Lourdes Leon is such a striking beauty. She has such a great look, and it feels like she probably had tons of options, for years, to model or Instagram-influence or do whatever she wanted. I admire the way she really didn’t want that life, at least not right away, when she was a teenager. She went to school, she studied, she did cool things like work on the costumes for her mom’s tour. Now at the age of 24, she’s the face of Marc Jacobs’s 2021 collection. To promote the ad campaign, Lola (that’s what she prefers to be called) chatted with Vanity Fair.
Ballet: 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.”
Her dream dinner: It 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”).
Dudes sliding into her DMs: 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.”
Her first boyfriend: 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.”
Why she left Michigan: 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.”
Being half-Cuban: 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.”
Her goals: Getting a driver’s license and “motivating a person or two” to realize their dreams. “I would just like to be of use.”
Her hero: Jersey Shore star Jwoww, because “she was never getting too sloppy and she always looked really hot.”
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.”
She’s really funny and really cool, like an impossibly chic and wry woman who has known that she’s a badass from a young age and everything around her has reinforced that. She intimidates me! She would find me dreadfully uncool. I can’t help but think that she must drive her mom crazy too – Lola is so young, so fresh, so effortless, so good at everything. It must drive Madonna up the wall. I loved the aside about Ansel Elgort – he seems to have been the preppy villain of their high school, and it’s my dream that she and Timothee still hang out. And she thinks Prince Charles is a bit evil! Girl’s got great instincts.
IGs courtesy of Vanity Fair, Lourdes.
I love religion and religious people? What a moron. It’s like one answer is very intelligent- likely the questions she was given prior to the interview, and the next is a copy and pasted answer from any 13 year olds Facebook. Literally laughing.
+1,000
I know. Major eye-roll.
Cue “Like a Prayer”. She’s her mother’s daughter.
Being from the Dominican Republic, and now living in Canada where the atrocities that were done (and are still happening) to Indigenous/First Nations people due to Catholicism and christiany seem to finally be taken seriously… hearing someone say they love “religion and religious people” just makes me feel like they’re saying they love cultural genocide.
And I understand that’s not what she’s saying, I just hope someday she realizes that religion to a lot of people mean trauma.
And it’s not like the horrors they’ve done are hidden or anything. You have to be willfully blind to not see it by now.
Thank you for mentioning this Mtec. I’m Canadian and we have all been horrified as more and more unmarked graves are being discovered. Her saying she loves religion and religious people only goes to show how out of touch she is with the sad reality that religion stomped out most of the indigenous cultures of North and South America, and Polynesia.
That’s not how she meant it. Many institutions have changed in meaning. Religion is one of them. Some people like the comfort of tradition and see devotion to beliefs as beautiful. There are many religions across the globe.
I think if she had said she likes/loves being religious (for reasons 1, 2, 3 etc) that would have made more sense to me. We all have our own private spiritual paths that make personal sense to us and bring us comfort and security in times of both need and normalcy. But stating she loves religious people sounds a bit fake to me. I have a feeling she’s never interacted with Candace Cameron Bure.
This, coupled with leaving Michigan because she saw a MAGA hat is kind of an eyeroll. She sounds pretty immature.
There may be no place in the US free of those hideous MAGA people. She didn’t want a traditional college experience, why not just say that? No need to try to paint Michigan as some conservative stronghold.
She is gorgeous and very funny. Good for her!
It must drive Madonna crazy that she possibly cant control her anymore and embarrassing that her own son ran off to live with dad and his step mom. Madonna just seems impossible, her adopted kids wont have the the same chance to run off to another parent should she drive them up the wall.
Rocco is better and more talented
Meh. I mean, she is attractive for sure, but I’m not interested in what she has to say and she doesn’t sound that funny or cool or any of the other gushing things listed above.
for real, im wondering if this was a paid piece! its so admirable she didnt use her nepotism…for a little while…then she did….hahahaha.
