But, in a move that has become rather a cliché for the Material Girl, the new year brings a new ad campaign –
this time for upmarket fashion brand Louis Vuitton – which refreshes our memory of just how toned, taut and titillating Madonna can be, by showing her with legs akimbo in fishnet tights and red frilly knickers that leave little to the imagination.

Supposedly set in some smoky Parisian bar, but actually shot in a LaLaLand restaurant, this pic manages to be both silly and high in cringe factor. Her face appears to have been air-brushed to make her look, flatteringly, like a young and lovely Faye Dunaway. Unfortunately, though, one leg is stuck in the air hoisting a large expensive handbag on a skyscraper heel.

The clothes and accessories probably cost many thousands of pounds, but was it the stylist or photographer's intention for the Queen of Pop to look like a call girl who fell out of a taxi, leaving her skirt on the back seat? Having thrown caution and modesty to the wind, she then appears have fallen onto the nearest leather banquette, proceeding to flash her private parts at late-night drinkers while performing a circus trick.

Far from crashing their cars with lust or admiration when they see this image plastered across hoardings in the street, men as well as women will surely be shouting: "Put it away!" However hard she desperately tries to look sexy, Madonna just succeeds in appearing desperate when she poses for a stunt photograph like this. What on earth can she be up to?

With her pedigree of profane lyrics, explorations of erotica in her book Sex and flirtations with gender-bending over the years, Madonna has long-since ceased to shock anybody. A product of feminism who strode up to the plate and showed a woman could be attractive, sensual, energetic, ambitious, funny and not a little ruthless all at the same time, her lack of inhibition has always been outrageous, an exhilarating part of the package that is Ms Ciccone. But she has never actually looked downright bonkers – until now.

What is Madonna out to prove, and why does she need to do it? She's one of the world's wealthiest women – worth more than £300m, even allowing for the recent cash and property divorce settlement (rumoured to be somewhere between £25m and 50m)given to her second ex-husband Guy Ritchie. She's not exactly in dire need of the alleged $6.5m fee for the Louis Vuitton photo shoot.

The pictures were taken by one of Madonna's favourite photographers, Steven Meisel – the man responsible for the explicit images of the singer and various pals in the infamous book. Perhaps she's putty in his hands and he persuaded her that handbag fetishists everywhere would be her fans if she went along with the weird suggestion of flogging posh bags by flashing her pants.

Perhaps a style icon like Madge can't resist allying her own brand with a world-famous, well-travelled range of bags that scream expense and a certain flashy covetability. Wag-type women and wives of sheikhs like nothing better than to identify with the girl from Michigan who pulled herself up by her bra straps.

They may not quite have attained the teeny-weeny
half-starved dancer's body, complete with the road map of pulsating overworked veins, but they can certainly have this season's LV top tote in every shade.

Talking of the tight, taut state of this mother-of-three's body, let's not forget she works at it. Four relentless hours a day are spent in the gym, jogging and strengthening her core
muscles with pilates alongside best buddy Gwyneth Paltrow. Madonna once answered an interviewer's query about why she did so much exercise by saying that the men in her
life had always liked the "carved-out" look.

It's interesting that she didn't say she did it for herself; also interesting is the story that Guy Ritchie allegedly complained that the manically-focused exercise regime got in the way of the couple's personal life, and made nasty comments about how it felt to cuddle so much bone and sinew.

Undoubtedly fabulous at 50 in many ways, and a horribly onerous example to other middle-aged women, Madonna is used to controlling almost everything and everyone around her. It must have been traumatic when her famous willpower couldn't overcome marital problems. All she can do is to go on being fit, thin, smart, ruthlessly ambitious, rich beyond the dreams of avarice – and constantly in our faces.

Despite the global exposure they'll receive, perhaps the
Louis Vuitton pictures are only truly aimed at taunting one particular person – and if so the plan has misfired, because belly-aching laughter was almost certainly not the effect she was hoping for.