To boys and girls with a disco ball, some sunglasses, a glue gun, and a dream, this is your moment, Lady Gaga from Yonkers, New York, a graduate of lower Manhattan nightlife, who came into this world as Stefani Germannotta, is a star. "Just Dance" and "Poker Face," the first tracks from her 2008 platinum-selling, electro-pop debut album The Fame, both reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 single chart, a success not seen since the introduction of Christina Aguilera a decade ago.

Gaga delivers herself to the masses wrapped in postfeminist sexuality, cynicism-free materialism, and a new generation's excitement for "creative direction." She is the number one proponent of the avant-garde statement costumes currently popular with entertainers like Beyonce and Rihanna. Gaga's distinct visual vocabulary includes a signature "hair bow," a studied disinterest in wearing pants, and an evolving wardrobe of geometric, left-of-center fashions (a Hussein Chalayan-inspired bubble dress, for example).

Considering that Gaga designed this persona on her own, along with the creative team she calls Haus of Gaga, her development is being watched with interest, particularly as her notoriety affords her greater access to the high-end resources and collaborators that can bring more polish to her artistic ambitions. "You always have to be ahead of the curve," she says. "Right now I'm quite obsessed with 1950s monster movies. And it's a leap. But when you focus on something and commit yourself to it, your lie can become true."

The following conversation with Gaga, who speaks with a slight Madonna-esque accent, happened during a photo shoot for an upcoming M.A.C beauty campaign, in which she will star alongside Cyndi Lauper. Questions were directed at Gaga's reflection in a mirror through a space between her hair, which was being worked on by Danilo, and the arms of a makeup artist applying red rhinestones to her face.

Have famous people been everything Gaga hoped they would be?

I was never excited to be friends with famous people. That's never been the goal of this. I know my album is called The Fame, and that's the subject matter, but it's fame in the Warholian Studio 54 kind of way, not the stereotypical fame that people read about in tabloids and is considered very poisonous.

Why is fame important?

To me, if something is good when it's shallow, that's enough. If it goes deeper that's fine. I hope people read into the work but if they don't...

You've spoken about the subtext of "Poker Face." What is the subtext of "Boys, Boys, Boys"?

I wrote the track as a mating call. I was dating this guy who was really into heavy metal and I wanted to write a pop song that would make him fall in love with me. So I wrote that record and we dated for two years. It reminds me of "Girls, Girls, Girls" by Motley Crue. the subtext is that even though I'm a very free and sexually empowered woman, I'm not a man hater. I celebrate very American sentiments about bars an drinking and men buying women drinks. It's very heavy metal sentiment that I celebrate in a pop song. But I don't think every record has to have this "Poker Face" subtext.

Has Gaga encountered an item of clothing too outrageous for her?

I don't consider my own clothing to be outrageous. It's very strange to me the way people say, "Oh, Lady Gaga and another one of her wacky outfits!" Or, "You always dress so crazy!" The truth is that people just don't have the same references that I do. To me it's very beautiful and it's art, and to them it's outrageous and crazy.

It's certainly more challenging than a pair of torn Levi's and a tank top.

I guess challenging and outrageous are two different things. There is a method to my aesthetic. I don't choose pieces based on their shock value. I really think that what I wear and what we design as a house is very beautiful and when people say it's outrageous or over-the-top, to me we just don't share the same references. Danilo, for example, knows who Thierry Mugler is. He's very familiar with his work, he knows the shapes, he's seen the progression of his work and his archives since the '70s. So if Danilo sees a piece that I've designed that's Mugler-inspired, he says, "Oh, that's amazing. I love it." Whereas someone who doesn't know Mugler might say, "Oh you look like a tranny robot." They just don't understand the reference. But it's not my job to do something that's safe for people. I just do what I think is beautiful.

The pop stars have been very territorial with the Mugler lately. Have you met Sasha Fierce?

Have I met Beyonce? No.

You once said you wish your live shows could change lives...