I agree, I don’t understand why anyone is interviewing her. I don’t find her to be very attractive either. She went through a period where I thought she’d turn out gorgeous. I was mistaken.
She also seems smug. Which is ugly.
I’m totally going to get burn’t for saying this. But I thought she was a drag queen just from the picture. And like a lot of you this had to be a paid piece. She sounds like a fool.
I share your thoughts, Ines.
Cosign with Ines’ comment
She is gorgeous! She seems to have a good head on her should and that probably was tough growing up with a mom as exacting as Madonna.
LoL the dig at Ansel. I believe he probably is a terrible dj
She sounds spoiled, entitled and is under the belief that she’s super smart because she’s super wealthy. Another one who’ll brag about the “home run” they hit while they were born on home base.
+1 all this.
She talks in circles like her mother.
I just want to know does she have a fake British accent like her mother lol?
I remember when Lourdes was a baby…so was so cute and still is. I honestly thought she graduated from U of M though? Had no idea she transferred out.
I’m guessing fake Cuban accent
Wow, that’s such an intense reaction for an article. You need to chill Amy.
I doubt one whole MAGA hat drove her from U. of Michigan, it’s a liberal school. She should just say she wanted to do something else.
So silly. Like there aren’t MAGA people at every school? She probably just missed NYC.
Yeah, that statement rubbed me the wrong way. There are Trumpers in liberal parts of the country too. She’s comfortable in her bubble of privilege and I can’t blame her. Just own up to it.
Yeah, she lost me at the diss of UM. If *Ann Arbor* isn’t liberal enough for you, you’re going to have a problem just about anywhere.
Yeah, at best that bit is her saying “I decided the leave the second I realized that I had to be around people who were different than me.” Following that up with “we feel together now” after the Trump presidency… well yeah. You only talk to people who think and feel what you do. I’m not saying everyone needs to go out and befriend Trumpers, but I am saying that not everyone has the ability to build a world for themself where they don’t have to learn how to deal with them.
Ann Arbor is the most liberal place in the whole state, maybe even the whole region. There is no way she left UofM because it was too Trump-y.
Umm… here’s some inside dish. I was at UM at the same time she was, and knew kids in her program. Drumroll…. girlie didn’t show up to class, and when she did, she didn’t seem to want to put in the work. Just thought I’d leave that here….
She is quite striking and sounds fun and observant. She kinda looks like a young Rossy de Palma, Almodovar’s muse. Yes she’s privileged and soooo over it, but seems way more interesting than a lot of famous offspring. She kind of reminds me of a young Sofia Coppola, at that drifting stage of rich young life. Now what do these people do besides influencer type “ careers”?
I also think Lola is gorge and super cool. Her admiration is Jwoww is hilarious and a perfect indicator of her generation.
I don’t buy that there are more Trump fans at University of Michigan than there are in Westchester, but whatever. She could have just said she wanted to move to New York or change programs.
She doesn’t seem terrible or anything, but I don’t know if she’s ever going to become a big deal.
Lola was vicious to her new IG followers and made some incredibly crass, vulgar and unwarranted comments to them. I was pretty shocked at how awful they were — the apple didn’t fall far from the tree with this kid. Hard pass.
sorry im all over this thread but lola is a giant fartsniffer, just like her mom.
“Giant fartsniffer”…LOL!!!
best comment of the day!
Oops I said the same thing you did I didn’t read the comments but I agree.
She’s always been pretty but I never found her drop dead gorgeous or a “striking beauty” but to each their own. I can’t even tell it’s her in the Vanity Fair photos with the wigs/dyed hair and all the makeup, she looks unrecognizable. What I learned from these pictures is she has suuuuuuper long legs and would probably have a great dance career should she go down that path.
I didn’t realize she transferred to SUNY Purchase, that’s funny to me because I grew up not far from the school. It is a really great arts school and their dance program is amazing with great studio facilities. Not to mention the Performing Arts Center at Purchase has a robust event program open to the public during non-COVID times. However when I was young, my dad always used to threaten to send me there because it was a cheaper state school and whenever I came home with a bad grade. Eventually I told him it wasn’t the threat he thought it was given it is a school specialized in the arts. The campus is ugly but it has produced some great musicians, actors, and dancers.
