Type in ‘Lady Gaga fashion’ into our picture database and you’re going to invariably end up with a frozen screen. Because, ever since she came into the public eye in 2008, this divisive pop culture figure has managed to entertain, shock and leave us speechless with her rich catalogue of weird and wonderful ensembles.
And all this while she’s selling 23 million albums and 64 million singles worldwide.
So, before she heads to Dubai on September 10 to make her Middle East debut at Meydan with her artRAVE: The Artpop Ball tour, we at tabloid! risk a cataclysmic systems crash to dig up some of Gaga’s most memorable fashion moments and trace her evolution from an attention-seeking wannabe to Vogue cover star.
In the beginning
Back in 2008 when her debut album, The Fame, was released to slow radio play and Just Dance was just beginning to hot up, Gaga was still a novice at the fashion game and she started off looking like a poor woman’s version of Kesha.
The hair bow
By the next year though, Just Dance had become a global smash, and the hair bow made its debut. Gaga took it everywhere she went, and it created a buzz around the world. Still a bit tame by Gaga standards, considering what was to come next.
Mirror, mirror
The signs of eccentricities first emerged on the Glastonbury stage in 2009 when she wore an enhanced version of the dress she wore in the video for Paparazzi. The mirrored geometric dress was definitely a sign of things to come.
Accessorise
Gaga soon decided she wanted to invoke the power of the accessory, and she went wild with it. Whether it’s a lace veil with bunny ears, hair extensions woven like a hat or outrageous sunglasses, she knew exaggeration was the name of the game, and she played it. And oh, remember that tea cup she took everywhere she went?
Her many faces
Are you keeping up? Gaga needed five costume changes at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2009. Yes, five! She arrived on the red carpet in what looked like something out of The Phantom of the Opera, changed to a racy belly-barring top, which she splattered with blood on stage, and then emerged with a red lace outfit complete with face cover and headdress. Post show, she was in a padded playsuit. Gaga’s performance and costume made all the noise that night. And she had definitely arrived.
Latex me
Gaga’s obsession with latex began soon after. The most memorable one is probably her Elizabethan-era dress, complete with a dramatic neck ruffle and pouf sleeves, when she met, well, Queen Elizabeth II, following her Royal Variety Performance in London.
My world
By 2010, Gaga was already an established star. And when she turned up for music’s biggest night, the Grammy Awards, she encapsulated her status with a space-themed Giorgio Armani creation. One of our top looks ever on Gaga.
Tier me up
While she was already displaying signs of eccentricity, the red carpet of the Brit Awards in 2010 was where Gaga stunned the world. She appeared sporting a white tiered Francesco Scognamiglio dress with a white pompadour wig in Amy Winehouse country that left everyone, well, speechless.
Standing tall
Google ‘heelless heels’ and images of Gaga will top the list. If that Alexander McQueen dress and shoes she wore in the weird and wonderful Bad Romance video wasn’t one of the most perfect synchronisations of fashion and pop culture, we don’t know what is.
Queen
Our No 1 Lady Gaga look of all time, the 2010 MTV VMAs will forever be remembered for this Alexander McQueen dress (and another one, see next dress) because it said everything Gaga stood for at that point in time: She was The Queen of the charts.
Eat me
Yes, after wowing the red carpet, Gaga turned up at the show in a dress made out of raw beef. Dreamed up by Argentine designer Franc Fernandez and styled by Nicola Formichetti, now the creative director at Diesel, this one’s gone down in history as a ‘moment’ many times over. And only Gaga could have pulled it off.
I am iconic
At the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) Awards where she was honoured with the Icon of the Year award, Gaga’s look, created by Nicola Formichetti (who was then at Thierry Mugler), was perfect for that event. Just the right amount of edge. But she later stripped down to the sheer bodysuit she was wearing underneath and we weren’t so sure.
Colour me turquoise
Gaga turned up at an event in Sydney in 2011 looking very regal and respectable. And we haven’t been able to get over this look ever since.
Drop it like it’s hot
There was a time when Gaga thought bottoms were too limiting, and ditched them completely. She’s rarely been seen in one ever since.
Gaga fail
Here’s one look we will never quite forgive this fashion trailblazer for. The pink ‘shroud’ she wore at the London Fashion Week show of her long-time collaborator, the English hat maker Philip Treacy, was tasteless and quite simply, ridiculous.
Taming the shrew
Despite all the craziness, Mother Monster likes to mix it up with touches of normalcy. And this arrival in Auckland in 2012, in an orange neo peplum dress by Antonio Berardi, is just so chic it has to go down in the books. And a BuzzFeed post on ’16 Times Lady Gaga Looked Completely Normal’.
Colour me bad
2013 was Artpop year. And Gaga channelled that in everything she did and wore. There were moments of arty brilliance, and some not-too-cool-for-school looks. But then that’s Gaga.
Hair today
The hair went wild and big in 2013. The album sales, not so much. But the world rejoiced that fashion’s most interesting figure has had yet another transformation.
She undead
Gaga turned up at a London club in 2013 for a surprise performance of Venus. And she was in full zombie mode. OK, then.
Lady Godiva
We’ve already established she knows how to make an entrance (remember that egg?). So at the American Music Awards in 2013, when someone came sidesaddle on a white puppet horse, we knew it’d be Gaga. Channelling Lady Godiva, we were so glad she had clothes on, a beautiful Versace one at that.
Glam rock
Another glorious look of Gaga we love. At an event in London, she turned up with long blonde dreadlocks and a heavy golden necklace on a Versace suit.
And the award goes to…
Gaga’s collaboration with Donatella Versace continued when she turned up at the Oscar awards earlier this year in a beautiful dress made especially for her. Metallic goddess sounds about right.
Visor alert
A toned-down Gaga was seen everywhere this year. Yet Gaga wouldn’t be Gaga if there wasn’t at least one quirky element to it. In this case, the visor, from her Artpop promo picture, which was designed by Isabell Yalda Hellysaz, quickly became an accessory must-have.
Born this way
Alas, just when we thought Gaga had shed a lot of her, well, Gaganess, it all came rushing back. The weird and wonderful looks returned and it was all good with the world.
