Interview: Madonna

MADONNA talks fashion, fragrance and retreating to her dungeon as she prepares for a global tour that will see the queen of pop perform in Edinburgh this summer

SHE may be sporting Gaultier and Givenchy – as well as her first fine fragrance, Truth or Dare – on her upcoming tour, but Madonna hopes there’s one thing she won’t be wearing as she travels the globe to promote her new album: injuries.

The MDNA tour, in support of her 12th studio album, has required some physically challenging moves. At Macy’s Herald Square earlier this month, making an appearance in support of her scent, the star was nursing what she called “a big old cut” on her leg. Motioning to her black lace Dolce & Gabbana dress, she laughs, “I take these clothes off and I’m covered in bruises. It’s very sexy.” Why? Wait and see, she says, but promises it will be intense.

The tour kicks off in Tel Aviv on 20 May, wending its way around the Middle East and Europe (including Edinburgh’s Murrayfield on 21 July) before North America in August. “It’s crunch time for me getting my show ready, so after this I have to go back to the dungeon,” she says. “I call it the dungeon, where we work. In a room with no light. It’s kind of our factory, but I have a lot of work to do.”

As for the show’s couture, she says, “I worship and adore [Jean Paul Gaultier]. He’s creating one of my costumes, and kind of godfathering the costumes for a section of my show, with all my dancers. I’m really happy he’s doing it, because he’s such a genius. I’ll probably wear something that Riccardo [Tisci] from Givenchy makes. But the rest of it is going to be what my costume designer, Arianne Phillips, creates with me.”

If her Super Bowl XLVI costumes – which included a glittering Egyptian caftan, fanciful Philip Treacy headpieces and a priest’s robes – are any barometer, those MDNA costumes will get people talking. Madonna calls the Super Bowl show “one of my most favourite and most treasured performing experiences, for sure. That was amazing”.

But next time she may opt for flats instead of heels. “The dance that LMFAO does, the shuffle, was really hard to do in heels. I have to say, I would prefer to do the shuffle in sneakers. If you want to drop it like it’s hot, it’s good to wear flats, because then your booty gets really close to the floor, but then there are things you can do in heels that you can’t do in sneakers.”

Madonna’s fingerprint goes on anything that bears her name. “I don’t take the job of creating anything – whether it’s fragrance or beauty products or clothes – lightly, and I need a lot of time to do stuff. I don’t like it when other people create for me.”

That was definitely true when it came to her debut scent. “The time was right,” she says of partnering with Coty Prestige. “I’ve been working off and on on various fragrances over the years, and [have been] approached by a lot of companies and have tried to create fragrances. They were always abandoned projects.

“I’ve always loved perfume; it has always been a big part of my life. But every time I tried to create the scent I was looking for, it never reached the stage where I thought it was good enough or I was told that the ingredients would be impossible to recreate in a mass way. Then I’d say, ‘Let’s try and do a synthetic version,’ and it never smelled as good as I wanted it to. And if I’m not going to wear it, I’m not going to sell it.

“So, I finally was able to create, with my partners, a fragrance that I could stand behind. We tested a lot of things over the past few years, and [Lourdes ‘Lola’ Leon, her 15-year-old daughter] has told me what she likes. She is a very opinionated young lady, and she likes this perfume.’'

The singer had her late mother, also named Madonna, in mind when creating the scent too. Her mother, she recalls, wore Fracas. “I wanted to create a fragrance that would remind me of her.”

She shrugs off the brewing controversy about the sexy TV campaign for Truth or Dare, a black-and-white spot that features her writhing in lingerie. “I don’t understand. It was perfectly innocent,” she says with an arch look. “I just touch my cleavage once or something. I think it’s dreamy and sensual, and I think it perfectly conveys the feeling I’m trying to evoke with the perfume. It’s a perfume for a woman.”

With her Material Girl line, also for Macy’s, Madonna has dabbled in body sprays and nail polishes, and would like to extend her Truth or Dare fragrance franchise into additional categories. But first up are lingerie and footwear under the Truth or Dare name. “Once again, time-consuming. I want it to be good. [More beauty categories are] something I’d like to develop, but I need to get past all of my other responsibilities and commitments, like my tour. So, sometime in the future, yeah.”

She has a second fragrance in the works; it is due out “sometime next year. I think it would be good to do a men’s fragrance, as well,” she says. “My daughter thinks so. She wants to wear it. She likes to wear men’s cologne – don’t ask me why.”

If she does do one, she says, “I love musk and amber and woody kind of fragrances on men. I love the smell of whisky – we should make a men’s cologne that smells like whisky. I can’t drink it, it’s too strong, but it smells amazing – a really good old whisky.” n