I'm wondering why you asked if I'd met Beyonce.

Because she's really into Mugler right now.

Right now. But I've been wearing Mugler for years. For me it's not a cone-off for a tour or a one-off for this album cycle. This kind of clothing, the period, the lifestyle of fashion and art and pop art as life, this is who I've been for years. But beyonce looks amazing. I love what Mugler did for her tour. But do you see my point? It's not going to end after The Fame is over.

What about the teacup as accessory?

That's ridiculous. I like to drink out of china. People made a big deal of it.

What is the origin of the hair bow?

Me and Matt Williams, he's my creative partner and my best friend, we design and creative direct everything together, we were in the set of my "Poker Face" video. We were looking through books, and he was looking through a Gaultier fashion show, and Gaultier did all this amazing hair art with cats and giraffes, like crazy amazing. And I was yapping about bows. "I love bows!" I was imagining myself with hundreds of bows. "Bows are everywhere! Bows are the next big thing! They're not on the street but they're at the parties!" So he's saying, "Yeah, I like bows, but everyone's going to do it." And I said, "Let me see that hair art. Go and put a fucking outfit on my head."

By all rights, Lady Gaga should be exhausted. She has just spent a whirlwind weekend in Toronto at the MuchMusic Video Awards where she turned in an elaborate performance that culminated in fire shooting from her breasts, and afterwards was present for at least part of an ugly postshow confrontation between her pal Perez Hilton and members of the Black Eyed Peas; it was all over the tabloids. “We haven’t slept,” admits Gaga. “We just got off the plane and came here. It’s like, 'Get some orange juice and coffee, motherfuckers! Let’s get to work!' It’s not every day you get to shoot with Testino.”

Quite. Mario Testino, the man at whose altar the world’s most glamorous fairly genuflect, spends five hours with his lens trained on the year’sdecade’s most outré pop star. Some might expect Testino would get the famously pants-less wonder to, well, class things up a bit. “It’s funny you should think that,” says Gaga, in a voice just raspy enough to make it clear she knows her way around a party. “Actually, Mario wanted me naked all day long. It was my stylist, Nicola, who kept sneaking in the designer stuff. He was like, ‘Put this Fendi belt on right now!’ We love clothes. But Mario, he really understands me, and he said, ‘I want this to be about you. I don’t want it to be about the clothes.’”

“The concept was really shooting the essence of Gaga, who she is,” explains best friend Matthew Williams, creative director of the Haus of Gaga, the singer’s design collective. Gaga adds, “You know, the glasses, the hair, the tan—I’m known for that. So we just made me übertan.” And pumping through the speakers all the while? Naturally, “Poker Face.”

It is the year’s most inescapable song. From the “Mum mum mum mah” robo-Gregorian chant of the opening to the slinky verse to the singsong hook—it’s 2009’s “I Kissed a Girl,” “Since You’ve Been Gone,” and “Womanizer” rolled into one, at once sillier and smarter than all three. It’s one of those tunes against which resistance is futile. Even rockers like the Arctic Monkeys, Weezer, and Faith No More have busted out their own versions this year, much to Gaga’s delight.

“I looove Faith No More! Their song ‘Epic’ was my burlesque number at the bar I used to work at! I used to fog myself and dance to it. When I found out they did ‘Poker Face,’ I was like, shit!” Of course, it’s not Faith No More, nor influences David Bowie, Queen, or the Cure to whom Gaga is most often compared. Rather, it’s to the goddesses of platinum pop: Madonna, Britney, Christina, and Gwen—comparisons the singer finds a bit lazy. “Look, when I was a brunette, they called me Amy Winehouse. When I was a blonde, they called me Madonna. Then they called me Christina, then Gwen. I just don’t think most people’s reference points go back very far.” While she does share a name with Gwen (Gaga’s given name is Stefani Germanotta), while she once engaged in a bitchy back-and-forth in the press with Aguilera, and while she wrote a song for Spears (“Quicksand”), it’s Madge who seems closest to the mark: both are Italian-American girls who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps in the big, bad city, both are given to spectacle, both are sartorially adventurous and driven, and neither one apologizes for being pop.

