Madonna's costume

LANGUAGE LEVEL B1 (INTERMEDIATE)

Madonna’s pink Material Girl dress and the famous Jean-Paul Gaultier black bustier she wore for the Who’s That Girl tour were among items displayed in a recent exhibition of her stage clothes.
Simply Madonna: Materials of the Girl follows the many phases in the pop star’s career over the last 25 years. Held in London earlier this year, it was the first time these personal objects have been exhibited. Normally, they are kept in a bank vault.

PERSONAL ARTIFACTS

Madonna’s chameleon-like nature makes the exhibition special. From her punk look in the 1980s to her most recent appearance in a leotard and stockings, reinvention has been at the centre of the 50-year-old’s success. Other memorabilia on display includes old tour posters and record covers, a cheque she wrote to her beautician for depilation and a gold necklace given to her by an ex-boyfriend.

BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY

It took nine months to assemble the 1940s dresses from the Evita movie (in which Madonna played Eva Peron).
The  organisers, Marquee Capital Ltd., hope the exhibition will raise the value of the items.
They intended to sell the pink evening dress at auction after the London exhibition. They haven’t sold it yet, but they received a bid which was 300 per cent more than the price that they paid for it.  

A Chameleon

LANGUAGE LEVEL C1 (ADVANCED)

Speaker: Chuck Rolando (Standard American accent)

Madonna is one of the top five rock artists of all time and her amazing costumes were recently the subject of an exhibition in London; Simply Madonna: Materials of the Girl, which was held at the Truman Brewery in Brick Lane. It was organised by the Marquee Capital company, whose Marketing & Communications Director, Waheed Aslam, met with Speak Up. He talked about Madonna’s role as a fashion icon:

Waheed Aslam (Standard British accent):

The way Madonna looks at it, she’s got this... vision of the way the market’s actually moving, and the way... what appeals to a lot of different types of people, and she’s almost... almost foreseen that, and think(s) “What’s actually going to catch the attention?” So she’s reinvented herself several times. I think The Times wrote an article a couple of months ago, based on the exhibition itself, it was about the seven phases of Madonna, and the way she’s actually changed her image, all the way round, for the last 25, 26 years, and she’s almost foreseen what’s going to appeal to the wider public, or her fans, to reinvent herself continually, she’s obviously like a visionary type of person.

Marquee Capital plan to transfer Simply Madonna: Materials of the Girl to Dubai.
Madonna herself will perform at Milan’s Stadio San Siro on 14th July and at Udine’s Stadio Friuli on 16 July.