Balenciaga,Saint Laurent to Design Custom Pieces for Lady Gaga’s New Look

      Lady Gaga has spent the past four years or so shocking us with outfit choices ranging from a dress made of raw meat to a gown made of hundreds of Kermit the Frogs. But now it looks like Gaga’s ready to dial down the shock factor.

          WWD interviewed the fame monster and some of her collaborators about her forthcoming album/multimedia experience, Artpop, and the stylistic direction she’ll be going in surrounding its release.

  Gaga herself was pretty hush-hush about it, saying:

[I’m not] defined by the same designer or defined by the same hair cut or defined by the same icon. The statement is that I’m not one icon. I’m every icon. I’m an icon that is made out of all the colors on the palette at every time. I have no restrictions. No restrictions.

Fortunately Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, who shot Gaga’s cover art and the music video for her first single, “Applause,” were not as obtuse. According to van Lamsweerde, the “every icon” will be more stripped down for this album, and the photographer may have had something to do with that decision. “There is a sense of stripping bare and then putting things back on. That’s the process she’s going through,” she told the trade. “I always say to her, ‘Look at you. You are incredibly beautiful, accept it. Don’t try to hide your face, just shine through.’ For her, it’s a part of that not hiding behind wigs and glasses and all kinds of stuff.”

         Gaga’s latest V cover, which was shot by the photography duo, in which she wears literally nothing, is likely an example of that (though Gaga is clearly wearing a wig in it, right?).

         “I think that this time it is about letting some of it go and the focus being on the music because now she’s comfortable being naked and being who she is,” added her fashion director Brandon Maxwell. “The world has seen everything.”
      
         Gaga won’t be doing her next tour in the buff. Plenty of designers some of whom are known for a more refined, paired back aesthetic than we typically associate with Gaga are said to be creating custom looks for her, including Alexander Wang for Balenciaga, Hedi Slimane for Saint Laurent, Armani, and, of course, Versace.
  
           She’ll also reportedly wear custom jumpsuits by Italian label Mila Schon, which Maxwell describes as “toned down and pulled back and chic” and that they’ll be made of “things that they would not normally be made out of, like plastic, but they’re super well-tailored and clean.”

           Look out for Gaga to be wearing some of the aforementioned at next month’s VMA Awards, wear she’ll perform and presumably wear more than one outfit. Or dress up as a different person. Or something.   

Can’t imagine she’s changed that much.

maryjane