Stop the press, Lady Gaga’s going soft! The edgy meat-wearing fashion icon and pop star reveals her vulnerable side on the cover of the second issue of Porter, the glossy magazine launched by the guys behind luxury online shops Net-a-Porter and Mr Porter.
Shot by Dutch photography partners Inez and Vinoodh, Gaga is photographed in her grandmother’s robe, a piece she often wears when composing, and one of the few articles of clothing in her 3,000 garment wardrobe. She said she wanted the shoot to be a poignant reminder of where it all began for her.
“That’s really where I began, in that singer-songwriter mode,” she tells the magazine “Throughout the day on set, I was laughing as my hair used to be cut this way. I used to wear outfits like this! It brought me full circle, returning to my old style. They said, ‘We want to show you in a new way,’ and I thought, ‘But this is the old way.’”
Gaga, born Stefani Germanotta, also discusses her humble beginnings as an aspiring performer who began writing songs at 13 and her early music tastes, which leaned heavily to classic rock.
“I was a huge fan of The Beatles, Yoko Ono, Stevie Nicks and Led Zeppelin. I used to emulate that style, wear my mum’s old clothing, go to vintage shops, and I still had that look when I went to college [at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University] and wore my little hippie outfits. Then when I was 19 on the Lower East Side, I started experimenting more with glam rock. So this shoot really spans my style from 17 to almost 20. After that, I started to have a little more fun with futurism.”
The vulnerability, she says, is due to what’s happening in her career. Gaga recently split from her former manager, Troy Carter, due to “creative differences” and she has spoken publicly of betrayal. Her third album, Artpop, released last year, didn’t really burn up the charts. She says she is now looking for her “next thing”.
“If you watched me from September to December of last year, you saw me in the most manic performance of my life,” she says. “I was changing my outfits, my look, my wigs, every day, sometimes multiple times a day. That’s when I know my soul is restless. It comes out in a very physical way. If I’m able to hold on to one look for a longer period of time, it means I’ve settled into a new idea. If I haven’t, I’m just searching for the next thing, ‘What’s next? What’s next?’
“My fans know that I will sit at the piano and start to cry and share with them a story or a moment that’s occurring in my life,” she continues. “Then you never have to be afraid that people are going to discover things about you personally. It’s like, ‘Why lie?’”
Gaga, who released a new video for G.U.Y a week ago, will begin her ArtRave: The Artpop Ball world tour in May. The summer issue of Porter is out now.
