9<A8 J<ABF - Sara Lieberman

the new
york post
sunday,
July 25,
2010
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@HEE4L
On cigars, golf
and death ➍➊
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Colin Douglas Gray
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I n s p i r e d b s f i rs t fa s h i o n l i n e
➌➑
launche
The last days of the
Sex Pistol and his
drugged-out doll
➌➏
NYPost Photo Composite: Everett Collection;MAVRIXONLINE.COM
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Tips from hot pros
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new york post
Sunday, July 25, 2010
6BI8EFGBEL
The
LOURDES
Pop and style icon taps 13-year-old daughter Lourdes
to tell her what’s in ‘Vogue’ for new fashion line
@TWbaaT
look
Whatever Lola wants to wear, Lola gets to design. The
13-year-old fashionable mini-Madge drew from her own
closet when envisioning the Material Girl line for Macy’s.
BY CARRIE SEIM
@
AMA does preach. In a
fashion-meets-rockgod moment, Madonna will launch her Material Girl teen clothing
line with Macy’s on
Aug. 3, but instead of
crowning herself the next Queen of
Fashion, Madonna is offering her
13-year-old daughter, Lourdes “Lola”
Leon, for sartorial christening.
“She’s 100 percent the creative
force of Material Girl,” Lourdes’ father, Carlos Leon, tells The Post. “She
knew exactly what she wanted. She’s
a trendsetter that draws from all different things to put together a look.
She’s into different cultures and
brings that into her style.”
Cultures, of course, to which she’s
exposed thanks to her “rock star”
mom and her “city boy” Cuban father, says Leon.
“She gets to travel around the
world and experience different cultures,” he says. “I think she takes a little bit from each culture, myself and,
of course, her mom, and makes it her
own. She’s very creative in that way
— putting colors together and stuff I
would never even think about. She
has that natural ability.”
Proud Papa isn’t the only one who’s
taken notice. Known for her bushy
brows, sideswept bangs, torn tights
and inventive-but-unpracticed look,
Lourdes is a burgeoning style icon
whom even her fellow contemporaries appreciate.
“Our readers are obsessed with
Lourdes’ style,” says Teen Vogue
fashion news director Jane Keltner de
Valle. “She’s gorgeous, she’s cool,
she’s got her finger on her pulse, she
has the same kind of rebellious spirit
as her mother, but she has her own
voice as well.”
And she may just be stealing her
mother’s spotlight. While Madonna,
51, is its maternal namesake, forever
dressing America’s youth up in her
love, and Taylor Momsen, the rebellious “Gossip Girl” star, is the delinquent-debutante spokesteen, it’s Lola
who’s been anointed creative director and muse.
“She has a stronger point of view
than Madonna does, if you can believe it,” says Rob Smith, Macy’s executive vice president for marketing,
who recalls Lola shopping for
months with designers and pulling
clothes from her own closet to illustrate the fashion aesthetic she envisioned for the MG line, which includes a range of metallic tube tops,
sequined leggings and enough crossadorned and studded accessories to
remake the “Like a Virgin” video.
The immaculate conception of
their line officially began last July,
when Guy Oseary, Madonna’s manager and business partner, approached Iconix Brand Group, home
to teen perennials Bongo, Op, Mudd,
Rampage, Joe Boxer and Candie’s.
After six months of brainstorming,
Iconix CEP Neil Cole says, “We knew
we had a winner with Material Girl
when we brought Lola into the process.” Then, early this year, the consortium invited Macy’s to join their fashion marriage.
Alice + Olivia designer Stacey Bendet thinks Madonna is wily to focus
on juniors rather than a line for women her own age, something Bendet
says invariably turns out “a little
cheesy, a little tacky.”
“I’m usually kind of like, ‘Oh, God,
there’s another celebrity trying to do another clothing
line,” says Bendet. “But what
Madonna’s doing for a younger market is actually really
brilliant and new.”
Smith says working with
Madonna, who often arrived
in jeans with a “mom” demeanor, was easy and comfortable.
“But I have to be honest,
in the beginning, I was a little nervous,” he confesses.
“I remember walking in
and seeing Madonna and
thinking, be cool man,
you’ve waited like 25
years for this to happen!”
One of his favorite moments of the collaboration was watching her
and Mini-Madge interact
as mother and daughter.
“It’s kind of like, ‘That
skirt’s a little too
short,’” he recalls. “Or,
we’re going through
some of the things Lola
brought in from her
closet and Madonna
goes, ‘Wait a second,
that’s mine!’”
Lola is, in many
ways, like any other
teenage girl. She
browses Topshop,
loves to dance and
plays piano. But unlike everyday
teens, she’s on a first-name basis with
designer Stella McCartney, wore a
fringed Dolce & Gabbana skirt
(paired with Doc Martens) to a film
premiere last December, swipes
Christian Dior shoes from her mom
and is rumored to be enrolling at the
SARA JAYE WEISS/STARTRAKSPHOTO.COM
V[\_W
In April, Lourdes joined
Madonna at a benefit
sponsored by Alice +
Olivia, where she wore
a rockin’ leather jacket
that no doubt inspired
the “Moto Crop
Pleather” one (right,
$68) for the Material
Girl line.
new york post
Sunday, July 25, 2010
HUMBERTO CARRENO/STARTRAKSPHOTO.COM; LEFT: PHILIP VAUGHAN - ACEPIXS.COM
Lourdes struts the city
streets in plaid with
“proud father” (and
equally stylish) Carlos
Leon, who says fashion is
a perfect fit for Lola. “She
knows exactly what to
wear — what works and
what doesn’t. It’s a gift,”
he tells The Post.