My boyspawn contemplated Purchase, but ended up elsewhere. I would have been thrilled with Purchase.
I’ve always found Lordes really attractive, but, truthfully, as a model she doesn’t translate. She looks like a B model who got these big gigs because of being Madonna’s daughter. She doesn’t have much drive at all, so is now using nepotism to get some modeling gigs. She wanted to do theater, dance, sing, act, which Madonna says she can do all of it, but she seems to not have the drive and fear of failure. You have to fail to get somewhere. Madonna was scrappy. Nothing was given to her.
I’ve found her interviews disappointing and realized she was more interesting not talking.
She’s just a nice, striking girl, who is the daughter of a mega star. David seems to me the one with all of the charisma who wants to follow mom in show business in some form.
Has she done any acting? As the daughter of a mega star you’d think roles would be thrown at her. I haven’t seen her in any movie or tv show.
Madonna has pushed her for fame quite a bit from her early teens – she had some fashion brand going when she was a young teen, and there was a time when Madonna was appearing on UK chat shows trying to promote them as some kind of hilarious reality double-act (that obviously didn’t take off). But yeah she does seem to be drifting.
She does have a “look” but I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t have got the modelling gig without the name.
Her look reminds me of a hostess you’d see in a restaurant. She looks like most 24 year olds, I think — they’re pretty because of youth and following trends, but nothing looks distinctive about her. Most celebrity kids are blander than their parents but even for the kid of a celebrity, she seems more average among the Kaia Gerbers — like David Beckham’s sons.
While I don’t know a lot of 24 year olds, she sounds like most of the ones I’ve been around, just with a lot more money. They are very absolute, and also abstract, in their thinking, tend to come across as a bit dismissive and condescending with very limited real world experience (still in grad school), and sometimes want to tell them not everything has to be a deep thought or discussion.
I appreciate she is close to her dad and his family too, though if she’s going to move anytime she might end up living someone with a MAGA hat she’s going to run out of places to go. As someone else wrote, UMichigan is pretty liberal; she more likely transferred to be closer to NY since SUNY Purchase is in Westchester, just outside the city.
I’m in grad school now as an old with 24-year-olds and she sounds exactly like them. It’s exhausting. They are very absolute and know everything, yet can’t deal with ambiguity to save their lives.
oh yea, this ^^
Thank You!!! My niece is around this age and sounds exactly like this.
I don’t quite understand her comments about her emotional 2016 visit to Cuba. It almost sounds like she’d never met her dad’s family before? (“My family members were all freaking out, grabbing my face…”) I know this is in reference to the fact that she looks like her grandmother, but how long had it been since those family members last saw her, to all of a sudden realize how much she looked like one of them?
There are restrictions on travel from the US to Cuba, and they used to be more severe. It’s not out of the question that she hadn’t met all of those relatives, or that she met them as a child but hadn’t seen them for years before she visited.
@Lunchcoma I don’t think a lot of people know that you can’t just jet off to Cuba – god knows Havana would go right back to being the #1 vaca destination for Americans, Day 1. The ecological biodiversity of Cuba is unmatched because of the US policies. There is poverty, yes, but man, that place is amazingly beautiful.
This woman sounds like any other 24 yr old New Yorker in her position, everything is super-deep. Actually, she comes across as a lot nicer and more open then most and goes out of her way give a shout out to 🇨🇺
@ElleE: I only know one person who’s been to Cuba (on a student exchange), but he spoke extremely highly of it as well, both in terms of natural beauty and in terms of it being an extremely interesting place to visit. I’m sure tourism would spike if Americans could suddenly visit without any restrictions.
That’s a lot of blanks to fill for such a remark, though.
