Despite the numerous reports that, for her red carpet appearance at this year’s MTV VMAs, Sabrina Carpenter wore the original Bob Mackie dress famously showcased by Madonna at the 1991 Oscars (where her ensemble was complemented by a white stole and an almost white Michael Jackson), it was actually an identical sample gown from the Mackie archive. Which is just the first step in how to succeed in the art of “paying respect” to an iconic look without offending. Unlike Kim Kardashian, who remains the “gold standard” for how to decimate the integrity of a dress originally worn by someone far more legendary.
And we’re not just talking about Marilyn Monroe’s scandalous Jean Louis number (made more scandalous by seductively singing “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” to JFK while wearing it), but also the very Marilyn-inspired gown that Madonna paraded in ’91. Because, yes, Kardashian additionally sought to ruin not only said Mackie dress in AHS: Delicate (by going on about a dress that looks nothing like it to her character’s client, Anna Victoria Alcott [Emma Roberts]), but also the song Madonna performed at that Oscars ceremony, “Sooner or Later” (which won the Academy Award that night in the category of Best Original Song). This by repeatedly singing it with Anna as the two look at themselves in the mirror and fantasize about Anna’s eventual big Oscar win.
As for Marilyn being patently more “icon” than Kim, Madonna, too, is more legendary and influential than Carpenter ever will be. Even if the duo has occasionally been aesthetically compared to one another—with Madonna’s “curtain bangs” look at the LadyLand 2024 event for NYC Pride getting her linked to Carpenter more than the other way around. And yet, the VMAs is hardly the first time that Carpenter has paid tribute (sartorial or otherwise) to the Queen of Pop. For she also stepped out earlier this year (at Vogue World in Paris) in another dress that Madonna wore for the purposes of gracing Glamour’s cover in December of 1990. Specifically, a Michael Kors (that’s right, Madonna “High Fashion” Ciccone once deigned to wear Kors) beaded rhinestone slip dress.
Indeed, it seems that Carpenter has a certain fondness for M’s early 90s (but pre-Erotica) fashion era. Perhaps because M herself was heavily embodying the look of Marilyn Monroe at that time (again, without fucking up one of the icon’s dresses like the abovementioned Kardashian did). And yes, obviously Carpenter is tapping into both women for her “effortless pastiche” purposes (something that also extended to emulating Britney Spears while she performed a medley at the 2024 VMAs).
However, Carpenter was also deft in her tribute because for two key reasons: 1) she didn’t try to exactly replicate it with the same jewelry, pearl-studded handbag, fur stole and satin heels and 2) it was sanctioned by none other than the original wearer herself. Even if, like Blake Lively donning Britney’s Versace butterfly dress from 2002, the gown was reportedly acquired through Tab Vintage. According to Carpenter’s stylist, Jared Ellner, “Madonna still has the custom gown Bob Mackie made for her in her archive, but the other sample piece is the [dress] I believe we have.” And, for those wondering how the dress managed to “fit” Carpenter, whose height is notoriously short (“five feet, to be exact”), a closer look at where the gown falls shows it pooling around her ankles, bolstered by extremely high platform heels (in white, of course).
Though, to be fair, Madonna isn’t much taller, with her average height being cited at around five-foot-three or five-foot-four. Which is precisely why she once said, “I’ve always wanted to be taller. I feel like a shrimp, but that’s the way it goes. I’m five-foot four-and-a-half-inches—that’s actually average. Everything about me is average.” This sentiment, in turn, also prompting her to declare, “My drive in life is from this horrible fear of being mediocre.” To be sure, if Madonna wasn’t a much “bitterer” person than Carpenter, she might have called one of her own albums Short n’ Sweet long before the former Disney star decided to. But no, Madonna’s not really bitter, once quipping during her 1993 The Girlie Show tour, “Life’s too short to be bitter…I’m too short to be bitter!” And besides, how could she be when considering the ongoing, far-reaching influence she still so clearly has on each new generation of pop stars?
For, yes, despite Carpenter’s inherent Gen Z limitations in terms of having good pop culture taste, she still understands the meaning of Madonna. That much was made apparent when she performed a cover of “Like A Virgin” during several dates on her Emails I Can’t Send Tour. In a June 2024 interview with Rolling Stone, Carpenter would also mention Madonna as an essential lesson for any “Intro to Pop” class she might teach, commenting, “Those were some of the first pop songs I ever heard and they raised me when I was five and helped me find my own version of that. This would be a really long course. I should never teach a course.”
But, actually, maybe she should. Not only Intro to Pop for the daft Gen Z ilk, but also Intro to How to Properly Pay Tribute in Someone Else’s Iconic Dress. Kardashian really could have used that class before the Met Gala in 2022. Or even before she decided to dress like Madonna at the ’91 Oscars herself for one of her many Halloween costumes in 2017.
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