All interesting, you might say, but will we be talking about Gaga in thirty years? That, of course, is a much bigger question. Decades-spanning superstars may well be a thing of the past. But those who predicted Gaga would be a one-and-done dance-pop footnote have already had to eat their words. And as for her being branded trashy? We’ve all heard that before. “I remember the cover of Madonna’s ‘Vogue’ single and the lingerie and her hair—my mother was like, ‘Ucch,’” laughs Gaga. “But I used to play it over and over.” And now, all these years later, Queen Madge herself is attending Lady Gaga shows, or one last spring at least, at New York’s Terminal 5. That night, as Gaga recalls, there was a show on and off stage. “My sister texted me and she was like, ‘Madonna is 15 feet away from me. And there are two guys having sex in the audience. This is awesome!’ I just remember thinking, Wow, this is exactly what I wanted. I’ve got Madonna and I’ve got gay sex!”

Gaga herself has copped to a certain degree of bisexuality, but says she never played it up because “I didn’t want my gay fans to think I was using their community for edginess. You know, Ooh, she’s edgy!” She considers her song “Future Love” to be in part an endorsement of same-sex marriage, and vows to never stop playing gay clubs, no matter how big things get. “With the exception of God, my family, and Matthew, and the Haus, and Vincent Herbert [who signed and discovered her], the gay community is the single reason that I am here today. I started out playing gay clubs in America, then I went to London to play G-A-Y, where I didn’t think anyone knew who I was, and there were thousands of people there. How could I ever turn my back on those people who really fought for me? And besides the loyalty factor, playing in gay clubs is fun.”

And yet, Gaga says what she does is not camp. “See, we don’t see it that way. To us, it’s just beautiful,” she says. “The idea that Gaga is just kooky for the sake of being kooky is so wrong.” Hmm, where would people get that impression? The cone-head hair she sports on occasion? Or the stilettos-on-the-shoulders outfit she wore recently? Or the moment at this shoot when Gaga, lying on the floor in shimmering blue Balenciaga, hikes up the dress’s hem far enough that the stylist feels the need to place down there a platinum blonde tuft that perfectly matches her hair? Tsk-tsk.

But say what you will—and plenty have—Gaga goes for it. Whether with a lightning bolt painted on her face, big bows in her hair, space-age cat suits, or that Chalayan-inspired bubble dress with matching piano, she can evoke David Bowie, Grace Jones, Björk, Stacey Q, Klaus Nomi, or Suzanne Bartsch. Throw in some Sprouse here and Margiela there and it’s like hip fashion’s greatest hits. Well, some might say misses, but what the checkout aisle arbiters of taste have to say won’t keep Gaga up at night. “Us Weekly putting me on a worst-dressed list? I couldn’t care less.” On the other hand, she adds, “If Karl Lagerfeld called me an ugly hag, then I’d be upset. Because it’s Karl Lagerfeld.”

Whatever his opinion, Lagerfeld might want to stand back from Gaga’s latest creation—the aforementioned fire bra unveiled in Toronto. As with most of her ideas, its execution fell on the shoulders of Matthew Williams, part tailor, part craftsman. He says of the bra, “It’s really just sparklers—the old sparklers on the tits trick.” But Gaga accuses him of modesty. “I called him from Hawaii and I was like, Matty, we need to make my tits blow up!” And he made it happen.

No word yet on whether the bra will make an appearance on Gaga’s upcoming fall tour with Kanye West, another artist fond of outsized shows that spare no expense. But she does admit that the two are “exploring aesthetics and new technology that neither of us have traveled, and we are attempting an epic story.” Gaga talks a lot about her art, her work, the technology, the Haus, her creativity—and she knows it. “I’m sure to some people in the press it’s like to a nauseating degree,” she concedes. “There’s Lady Gaga again, yakking about her art.”

