Vogue: The Story Behind Madonna’s Most Celebrated Video

A brilliant future film director was picked to handle the Vogue video

Rising star David Fincher had spent the early part of the 80s working behind the scenes on some of the decade’s most successful Hollywood blockbusters, among them Return Of The Jedi. A shift to directing TV commercials in 1984 led to commissions for pop videos, including Jermaine Stewart’s We Don’t Have To Take Our Clothes Off, in 1986, and Sting’s Englishman In New York two years later.

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Madonna picked Fincher for two of Like A Prayer’s best promos: the extravagant Express Yourself (then billed as the world’s most expensive video to date) and the startling Oh Father. After Vogue, Fincher would work on one more Madonna classic – the haunting Bad Girl – before directing duties on the 1995 crime thriller Se7en saw his career hit the stratosphere. Later movie projects included the iconic Fight Club (1999) and Gone Girl (2014).

Madonna’s passion for classic Hollywood played its part in the Vogue video’s concept

The influences in Madonna’s Vogue video are plentiful. Of course, the song celebrates the flamboyant voguing dance craze that had emerged from the queer Black and Latino ballroom clubs in New York, but her longstanding fascination with classic Hollywood would also sit centre-stage in the song’s visual characterisation. No doubt her role in Disney’s Dick Tracy blockbuster played its part, too, but the brilliant roll call of classic movie legends referenced in the Vogue clip, such as Gene Kelly, Lauren Bacall and Bette Davis, elevates the song’s liberating theme with a iconic lyric, while Fincher’s classy black-and-white, Robert Mapplethorpe-like cinematography (also owing just a little to Isaac Julien’s Looking For Langston) is exceptional. A rushed schedule meant that a series of almost static set pieces inspired by some art deco portraiture and matched with some brilliant choreography makes Vogue the ultimate cultural mash-up.

Dancers for the blond ambition tour make their debut here

The dancers auditioned for the upcoming Blond Ambition shows were introduced to Madonna’s audience for the first time on Vogue. Following her recognised razor-sharp instinct for talent, many were picked from clubs and lacked much formal training, but they all possessed the quality Madonna often rates as highly as any other: attitude.

The seven men who featured in the Vogue video would experience a career lift unlike any other, and, as six of them were gay, their sexuality would become celebrated in the documentary film Truth Or Dare (aka In Bed With Madonna), which became a box-office hit the following year. Released almost 30 years later, 2017’s Strike A Pose film told the story of the Vogue shoot and the dancers’ time with the “Queen Of Pop”. “She was smart about tapping into the culture and the gay urban scene. She knew where to go get it,” said one performer, José Gutiérrez. Along with fellow dancer Luis Camocho, Gutiérrez choreographed the video for Vogue.

The Vogue video was everywhere in 1990

After a 16-hour filming session across 10 and 11 February at Burbank Studios, in California, Vogue was rush-released to MTV the following month. It became a sensation, dominating airplay and powering the single to the top of the Billboard charts by May, after just six weeks on the listings. Disney picked the track to promote Dick Tracy, which hit cinemas that June, and, globally, Vogue’s video made the single Madonna’s most successful to date – an extraordinary new high after six whirlwind years of chart domination, including an astounding run of global No.1 hits.

Critics raved about the Vogue video, and its influence lives on

After the more nuanced reflection of the Like A Prayer single, Vogue’s charismatic energy seemed like another supersonic change of direction for the “Queen Of Pop”, already celebrated for her ability to keep her career powering forward at pace.

After some of the controversies sparked by her previous videos, the see-through top seen briefly at the start of Vogue must have seemed like small fry. This was Madonna at her most mainstream, albeit while sampling an underground dance scene for wider consumption (although the upcoming Justify My Love video would see her attracting flak once more). In the meantime, Vogue received nine nominations at the 1990 MTV Music Video Awards, where Madonna would close the show with a Marie Antoinette-inspired performance of the song. It won three technical awards, including Best Direction, Editing and Cinematography (for Director Of Photography Pascal Lebègue).

In 2011, Billboard voted Vogue the third best video of the decade, and it continues to clock up millions of streams to this day. Although Madonna likes to reinterpret her work on her tours, the classic styling of that original 1990 masterpiece is never far away, as was seen in its staging on the Celebration Tour of 2023-2024.

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