Plaid blazers (left, $36) and tulle skirts
(above, $22) — usually paired with tights
topped by leg warmers — are two trends
Lourdes chose to re-create for the line.
ICONIX(3)
LaGuardia High School of Music &
Art and Performing Arts (a k a the
“Fame” high school) this fall.
Madonna’s publicist Liz Rosenberg
won’t comment on Lourdes’ schooling and insists she’ll stay mum in
press interviews for the time being.
But Lola’s voice comes out loud
and clear in every one of her blog
posts and tweets for MaterialGirlCollection.com. In her first entry, we
learn about her favorite colors (“My
favvvv color is black (just because it
goes with everything) and my least
favorite color is brown (because it
resembles the color of something
QUITE gross)”), and her hateration
of a certain shoe style (“OK, but no
joke, gladiator sandals are OUT. They
came out in summer 2008 and I was
like, ‘OK those are really cute. Then
2009 comes around and people are
still wearing them, so I’m like, ‘OK
whatever it’s just a phase.’ BUT
NOOOOO. Because people are
STILL wearing them...It’s been three
years people COME ON!!!!!!!!! I’m just
like what????.”)
In a later post, she divulges her love
for vintage (“I’m going to East London in the next days, to this area
called Bricklane, to get some more
vintage, cuz you can never have too
much vintagy-thrifty looking stuff...
HOLLA”) and shares a shopping
“score” (“So I FINA-FREAKING-LY
found the sandals that are NOT gladiators. They are black leather and they
lace up from the toe until the ankle.
Giddy God.”)
These teenspeak confessions are
part of the line’s clever marketing
campaign, created to offer a glimpse
into the life of a superstar’s scion,
with the hope of reaching the line’s
intended, and sometimes dubious,
demographic, such as 17-year-old Jersey City blogger Arabelle Sicardi.
The Fashion Pirates writer (whose
blog scores 10,000 daily hits) says, “I
love Madonna, but I wasn’t blown
away with it. It’s typical girly things
that you can find at Forever 21.”
Which, she adds, is where she and
her friends most frequently clotheshunt. “Honestly, I don’t know a lot of
teens that talk about shopping at Macy’s and stuff,” she explains.
Of course, Macy’s is urgent to
change that. In an effort to catch “fast
fashion” retailers like Forever 21,
H&M and Zara, the store is attempting something it’s never tried in its
152 years: stocking fresh Material Girl
pieces on a daily basis at prices that
undercut most of their other juniors
lines. Most of the MG collection —
including clothes, shoes, bags and
jewelry — retails between $12 and
$40, mirroring Forever’s price points.
“Teens shop with such frequency,
we want them to come in and find
something different every time,” says
Smith.
The Macy’s Herald Square location has sacrificed 4,000 square feet
of real estate for the line, and will host
appearances by Momsen (for the big
launch on Aug. 3) and Madonna and
Lola on Sept. 22.
Despite these grand orchestrations, the MG line is sure to be compared to the spate of teen-celeb collections recently launched or
planned: Miley Cyrus and Taylor
Swift for Wal-Mart, Selena Gomez
for Kmart, Britney Spears for Kohl’s.
Gomez, the 18-year-old star of
tween hit “Wizards of Waverly
Place,” praises Lola’s style while defending the more down-to-earth aesthetic of her Dream Out Loud collection for Kmart, launching in August.
“My line may not be edgy, but that’s
because I’m not edgy,” she says.
“From my understanding, her line is
more high-fashion.”
That, and heavily influenced by
ensembles from Madge’s heydays,
with hard-soft mashups of bustiers
and ballet flats, floppy bow headbands and studded bangles, leather,
lace, ruffles and rivets. The effect is
Desperately Seeking Madonna’s
CH?F8&,
Greatest Hits.
But can today’s pop princesses
even name the Material Girl’s albums?
Teen blogger Sicardi breaks the
news of Madge’s untimely demise
gently. “Madonna is still amazing and
everyone should respect her,” she
says, “but it’s the time of Lady Gaga.”
(In all of the interviews for this article, only a teen dared utter such popculture sacrilege.)
“This generation knows everything
there is to know about Lourdes and
probably a lot less about Madonna,”
says Louise Roe, a fashion expert on
youth-aimed reality shows such as
MTV’s “The City.” “The moms who
are shopping for their kids will probably connect more to the Madonna
thing.”
A point not likely lost on famously
savvy businesswoman Madonna. Her
SHE’S A
TRENDSETTER.
SHE HAS THAT
NATURAL
ABILITY.”
— LOURDES’ FATHER,
CARLOS LEON
association with the line could prove
ironically reassuring to moms who
remember their own Madonnainspired tutu-and-leather outfits.
Designer Betsey Johnson, 67,
responsible for designing some of
those very looks, heads her own fashion family, collaborating with daughter Lulu Johnson-Margulies for the
last 21 years.
“You’re too close, you care too
much, you worry too much and you
expect too much,” she says of
mother-daughter collaborations.
Still, Johnson says, she wouldn’t
trade their working relationship.
Neither would Lulu, who began
working in her mom’s first store on
Thompson Street at age 14. But she
does suggest that Lourdes stay young
as long as possible, travel, attend college and not compare her own journey to that of her famous mother’s.
“I’m sure Madonna, like my mother always did, just wants Lourdes to
be happy and explore different
things,” she says.
That, or take over the world, one
sequined belly top at a time.