But all that yakking is just part of Gaga fighting the good fight. She insists time and again that pop is not lowbrow, dance music is not soulless, and that she is not playing a character but creating something with meaning. Her sincerity of purpose is admirable. Considering the well of blank R&B ciphers and Disney eunuchs into which 21st-century pop has thrown itself, maybe a performer who talks about creative vision, aspires to be avant-garde, counts among her circle of creative people designer Benjamin Cho and violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain, and sings the praises of drag queens—just maybe that’s a good thing. Roll your eyes if you like—and yes, maybe she ought to wear her heart and art a little less on her sleeve—but Gaga truly believes in all this.

For the day’s final tableau, the Lady slips into a brown leather Fendi bustier and boots; her Haus of Gaga circuit-board glasses lend her a savage, vaguely Aztec look. Mario Testino snaps away—the woman with an album (and song) called The Fame and a single called “Paparazzi” shot by a fashion photographer known for his images of that ultimate victim of fame, Princess Diana. “Yes, Diana was the most iconic martyr of fame,” says Gaga. “She died because of it.” But Gaga adds—and this is no small point in a world of YouTube, Octomom, and Real Housewives—her album should not be seen as a glorification of celebrity. Rather it’s about “the dream of wanting to make something of yourself,” a dream that Gaga is undoubtedly realizing. “I took off those circuit-board glasses and looked at the computer monitor and I cried. I thought, We did that! We’re doing something right!”

Flash of Genius A Gaga journal by Matthew Williams

THE CAMERA LOVES LADY GAGA, AND NOW AS CREATIVE DIRECTOR OF POLAROID, SHE HAS BRILLIANTLY TURNED ITS INVASIVE LENS INTO YET ANOTHER POP PLATFORM. HERE, MATT WILLIAMS, THE CREATIVE DIRECTOR OF THE HAUS OF GAGA, CAPTURES ALL HER UNCENSORED, OVER-THE-TOP, EXPLOSIVE COUTURE MOMENTS IN A CLICK AND SNAP

This spread: Los Angeles, January 2010

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Clockwise from top left: Miami, 2010 New York, 2010 Los Angeles, 2010 Miami, 2009

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This page top left: New York, 2010 All other photos: Los Angeles, 2010

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V MAGAZINE MEMORANDUM No. 1

Date: MAY 2011

Re: PIET MONDRIAN & LIBRARY CARDS

From: M†SS.GAGA
To: STEPHEN GAN
Copy to: HAUS OF GAGA
LADY STARLIGHT
NICOLA FORMICHETTI
FREDERIC ASPIRAS
V COLLECTIVE
LITTLE MONSTERS
THE WORLD
FASHION-SEXUALS
ANDY WARHOL
NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
BULLIES

Glam culture is ultimately rooted in obsession, and those of us who are truly devoted and loyal to the lifestyle of glamour are masters of its history. Or, to put it more elegantly, we are librarians. I myself can look at almost any hemline, silhouette, beadwork, or heel architecture and tell you very precisely who designed it first, what French painter they stole it from, how many designers reinvented it after them, and what cultural and musical movement parented the birth, death, and resurrection of that particular trend. So dear critics and bullies: get your library cards out, because I’m about to do a reading.

An expertise in the vocabulary of fashion, art, and pop culture requires a tremendous amount of studying. My studio apartment on the LES, quite similar to many of my hotel suites now (knock on wood), was covered in inspiration. Everything from vintage books and magazines I found at the Strand on 12th Street to my dad’s old Bowie posters to metal records from my best friend Lady Starlight to Aunt Merle’s hand-me-down emerald-green designer pumps were sprawled all over the floor about two feet from my bathroom and four inches from my George Foreman Grill. (Starlight was always jealous that mine had a bun warmer and hers didn’t.) And in my downtime, which meant whenever I wasn’t waitressing, go-go dancing, or making mixtapes for a music publishing company in Times Square, I was analyzing and studying my library. I would dream of being a rock star who dressed like Marc Bolan, walked like Jerry Hall, and had the panache of Ginger from Casino and the mystery of Isabella Blow.¹ See footnote.

