“Little Girl Boy Lost,” by Hamish Bowles, was originally published in the December 2009 issue of Vogue.
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I ve always been an outspoken and extreme dresser,” pronounces Lady Gaga, here embodying a Marc Jacobs—clad witch for Annie Leibovitz s Hansel and Gretel portfolio (inspired by Richard Jones s production of the 1893 Engelbert Humperdinck opera, opening this month at the Metropolitan Opera). To prove her point, Lady Gaga arrived at Vogue to discuss the shoot wearing a trailing white chiffon Galliano goddess gown with a Philip Treacy headdress that spelled Vogue in clipped white feathers. The following day, she came to see Creative Director Grace Coddington in a little black dress with a flaming-red wig, and later appeared on location, as Coddington recalls, “stark naked except for her white rubber raincoat and some very, very high heels!” She then promptly threw herself in the mud at Leibovitz s feet.“Gaga was so bubbly and chatty and enthusiastic and excited to be alive,” says Coddington. “She was up for anything.”
Gaga acknowledges that her art director, Matthew Williams—“my Jean-Paul Goude”—was “the inspiration that made the connection for me between the art world and the fashion world. He used to say things like ‘If you want to make a shoulder pad, don t research jackets—research sculpture, mineral rocks, paintings.’ He thinks in a different way; he is the designer of the future.”
Fashion and art collide in Gaga s work, too. “We d been thinking of innovative ways to premiere the music,” she says about her decision to debut “Bad Romance” at Alexander McQueen s Plato s Atlantis show, which she found “not of this world.” “When Magdalena was stomping her pretty little hooves down the runway,” she says, “it was dreamlike.” Meanwhile her ballad “Speechless” (“about my love for my father”) was first performed in November in Los Angeles at MOCA s thirtieth-anniversary gala, as part of an installation by Francesco Vezzoli. For this she became, in her words, “a child of the Warhol of my time, among the most famous Pop Artists of our time—Damien Hirst made the piano!”
Lady Gaga s unique and winning blend of art, fashion, and music take to the road with her Monster Ball tour, kicking off November 27.
To go behind the scenes with Lady Gaga as she is photographed by Annie Leibovitz, watch Video Diaries at Vogue.com.
