Immaterial Girl?

A mystical creature. The embodiment of female angst.

This is how Madonna describes her look in the new video “Frozen,” from her recently released album “Ray of Light.”

In “Frozen,” her hair is decidedly raven, she’s clad in black from fingernail to foot, and her hands are decorated with trendy mehndi temporary tattoos.

But this look isn’t as vogue as we expect Madonna to be, observers say. It may even mark the end of her days as pop’s No. 1 fashion icon.

The newest Madonna incarnation has a name: “Veronica Electronica,” a spiritual alter ego whose style is suspiciously similar to the Goth look, a black, brooding, club-kid fashion staple that’s been around for well more than a decade.

“Don’t say Goth,” Madonna said on a recent MTV special. “The director won’t like that at all.”

But Leon Hall, co-host of E! Entertainment Television’s “Fashion Reviews,” knows a Goth when he sees one. Madonna may disguise it under the moniker “Veronica Electronica,” but Hall prefers to recognize the Morticia Addams-ish attire for what it is.

“Goth is tired, and why would Madonna pick up on a tired trend?” says Hall, who also is host of E!’s “Fashion Emergency.” “You expect her to be an originator, not a follower.”

It’s simply out of chameleonic character for Madonna to take anyone else’s lead. It’s her fashions that have been faithfully copied since she bounced onto the pop scene in 1983 with a crucifix and a dream.

The music on her new album may be hailed as progressive, but the look of “Frozen” is regressive.

It’s her first video since giving birth to baby Lourdes, and Madonna watchers looked for signs that her latest role as mother had impaired her trend-setting powers.

But despite Hall’s negative reaction to “Frozen,” he and other critics concede it will cause a temporary resurgence in mehndi tattoos and the Goth look.

“Madonna has influence, be it good or be it bad,” Hall says.

At 39, Madonna’s not the same person who simulated sex on the stage 14 years ago at MTV’s Video Music Awards when she debuted “Like a Virgin” in a thrift-store wedding dress.

You won’t see that innocently trashy aesthetic so obviously at work anymore, now that she’s heavily reliant on high-end haute couture designers such as Versace, Gaultier, Dolce & Gabbana and Galliano.

Duplicating her style has become increasingly difficult. Once it was as easy as plucking a Madonna-inspired rubber bracelet or a PG-13 bustier off the rack of your local Contempo Casuals. But when her looks began to change from video to video, a concrete image became harder to pin down, says David Wild, senior editor for Rolling Stone, who has chronicled Madonna’s influence through the years.

Today, Madonna’s look is more indefinable and reflects her many symbiotic relationships with fashion designers.

Although she’s gone from thrift store to Dior, as Hall says, Madonna can still peripherally influence a purchase and lend momentum to a fad, depending on what she’s seen wearing. The fur-collared Dolce & Gabbana coat she wore on magazine covers and talk shows in the early ‘90s spawned hundreds of knockoffs around the world. And not long after the release of her “Human Nature” video--an S&M; sendup--black vinyl adorned the racks of even the most mainstream retailers.

While she still has power in the fashion world, some of Madonna’s core audience wishes she’d never abandoned her sincerely slatternly fashion statements.

GiGi Guerra, associate editor of the fashion magazine Jane, targeted to women ages 18 to 34, was part of the fan base that Madonna inspired to lip-sync to “Like a Virgin” in the living room, wearing their mom’s old bras.

“She doesn’t appeal to me like she used to,” Guerra says. “She was my idol for so many years. She and [Duran Duran’s] Simon LeBon. That’s all I thought about. She almost annoys me now. She keeps chugging along, doing it over and over.”

Fans such as Guerra, who idolized Madonna in her first phases, are far past the stage of mimicking rock stars.

“It’s pretty embarrassing to have kids of your own and still try to be her. She’s not that kind of icon anymore,” Wild says. “The remarkable thing is, she’s still in the game. It’s a testament to her ingenuity.”

Madonna has held the world’s attention for 15 years and weathered many fashions in the time between “Material Girl” and mehndi makeup. She has shifted looks more times than Susan Lucci has lost at the Emmys.

Rolling Stone’s Wild would like nothing more than to see Madonna return to the vampy virgin look for a video or two. Guerra also sees Madonna returning to fun and flirtation.

But “Fashion Emergency’s” Hall, who regards the Goth look of “Frozen” as a low point, will only be satisfied “if she did something uniquely her that still had that edge, within the parameters of being a 40-year-old mother.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

From Video to Video, the Many Looks of Madonna

Madonna’s videos have always been a powerful fashion pulpit. Here’s a review of classic videos featuring Madonnas whose looks run the gamut from Marilyn to Morticia.

Borderline (1984): Bows, baggy pants and spray paint are the tools of the new girl on the block. Her style is solid, but the thin, pop candy music leaves many critics wondering whether it’s enough to sustain a career.

Like a Virgin (1984): Vintage Madonna in beads, lace and teased hair at her writhing, moaning, trashiest best shows that style may be enough. As an urchin tart rolling in a gondola at one moment and a deceptively innocent bride being carried over the threshold the next, Madonna cements her sexual split personality.

Material Girl (1985): First out-and-out outing as Marilyn Monroe in an ironic, cleverly choreographed showcase. In diamonds and a nostalgic pink satin gown, she struts her stuff through a sea of black-suited suitors. Icon established.

Open Your Heart (1986): Madonna heralds the lethal lingerie period as a peep-show dancer wearing a spiked bra with tassels in a seedy strip club. Cropped ultra-platinum hair and dark eyebrows further distinguish the look that also encompassed “Papa Don’t Preach,” “True Blue” and that whole “Who’s That Girl?” fiasco.

Like a Prayer (1989): A brunet Madonna with stigmata, getting cozy with a black saint statue in a church, makes Catholics cringe and Pepsi pull the video from an ad campaign. But before they can do that, she’s already re-popularized visible bra straps.

Express Yourself (1989): Monocled, in designer power suits, with exposed bras and in clingy dresses, Madonna alternately laps up milk and grabs herself authoritatively in this update of Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis.” The look spurred a resurgence in tailored women’s fashions coupled with peekaboo lingerie.

Vogue (1990): Ultra-retro Hollywood at its glammest. In suits and Hollywood-starlets-of-yore costumes, Madonna pays homage to Greta Garbo and Monroe, Dietrich and DiMaggio, among others. As she urges observers to “strike a pose,” she brings a dance trend from the black gay underground to light.

Erotica (1992): Relegated to late-night play on MTV (which was more exposure than the racy “Justify My Love” video ever got), Madonna dominates with a whip, tongue-kisses girls and goes S&M; manic in this “fantasy” that left many a fan more irritated than offended.

Take a Bow (1994): As a bullfighter’s babe circa 1930, Madonna stuns visually with fitted, classic suits by Galliano and exquisite hats. She also does some of her best lingerie-clad writhing since “Like a Virgin.”

Frozen (1998): Madonna’s latest incarnation is as a Goth-Morticia Addams with black nail polish and Mehndi henna hand tattoos. She morphs into multiple Madonnas and makes weird, flowy movements with her hands that are supposed to look spiritual but actually look like slow-mo Voguing.