Any writer, or anyone for that matter, who doesn’t understand the last two sentences of this column should NEVER be writing about or critiquing fashion or artists in publication. As someone who references and annotates her work vigilantly, I am putting all of you on notice. I’ve done my homework, have you? Where are your library cards? Did they expire? When Yves Saint Laurent designed the “Mondrian” day dress for fashion week Fall/Winter 1965, did he plagiarize or revolutionize? Some people would say he was unoriginal, that he traced an iconic contemporary artwork by Piet Mondrian, and stole it for his own merits. Others may argue that by referencing something so “before its time,” he influenced an entire generation in fashion that transformed the female body with a more linear sensibility, graphics, and painterly shape. We now call it “mod.” Picass said, “Good artists copy; great artists steal.” Maybe he only said that because he and Matisse were in a bitchy queen fight for two decades (some called it a boxing match, I call it a conversation in art). But maybe it’s just that the resolution is: art gives birth to new art. There is no chicken or egg. It’s molecular. Cells give birth to cells. To put it more bluntly, the Hussein Chalayan vessel I wore at the Grammys wasn’t inspired by a chicken. It was stolen from an egg. But the transformation, the context, and the approach taken to reinterpret the meaning of birth and rebirth in terms of fame on a fucking red carpet — this is what creates the modernity of the statement. The past undergoes mitosis, becoming the originality of the future.

The Haus of Gaga, my (our) own pop-cultural family and living Warholian factory, talked endlessly about the initial vision for “Born This Way.” On the set of the video, it was almost terrifyingly important to me that I tribute Rico (the Zombie Boy’s) tattoos, creating a visual metaphor where tattoos, along with the body modification I had been exploring, became a subcultural symbol for rebirth. Rico in this case was my Mondrian. After I put the makeup on, I found myself dancing and flailing at 9 a.m., after twenty-four hours of no sleep on set. Feeling young and free, it occurred that the makeup allowed me to erase the public’s perception of my beauty, and define it for myself. I asked Rico, “Why did you tattoo yourself this way?” (Something I imagine he’s asked quite frequently.) He said very genuinely, with no hesitation, “Bazooka gum.”² See footnote. And just like that, as many of the creations in my brain take form, I realized, and so did the Haus, that not only did I need to reunite with my youth, i.e. “Bazooka gum,” but that my fans needed to see me in that juvenile way in order to understand the intention behind why I wrote “Born This Way.” Accompanied with a side ponytail, it took me back to moments when I was just a little baby monster. When my mother would perch a pony high on my hair and we would dance so hard to the tape deck that the perfectly perched pony she fashioned would fall to the side. I had to take an uncomfortable journey back into high school, where my youth represented tears. Wishing I had a mask. Hoping that I could artistically hide the wounds buried deep from years of being bullied. I have since reckoned with this psychology in my performance art. But this time, the revelation was clear: I still want to wear the mask, but now I wear it proud, and with the same effervescence and innocence I had when I was 6, dancing with my mom.

After I performed “Born This Way” at the Grammys, it seemed as though the piece was interpreted as an engagement for battle. And the whole performance was a battle cry in essence — for freedom against forces of inequality and prejudice. But as quickly as the song catapulted to number one, a more subtle controversy exploded. “Born This Way” was a triumph as a pop song and a social statement, but it ultimately revealed another division: the reality that the young generations’ challenges with equality and social justice are just as prevalent now as they were twenty-five years ago. And while “Born This Way” was written for every walk of life, I began to feel my youngest fans were longing to be nurtured, while others felt they already had been. Perhaps in this way the song was not for everyone, although the intention was such. And perhaps I was naïve to hope everyone would unfold the true meaning of my performance piece the way I unfolded YSL’s “Mondrian” dress. Instead, I am caught between two forces: one holding onto a ponytail, and another screaming “I don’t want to be angry, I want to be free.”