It doesn’t imply long-time-no-see– in fact there has been a birth in the family this year and we see the baby every few weeks (like to a family BBQ), and every time its “my god he looks just like-_______” because the more he grows, the more he begins to morph into 2 or 3 different relatives. “His ears are from_____ and his nose is definitely___” and so on.
But each time we see him its different- as people age they look more or less like different relatives.
I do not understand the gushing tone of this article. She seems like every other nepotism model/influencer. Pretty, but probably not model material on her own merits. Privileged, not terribly interesting. But good on her for finishing her education & staying out of trouble!
Twenty four year olds aren’t very interesting. I do find her interesting because she is Madonna’s kid and we all know how snobby and particular Madonna can be. I will say this though, so far none of Madonna’s kids have proved to be super thirsty or get into a lot of trouble, so something must have gone right.
If you check out her IG she is definitely about that influencer life. She is also foul mouth, immature, rude and vile. She left U-M because she never went to class so let’s not act like she went to college and graduated. I don’t think she finished a full year. Typical nepotism of another celebrity kid. Nothing to see here. I hoped for more but look at who her mother is
She is so pretty in photos I’ve seen of her when she’s out, walking around. Whoever did this photo shoot made her look like a clown with all that makeup.
Diaspora engine…Rasputin and Castro…religion and religious people…
She doesn’t sound insufferable *at all.* At the very least, they could wait until she actually *does* something before interviewing her. She certainly doesn’t come across as unbearably cool or wry or any other gushing thing. She does seem very much like her mother’s daughter, though.
I don’t find her that interesting or striking? I actually skipped over this post initially because I thought that was a photo of Kim Kardashian. She’s not unattractive but she looks like a lot of the influencers on Instagram.
For some reason, I expected her to sound more sophisticated because of the opportunities Madonna has given her. She sounded kind of ….average.
I guess Madonna sounds the same way, but in Madonna’s case, I figure it’s intentional and we just go with it because it’s part of her persona to be slightly annoying amidst the star power she’s earned.
Ugh she’s so..ew…3 people she admires are from trashy reality TV? Okaaaay…also she is quite rude. You should see how she talks to people on Instagram. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
“Lola is so young, so fresh, so effortless, so good at everything” . . . yep. It all checks – this is a paid article. She has not done anything that her mother’s celebrity did not provide for her – “she did cool things like work on the costumes for her mom’s tour” . . . “has known that she’s a badass from a young age” – why? why is she a badass? This reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend watching Philip’s funeral. She said Anne was so badass for being the only female walking behind Phillip’s casket. I was so aghast, I was speechless. She was the only female because she was the only daughter. If she had a sister, then there would be 2 females walking behind the casket. There goes her badassery . . . Lola is just like most 24 year olds – she just happened to come out of Madonna’s vagina. That does not make her a badass or good at everything. For a site that “hates” the Windsors, celebitchy sure loves to build up unproven, nothingburger celebrity spawns.
YES to her last remark – the last 4 years have been traumatizing- and not just to those who live in or are citizens of the US. The whole world got assaulted – and just to top it off we had a pandemic- we are all bruised and mentally exhausted.
Glad to know I’m not the only one realizing / experiencing this.
One thing I will say, aside from agreeing with most of the commenters here, is I appreciate seeing a slightly “big-nose” gal featured, especially how she looks in that first photo. Under all the makeup and that glaring red wig, she has a classical look but not one usually championed in mainstream. Look at all of the actresses and models: they all have small noses. Even if they are plus size or have other large features, it seems to be a universal standard that your nose has to be small otherwise you don’t fit beauty standards and look “harsh”. There are very few examples, other than the glorious Rossy de Palma and in some ancient sculptures, in the West of women with large noses. And look at all the fairy tales in history, too, with the witch always having a big hooked nose. Just saying, it’s part of the history of standards of beauty… One small detail and I know very much related to Euro-Western, not saying anything here about the rest of the world since I’m well aware about all of the other layers, too, as a BIPOC woman not raised in U.S….