Madonna and pink is one of my favorite combinations, as amply illustrated in this set of photos. It dovetails in lovely fashion with our waning coquette summer theme, where pink and moodiness and an underlying element of melancholy come into beautiful and sometimes-heartbreaking collision. Madonna is actually no stranger to the coquette aesthetic – adopting it regularly over the course of her career, but never quite going full-on thanks to her steely, indestructible element of survival. Still, she has had her moments, starting with the glamorous escapade fashion of ‘Vogue’, particularly in her 1990 Video Music Awards performance of the song, which found her dolled-up in Marie Antoinette garb as if to the coquette manor born.
Her ballads have a dreamy, coquette-like atmosphere to them as well, particularly ‘This Used to be My Playground‘ and ‘Rain‘ and ‘Crazy For You‘, while ‘Live To Tell‘ and ‘Promise to Try‘ offer something with the melancholic undertones a proper coquette scene entails.
For sheer pink coquette majesty, look no further than ‘Dear Jessie‘ with its wistful sighs of pink elephants and lemonade, or the theatrical dramatics of ‘Take A Bow‘ and ‘Frozen‘. On a sweeter note, listen to ‘Little Star‘ and then dive back into moodiness with ‘I Want You‘. If we’re stretching, I’d include my favorite Madonna song of all time, ‘Drowned World/Substitute for Love‘, to close out this coquette collection.