“I DON’T WANT TO BE A DRAG, I JUST WANT TO BE A QUEEN.”

I have a passionate understanding of the history of many of the references that not only I have reinspired, but have been reinterpreted over centuries of fashion: where they came from, what they meant, and specifically how they became modern again. I have concurrently shown that I could “read you” in this subject, but I would rather reckon with the fact that many are clinging tightly to cultural divisiveness and leaving home without library cards.

Just like sometimes Picasso was Matisse’s Mondrian, and vice versa. Bowie is often my Mondrian, as are Michael Jackson, Prince, Lita Ford, and Madonna. Mugler is my silhouette’s Mondrian, Cindy Crawford is my sexuality’s, Kermit is my whimsy’s, and, in my “Born This Way” video, two of my Mondrians were Francis Bacon and Salvador Dalí. In a lot of ways the “idea” of being obsessed with art is my Mondrian. Just like Campbell’s Tomato Soup was Warhol’s Mondrian, and Marilyn Monroe and Maripol were Madonna’s. I am obsessed with all the authors in the library of pop culture.

I do not define, however, my artistry or historical relevance with one particular fashion or musical statement. And I don’t believe any of the artists I mentioned do either. Rather, I find freedom in my ability to transform and liberate myself (and others) with art and style­ — because those are the things that freed me from my sadness, from the social scars. Furthermore, I am in no way encouraging anyone to emulate my fashion sense, but rather setting a, hopefully, liberating example for anyone to look inside and know they can become any image or projection imaginable. I am an obsessed pop cultural expert. And, perhaps, between my music, performance art, and this column, I will be remembered as such. After weeks of writing this article I asked out loud, “What do you think YSL would think of my metaphor about his collection?” My darling hair designer Frederic replied, “You could ask Nan Kempner, but she’s dead.” Now that’s a queen who never left home without her library card.

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1. Mirrored bikini inspired by Bolan Scuba Suit, Mugler runway model walk, a past romance with drugs and costume jewelry à la Scorsese. Lobster Philip Treacy hat.
2. For those of you who’ve never had it, it’s a retro chewing gum that comes with whimsical stick-on temporary tattoos.

GAGA MEMORANDUM NO. 3

Date: SEPTEMBER 2011

Re: EXTREME CRITIC FUNDAMENTALISM

From: M†SS. GAGA

To: STEPHEN GAN

Copy to:

MS. VREELAND
HAUS OF GAGA
NICOLA FORMICHETTI
V COLLECTIVE
LITTLE MONSTERS
THE WORLD
ART HISTORIANS
INTELLECTUALS
JOURNALISTS
COLUMNISTS
CATHY HORYN

Doesn’t the integrity of the critic become compromised when their writings are consistently plagued with negativity? When the public is no longer surprised or excited by the unpredictability of the writer, but rather has grown to expect the same cynicism from the same cynic? When we can predict the same predictable review from the same predictable reviewer? Accomplished creators of fashion and music have a visceral effect on the world, which is consequently why they are publicly distinguished. So why do so many notable critics seem so impervious to the emotion of the work? Why such indifference? Does intellectualism replace feeling? It’s so easy to say something is bad. It’s so easy to write, “One star, hated it, worst show of the season.” It’s much more challenging to reckon with and analyze a work. It requires research, but maybe no one does their research anymore. So my question, V readers, is this: when does the critique or review become insult and not insight? Injury and not intellect?

I’m going to propose a term to describe this movement in critical journalism: Extreme Critic Fundamentalism. I define this term as instilling fear in the hopes and dreams of young inventors in order to establish an echelon of tastemakers. There is a difference between getting a B- in Biology with a series of poignant red marks from your teacher and being given a spanking with a ruler by an old nun. The former we can learn from, while the latter is just painful. The artist is the general and captain of his or her artistic ship, always ready and willing to take the first blow and drown if an iceberg is hit. But in reviews, should critics not reveal all the scientific, mathematical, and pertinent information to explain why the Titanic could not withstand the blow, or why other cruise ships were successful?

