This afternoon Owen and I went East... to the wilds of Brick Lane.

Now why did I think because it was a Sunday it would be a bit quiet? Wrong! After wending our way through the milling Spittlefield market punters who couldn't get enough of shirts, bags, dresses, framed prints, jewelry and home-made cakes we ran straight into the top end of Brick Lane - oh yes more bags, dresses, jewelry etc.

Now we ventured there not to chance my stomach with a lobster arse biriyani and a pint of mild but to see the SIMPLY MADONNA exhibition at the Truman Old Brewery, a collection of M's stage and screen outfits and other memorabilia. As you can imagine I had been quietly excited about this but sadly I found it a bit underwhelming.

The exhibition is in a massive high-ceilinged room with whitewashed walls, indirect lighting and zero atmosphere. On either side of the room are two platforms on which are grouped mannequins - the right side are stage outfits and the left are some of her many costumes from EVITA. In various corners there are individual figures wearing other film, stage and video costumes. The space is complemented by display cases of memorabilia from a hardcore Madonna fan as well as displays of promotional posters and a large wall-display of magazine covers.So far so good, but sadly there was no imagination behind the set-up. There was definitely stuff there worth seeing but it was spread so thinly around the large badly-lit space that I felt I had covered it all in about 20 minutes. The display shelves were so crammed with memorabilia that nothing really stood out although there were bound to be treasures to be found, areas of the room were just wasted space - the AMERICAN PIE outfit is stranded off in a corner with a couple of posters beside it which are lost in the gloom. The fan's collection of tour t-shirts look good all strung together on poles on the other side of the room but are positioned so high above you that you pass under them without them really registering.

Yes it was nice to see the outfits I have seen countless times on film and video but.... Jean-Paul Gaultier summed up the obvious problem with the exhibition when he said some time ago that an outfit is in itself dead until someone wears it and he loved designing for Madonna "as she is very much alive" thus making his designs look fantastic. Walking around the exhibition, looking at the iconic MATERIAL GIRL pink "Marilyn" dress or the cream silk tango dress from EVITA, they look like the inert skins shed by a lithesome animal that has moved on.
The biggest flaw however is the dopey idea to display the outfits on a job lot of showroom mannequins which are tall and willowy. Now Madonna is 5'4" with a 34c bust so in particular the stage costumes look just plain odd and particularly ill-fitting around the bustline. Pride of place is given to the OPEN YOUR HEART black corset costume with the conical breasts with gold-tassels. On Madonna it's iconic - on an akwardly-posed and seated mannequin you don't give it a second glance.

However - and there's always something to like - the major pieces in the collection have been augmented with Barbie-style recreations by Magia2000 and they are great fun... especially the overview of her tours. These show an originality and fun singularly missing from what is surrounding them. Again, most of these are badly lit when positioned next to the actual costume that has been recreated. Ultimately SIMPLY MADONNA is a bit of a let-down, all the more annoying because the exhibition brochure is everything the actual event isn't - linear, focused and well-designed. This approach points to the best way to stage a Madonna exhibition - not the random, lumping-together style on display here.