Lady Gaga Wears Gareth Pugh On 'Applause' Single Cover, Talks VMA Fashion
Lady Gaga on her 'Applause' single cover.
Photo: Lady Gaga/Little Monsters
If there's one thing we can expect from Lady Gaga, it's that, well, we just never know what we're gonna get! She's constantly surprising us--I mean, just last week (after a six month hiatus), news dropped that Mother Monster will be performing at the 2013 Video Music Awards and today WWD released an interview with Gaga in which she revealed cryptic details on her upcoming ARTPOP album and--GASP--what she'll wear to the VMAs. The "Applause" single cover art, which features Lady Gaga with a colorful, make-up smeared visage, was shot by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin. She is wrapped in a white Gareth Pugh jacket, and, interestingly enough, this image is ACTUALLY from her upcoming "Applause" music video, which was also shot by the Inez and Vinoodh duo. Gaga chose this image because "it’s the end of the night after the show. When I look at it I see that there is a longing for the applause. I see that there is a void that is leaking onstage, that the performer is leaking, that the art is sort of becoming something else in front of your eyes. Something more human, something more honest.”
Lady Gaga continued to discuss the overall fashion direction for her ARTPOP album, saying, “When you watch each image and you watch each thing come out, they might not look exactly the same. [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.” Her fashion director, Brandon Maxwell, said we should expect tons of custom pieces on Mother Monster--everything from Alexander Wang to Balenciaga to Versace to Armani. “It’s more toned down and pulled back and chic,” said Brandon. “But it’s also that we’re making suits out of things that they would not normally be made out of, like plastic, but they’re super well-tailored and clean. Maybe she’s just wearing a simple catsuit and a head wrap like she’s wearing here, but we sort of do the craziness on the face.” When asked about her upcoming VMA appearance, Mother Monster did allude to a collaboration with Robert Wilson and joked "I'm sending a doppelgänger. I’m going this year as a fried egg instead of hard-boiled."