• The temperature of the water.
• The construction of the ship.
• The weight of the cargo.
• The number of passengers.
• The disorganization of the crew.

Where my argument leads is to the perspective space of art, which is subjective and not ultimately rooted in mathematics or physics. Is it not even more critical for fashion and art critics to be profusely informed not only in art history but in the subliminal? The public operates with the assumption that critics are experts in their respective fields. But are they? Does every critic have the soul to really receive a work in the transcendental sense? The out-of-body experience of art?

In the age of the Internet, when collections and performances are so accessible to the public and anyone can post a review on Facebook or Twitter, shouldn’t columnists and reviewers, such as Cathy Horyn, employ a more modern and forward approach to criticism, one that separates them from the average individual at home on their laptop? The public is certainly not stupid, and as Twitter queen, I can testify that the range of artistic and brilliant intellectuals I hear from on a daily basis is staggering and inspiring. In the year 2011, everyone is posting reviews. So how does someone like Ms. Horyn separate herself from the online pack? The reality of today’s media is that there are no echelons, and if they’re not careful, the most astute and educated journalists can be reduced to gossipers, while a 14-year-old who doesn’t even have a high school locker yet can master social media engines and, incidentally, generate a specific, well-thought-out, debatable opinion about fashion and music that is then considered by 200 million people on Twitter. Take Tavi Gevinson. She’s 15, and Rodarte created an entire project inspired by her. Her site is thestylerookie.com. I adore her, and her prodigious and well-written blog is the future of journalism. The paparazzi has similarly been usurped by the camera-toting everyman. That magical moment of the movie star posing in front of the Metropolitan Museum is no longer so magical. Now everyone has a fucking cell phone and can take that same fucking picture.

Why do we harp on the predictability of the infamous fashion critic? The predictability of the most notoriously harsh critics who continue writing their notoriously harsh reviews? Why give the elephant in the room a peanut if it has already snapped its trunk at you? That peanut was dead on arrival. To be fair, Ms. Horyn, the more critical question to ask is: when did the pretense of fashion become more important than its influence on a generation? Why have we decided that one person’s opinion matters more than anyone else’s? Of all the legendary designers I have been blessed to work with, the greatest discovery has been their kindness and their lack of pretense. They care not for hierarchy or position. They are so good, and so precise, that all that matters to them while they’re pinning their perfectly customized garment to my body is the way it makes me feel. Perhaps the pretension belongs in formaldehyde. And the hierarchy is embalmed — for us all to remember nostalgically, and honor that it once was modern, but is now irrelevant. Peanut.

GAGA MEMORANDUM NO. 4

Date: NOVEMBER 2011

Re: EXTREME CRITIC FUNDAMENTALISM

From: M†SS. GAGA

To: STEPHEN GAN

Copy to:

MS. VREELAND
HAUS OF GAGA
NICOLA FORMICHETTI
V COLLECTIVE
LITTLE MONSTERS
THE WORLD
ART HISTORIANS
INTELLECTUALS
JO CALDERONE

My study of gender manipulation, though not a new endeavor in the fields of art and fashion, has been both revealing and terrifying — perhaps my most emotionally challenging performance to date. Beginning as an invention of my mind, Jo Calderone was created with Nick Knight as a mischievous experiment. After working together tirelessly and passionately for years, eating bovine hearts, throwing up on ourselves, giving birth to an alien nation and an AK-47, Nick and I began to wonder: how much exactly can we get away with? Given the nature of this V Magazine issue, an exploration of “the model,” I felt it appropriate to investigate, in diary form, how the past few months of my work have been a deliberate attack on the “idea” of the “modern model,” or, in my case, the “modern pop singer.” How can we remodel the model? In a culture that attempts to quantify beauty with a visual paradigm and almost mathematical standard, how can we fuck with the malleable minds of onlookers and shift the world’s perspective on what’s beautiful? I asked myself this question. And the answer? Drag.

