The time is March 2005. Madonna had not yet suffered from a horseback riding accident that will make her realize how little interested Guy Ritchie is in performing the role of husband by giving just a bit more of a shit. The duo is still in the throes of their joint interest in Kabbalah (an influence that would heavily pepper the plot of Ritchie’s not as appreciated as it should be Revolver). And being in these throes, the level of fervor for participating in the beloved costume party known as Purim was at an all-time high, with the two ironically (for everything Madonna does is tinged with irony) opting to show up dressed as The Pope and a nun. Madonna, whose homages to religious dress in the past were always laden with the salacious, perhaps elected for this more modest form of “reverence” for her born into religion as a result of being oppressed by the shackles of marriage to a stodgy Brit. Even so, at the time she told herself it was a good relationship because he “pushed” her.
Challenged or not, Madonna still clearly ran the show of that marriage, for it’s unlikely you would’ve found “hard” “bad boy” Guy Ritchie caught dead in pope regalia in the era of his Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels heyday. Even so, judging from the faintly horrified and disgusted looks on their faces in most of the images that materialized from the evening, neither party was getting what they wanted out of appearing in such sumptuous habiliments.
Three years later, when the divorce was finalized, it became evident that no act of god was going to save the marriage from what one could clearly see with the benefit of hindsight was a living nightmare behind closed doors. Because anytime a strong and powerful woman attempts to ally herself romantically with a faux rough-hewn man still clinging to twentieth century ideas of machismo, the result is always going to end in catastrophe. But Madonna, hopeless romantic that she is, gave monogamy the old college try once again, knowing full well that if it was going to go awry with another faux bad boy (Sean Penn being the first husband to fulfill that role), it might as well be a British one. Something about them harkening back to the appeal of Guy Fawkes for his rebel heart ways.
In any event, it’s evident that Madonna wanted something of a redo of her religious performance of ’05 as a couple, taking the opportunity to get things truly right with a man that would appreciate (and always has) her sartorial A-game. That (French)man being, of course, Jean-Paul Gaultier. As Madonna’s longtime fashion collaborator, his esteem for her avant-garde predilections has resulted in some of the most iconic fashion statements of all-time, the most classic example being, of course, the cone bra. Ergo, if anyone was to accompany her in all her Goth Queen of Catholicism glory at the Met Ball last night, it was to be Gaultier, bedecked demurely in the stylings of a priest–not a pope, because he knew better than to attempt to outshine the lady of the hour, who also went on to sing, fittingly, “Like A Prayer” and Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” (in addition to a new song from her forthcoming album called “Beautiful Game”). But before her costume change into something more angelic for that, it was her debut onto the red carpet with Gaultier that had Madonna experiencing the sweet satisfaction of vindicating her wasted game of dress up with a straight man who didn’t give a fig. Protestants never do.
