While Madonna has certainly given us all a good look-see of lace, leather, and, yes, latex costumes in her stage costumes of past, it was anybody’s guess what we’d get when the Material Lady returned to concert stages.
This is not a lady who has stepped through her wardrobe choices, song-smithing, and overall image anciently.
Miss Madge reigns supreme in the influence of that world where fashion and music meet. Aretha Franklin represents the mix of classic pop/soul hits with an underlying unwavering strain of feminism (not that Madonna does not represent feminism herself in her way). The two women are icons, divas to many (a title Aretha Franklin wore proudly) and have no equal in what they specifically produced.
And while we have all heard names like Klaw, Burtman, and Page in context with what was considered alternative fashion modeling and picture taking, there are still plenty more men and women who paved the way for the Jean Paul Gaultier’s, the Alexandar McQueen’s, and even those iconic images of Hatstand, Table, and Chair we made mention of here.
In his new book, Charles Guyette: Godfather of American Fetish Art, Richard Pérez Seves presents the story of a man we all should know better