It Was a Madonna Summer! The Queen of Pop’s Stylist on Her Iconic Looks

4 min read

Madonna kicked off her fashion renaissance in May with a bold Met Gala appearance that paid tribute to the famed surrealist artist Leonora Carrington’s 1945 painting “The Temptation of St. Anthony.” In her all-consuming, inky black, witchy Saint Laurent gown, she topped off her look with Isabella Blow’s infamous shipwreck hat by Philip Treacy. In June, she released her dazzling Confessions II album, followed by a major surprise performance in Times Square, replete with metallic leather and pink lingerie. In July, she won the World Cup Halftime Show, corseted up in sporty pinks and purples. And just earlier this month, she performed in whimsical purple at the World Pride Music Festival in Amsterdam alongside Kylie Minogue. It’s been a Madonna summer, as the Queen of Pop has reinvented herself yet again with archival vintage fashion and endless shades of pink and purple. Given fashion’s recent predilection for boudoir dressing and niche vintage, it makes her easily worthy of being crowned the icon of summer style in 2026. She’s the blueprint for fashion right now because she’s done every trend before they were even trends.

“She’s like the creamy smooth pop icon goddess who fell from a nightclub from space,” Rita Melssen, stylist to Madonna and mastermind behind her outfits, describes the icon’s aesthetic. The two have worked together collaboratively to come up with a formula for her new era, and it’s one that references Madonna’s own boundary-breaking fashion, with hints of her provocative, over-the-top pop-inspired boudoir dressing, with a new twist. “We have our colors clearly, which are pink, purple,” says Melssen. “What we did with Confessions II is we kind of softened it from Confessions I. We kind of leaned more into the boudoir aesthetic with little lace slip dresses, teddies, but also that’s why we still kept, for example, those amazing leather jackets by Frida Giannini from the original Confessions, because we always want there to be some sort of juxtaposition. We don’t want anything to be too pretty or too rough or too racy or too disco. We always want to mix two things together that are seemingly from opposite ends of the spectrum.”

About those archival pieces: the duo pulled from both Madonna’s own collection and the archives of some of the Queen of Pop’s favorite designers, specifically when it came to shoes. The Yves Saint Laurent lace-up boots that she wears to perform were made for her by Tom Ford during the original Confessions on a Dance Floor. “They’re so worn in from all the years of dancing in them, which is just incredible,” adds Melssen. In the Confessions II short film, for example, she wears vintage Dolce & Gabbana PVC minidresses and crystal-studded corsets.

The custom-made metallic purple pair of Yves Saint Laurent purple pumps that she wore for her album cover was another piece that Madonna had in her own personal collection. Vintage corsets custom-made by stylists who worked with her during the original Confessions on a Dance Floor (B. Åkerlund and Arianne Phillips) play a role alongside new, antique-inspired options by the corset makers Rosamosario and Period Corsets. “It’s a very important thing for me because I love vintage clothing,” says Melssen. “I love supporting people who collect archival clothing because I think it’s such an important part of history and we should really never forget what happened before.”

Also key to the icon’s latest looks? Accessories like unusual gloves, which are a nod back to her signature aesthetic since day one: lace gloves, driving gloves, opera-length gloves—she’s truly done it all. Now, she’s layering them, donning sheer colored opera gloves with a driving glove styled on top. “We’ve got every color under the rainbow of gloves and/or a sheer opera-length glove that is in either a matching color or an opposite color of whatever the look is,” says Melssen. Also: colorful vintage sunglasses with just the right amount of transparency, like the vintage Dior by John Galliano sunglasses she wore to her surprise performance in Times Square. “I think sunglasses are very much synonymous with her,” says Melssen. “But we always want to see her eyes. I feel like that’s such an important point of connection.”

Whereas Madonna’s past fashion explorations heavily leaned into deep charcoal blacks, reds, deep blues, or shades of champagne and pure white, the new aesthetic is pure pop, with a dose of lighter and brighter nostalgia toward 2005 and before. “It represents her femininity and her softness, which I think she’s such a hyper-independent badass woman that it was nice to soften things up a little bit,” adds Melssen. “It’s about mixing eras, blending the past, the future, and the present in this moment.” From corsets and cone bras to bloomers and the radical act of refusing to stay the same, Madonna continues to define style. We can’t wait to see what’s next.