Nick and I photographed Jo, omitted his biological sex, and shopped the photographs around to men’s fashion magazines. The cover of Vogue Hommes Japan, a major Japanese men’s publication, was a coup to say the least, exciting mostly because we had convinced the editors that Jo Calderone was a male model and had sold his look as the next big thing. Nick Knight, a photographer with intuition that borders on godly, wondered immediately if they would be able to feel my spirit in the photograph. He wondered, knowing good and well his photographs were marvelous and utterly masculine, if there was still no way to mask my intensity as a performer. What an interesting venture it was, because, in truth, really brilliant models have the chameleonic ability to transform into new creatures all the time. So why should I be any different? Was our experimentation devious? Or is it nobody’s business whether or not Jo has a cock in his pants? It was a few weeks later, after the cover was printed, that Nick said to me, sweetly, “Gaga, I believe Jo has to sing.”

I wrestled with this idea. Would it be convincing? What was the purpose of the piece? And if I were to do it, what would its significance be in relation to my work as Lady Gaga? Yes, this is me, but in the fantasy of performance I imagined (or hoped) the world would weigh both individuals against one another as real people, not as one person playing two. Lady Gaga versus Jo Calderone, not Lady Gaga “as.” That would be the intention of the process, to co-exist with an alternate version of myself — in the same universe. So I reasoned, how could remodeling my current image ignite a statement or revelation about me as an artist? What is the new model of the performer and how can I push the boundaries? The answer was that Jo would not just make a statement about me as performer, but would reveal things about me as a woman. I decided then that there was only one way to execute this piece: Jo and Gaga had to argue.

As I began to reckon with Jo, I found it important to excavate what he didn’t like about me, or rather, what I struggle with liking about myself. Concurrently, I felt it necessary to imagine what the public expects of me during a performance of this magnitude — the opening of the VMAs — and how I might destroy this expectation in a variety of ways. On a stage, the laws of fantasy are meant to be broken, but I have always found it difficult to bring my real pussy out there with me. (Or do I bring it out there and just don’t know it?) I have always feared that the reality of love, if brought into the spotlight, has the potential to destroy creativity. Needless to say, the line between fantasy and reality is blurred in my life, as this psychobabble may indicate, so I drew upon my personal experiences to initiate a deeper parallel. Do my lovers feel like an extension of my audience? Because I refuse to draw a distinction between what’s real and what is artifice, do they feel a part of the show? How can Jo become more relatable and lovable than I am?

During my performance and the three days I spent as him, I felt permission through him to confess things about myself as a woman, things I would normally keep hidden. In a way, it seemed that he could get away with a lot more than I can. He talked about his feelings, wore Brooks Brothers, smoked Marlboro Lights, drank beer on stage, and talked about what I refuse to discuss publicly: my relationships. It was by remodeling myself into something completely foreign, and in some ways crafting the anti-pop performance, that the complexities of “the model” began to unfold. For someone known as much for her image as for her music — and this has become my model — the presence of Jo in no way eradicated my spirit from the stage. I was still ever-present, and, in fact, more myself than ever. Jo had a clean slate. Jo had no past or future to answer to. Jo existed only in that moment, as I chose for him to.

By remodeling the “model artist,” “model citizen,” or “supermodel,” we can liberate the present. The transformation detaches the model from any universal paradigm and allows him or her to reinvent perspective in a pure, unattached moment. Within the different archetypes of our psychology, which part of ourselves can tackle an obstacle with more honesty or strength? Is it a farce to transform? Or is it an injustice to “the model” to treat him or her as a prototype? How will you remodel yourself and discover which model is best for today? Use every ounce of potential you have, raise revolution against what people expect of you, and tell the world this is not a rehearsal. This is the real me. And listen up, ‘cause it could be the most honest incarnation yet.