After a lifetime of relative seclusion, Lourdes Maria Ciccone Leon, the 24-year-old eldest daughter of Madonna and “fitness guru” Carlos Leon, as Leon calls her dad, is suddenly larger than life. Specifically, she is 20 feet tall on billboards across the country as the new face of Marc Jacobs. She’s also starring in a viral Stella McCartney campaign, and is finally on Instagram. Over FaceTime during a visit home to Los Angeles, complete with unintentional cameos from Mom and a few of her six siblings (“I’m doing an interview, can’t chat”), the trained dancer and self-proclaimed “Latin from Manhattan” is refreshingly candid and intentionally provocative, with her contrarian sense of humor on full display.
SHE GOES BY Lola to her friends.
AS A “LANKY kid,” she started ballet classes at three years old. “My mom really went hard for that once she saw there was potential.”
SHE’S UP FOR a challenge and would like to play Mother Teresa in a movie.
HER DREAM DINNER includes “some words” with Princes Philip and Charles (whom she deems “a bit evil”)—but only after seeking advice from choice agents of chaos: Rasputin (“He literally just manipulated the royals”), Castro (“Anyone who’s ruled a country would be interesting to talk to about this”), and Real Housewives of Atlanta star NeNe Leakes (“I don’t think it’s horrible for women to have this show. Even when they’re screaming, I love it and it’s soothing to my brain”).
HER ADVICE FOR “grown-ass men who ask me if I’m on ‘The ’Gram’ ” is: “You need to gather yourself and think about the way in which you want to get to know people because that’s just not how you do it.”
SHE ATTENDED Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in Manhattan alongside Timothée Chalamet—“I respect him a lot, we were a little item. My first boyfriend,” she says, “or anything”—and Ansel Elgort, “a terrible DJ.”
AFTER SEEING HER first MAGA hat at the University of Michigan, Leon transferred to the competitive dance conservatory at SUNY Purchase, where “10-hour studio days” were the norm. “You think that your body is not capable of something until you just have to do it.”
SHE’S OBSERVED A lifetime of strange gifts sent to her mother. “She’s expecting something nice that she’ll actually use and she gets a leather horse condom and a bong shaped like a cock and balls,” courtesy of Steven Klein. “She doesn’t even smoke weed.”
AFTER AN “EMOTIONAL” trip to Cuba in 2016—“I look like my grandmother, and my family members were all freaking out, grabbing my face”—she hopes to spend extended time in her father’s family’s homeland. “That diaspora engine yanks you back.”
FOUR YEARS AFTER making her modeling debut with Stella McCartney, she choreographed and codirected the campaign for McCartney’s Adidas collaboration last summer—a welcome project, she says, because “it’s been really hard as a dancer in the time of COVID.”
HER GOALS INCLUDE getting a driver’s license and “motivating a person or two” to realize their dreams. “I would just like to be of use.”
SHE’S CURRENTLY READING White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo, All About Love by bell hooks, and Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Clothing by Ferragamo; shoes by Jimmy Choo; rings by Bulgari (index) and Bulgari High Jewelry. Throughout: hair products by Olaplex; makeup by Selena Ruiz; nail enamel by Presto.
Photographs by Adrienne Raquel. Styled by Ron Hartleben.HER HERO IS Jersey Shore star Jwoww, because “she was never getting too sloppy and she always looked really hot.”
SHE MET Marc Jacobs when she was 12 on the set of her mom’s Louis Vuitton campaign, and was “super fascinated with his tattoos.”
SHE FINDS SOLACE in spirituality: “Prayer is something that is really helpful to me. I love religion and religious people.”
SHE SEES A shift in the next generation: “After the last presidency, I don’t think I have one friend that’s not depressed or anxious,” she says, though “we feel together now, and there is a sense of solidarity and responsibility for any person that doesn’t feel safe to walk down the street.”
HAIR, ANDY LECOMPTE; MAKEUP, SELENA RUIZ; MANICURE, THUY NGUYEN. PRODUCED ON LOCATION BY PREISS CREATIVE. FOR DETAILS, GO TO VF.COM/CREDITS.
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