobbying tactics paid off when Alan Parker finally cast her in the role she felt she was born to play. You can see why she identified with Eva Perón ­up to a point: humble background, ruthless climb to the top. But Evita was more than a demanding diva; she was thought to be complicit in the disappearance of anyone who crossed her, as well as millions of Argentina’s missing pesos. Oh well, she gave great wardrobe.

Working out every day despite her pregnancy (Lourdes Ciccone was born three months before the premiere), Madonna more than did Perón’s style justice. In curlicues of eyeliner and Christian Dior lipstick, she worked every one of those 85 costume changes, 39 hats and 49 hairstyles.

This was a first glimpse of Madonna doing ladylike, later a glossy magazine staple in her English country lady period. The release of the film saw a revival in Forties tailoring, and for months Madonna wore suits and cultivated an überpale skin.

Music, 2000

Having exhausted Eva Perón and geishas, Madonna turned to facets of her homeland that had previously failed to engage her. Although the early Noughties vogue for ghetto fabulousness seemed at odds with Madonna’s increasing interest in kabbalah, it provided some irresistible style opportunities. The white three-piece trouser suit she wore for the Music video (in which she allowed Sacha Baron Cohen’s alter ego Ali G – then Britain’s coolest comic figure – to send her up, thus winning hearts in her adopted homeland) was not a million miles from the Savile Row-inspired tailoring her friend Stella McCartney was churning out for her recently launched label.

American Pie, 2000

The vest-and-jeans outfit that Madonna wore for her American Pie video was as wholesome and straightforward as the raven hair and kimono-inspired clothes of Ray of Light had been mysterious (or pretentious, depending on your taste).

If her cover of Don McLean’s Sixties standard was banal, it at least pre-empted the waves of patriotism that engulfed America after 9/11 – and, as McLean contentedly noted, ensured that “I’ll never have to work again.”

Re-Invention Tour, 2004

Jean Paul Gaultier was back on board, along with Karl Lagerfeld, Christian Lacroix and Stella McCartney. Madonna’s pirating tendencies were more eclectic than ever – ranging from Marie Antoinette to Braveheart and Carnival, and the clothes were some of the most beautiful to have gone on a pop tour. But the whole enterprise felt like a stock-taking of sort; a montage of Madonna’s greatest style hits was played on a giant screen every night – an indication that while the chameleon gene was still active, the desire for dramatic transformations that spilt over into real life was waning.