On the Blond Ambition World Tour in 1990, Madonna wore a series of Jean Paul Gaultier-designed cone bras — structured, exaggerated undergarments worn as outerwear — that became some of the most recognized garments in late twentieth-century popular culture. Gaultier's design, staged in arenas from Los Angeles to Tokyo, deliberately inverted the history of the bra: instead of a private undergarment concealing the body, it became a theatrical, armour-like statement of female power worn publicly. The tour grossed over $63 million and its imagery saturated global media.

Madonna's deployment of the corset-bra as theatrical power dressing generated substantial critical and poetic engagement, with feminist critics divided between reading it as reclamation of female bodily power and as complicity with male objectification. The garment featured in critical writing by Camille Paglia and bell hooks, both of whom reached very different poetic and political conclusions. The Blond Ambition Tour's visual language permeated queer poetry and performance art of the 1990s.