The London designers defining the look of Lady Gaga
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Lady Gaga is the cultural phenomenon of the 21st century; since she released her first album,
But Lady Gaga does not do this alone. Her prodigious creative output is the result of intensive collaboration with a team of hand-picked designers, DJs, artists, make-up artists, choreographers, dancers and video directors, many of whom are from London's avant-garde fashion scene and who are collectively known as the Haus of Gaga. 'I have a small bunch of really creative people who make up the Haus and they work with me on my sets, my costumes, my jewellery and the concept of Gaga. It's my team and we come up with crazy ideas and make them happen,' explains Lady Gaga. Its inception was inspired both by Bauhaus, the German design school founded by the architect Walter Gropius, and Andy Warhol's Factory, the shifting collation of creatives and crazies with which the Pop Artist surrounded himself. Indeed, during Lady Gaga's embryonic years she was obsessed with Warhol, dressing like him, reading and re-reading his books and highlighting pert-inent passages. It was probably during this time that, as well as gaining a deeper understanding of the philosophy of fame and spectacle, she was inspired to surround herself with like-minded spirits who she could inspire, feed off and carry with her on her journey.
Lady Gaga was born 24 years ago as Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, the eldest child of Italian-American parents. Her father, Joseph, was a self-made internet entrepreneur (he now manages Gaga's publishing company, House of Gaga) and her mother, Cynthia, a housewife. The family lived on Manhattan's Upper East Side and suffered privations so that their two daughters could attend the exclusive private Catholic school the Convent of the Sacred Heart (Paris Hilton is an alumna). Stefani was musical from the off, learning piano at the age of four. She was also a born performer, always playing the lead in school productions (and insisting on being referred to, backstage, by her character name; just as today she is known by everyone as Lady Gaga). She was a clever child, popular and kind.
School was followed by NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, where she studied music but dropped out at 18, feeling that her creativity was more honed than that of her peers. She left home and formed the Stefani Germanotta Band, performing in clubs on the Lower East Side. It was a time of struggle and mayhem: Stefani was living in a tiny flat, her musical career was not taking off, and she acquired a debilitating cocaine habit, doing lines at home, alone, off her Bible. After reaching a personal nadir, she was sent by her mother to stay with her grandmother in Virginia where, after a long sob, she determined that she would pull herself together and show the world what she was capable of.
It was not long after this that she changed her name to Lady Gaga and met Matt Williams, a designer, photographer and DJ in a restaurant in LA. Williams became Gaga's on-off lover, but more importantly, her creative collaborator. This was when the foundations of the Haus were laid. 'I hired him, he designed album covers and clothes for me, and he's the inspiration for the beginning of my fashion,' says Lady Gaga. Williams (whom Gaga has nicknamed 'Dada') is now the creative director of the Haus, responsible for tours and videos and celebrated for creating the Disco Stick, a sort of unicorn's horn with a big white light that Lady Gaga brandishes at every possible opportunity. As so often in her life, she sacrificed her personal life for her art: 'Dada is quite brilliant and we were crazy lovers, but I stopped it when we discovered what a strong creative connection we had. I didn't want it just to be about careless love.'
Although there is no official date for the genesis of the Haus, it was first credited as an independent entity on the sleeve notes of Gaga's 2008 album The Fame. 'Haus of Gaga refers to Gaga's inner circle of stylists and creatives, which includes fashion stylist Nicola Formichetti, creative director Matt Williams, choreographer Laurie Ann Gibson, who created routines for most of Lady Gaga's videos including 'Poker Face', and London-based stylist Anna Trevelyan, who assists Nicola. But there are many others and it is something that is always in flux – depending what Lady is doing and where she is,' explains Atsuko Kudo, a Japanese couture latex designer based in Islington, who is an occasional member of the Haus and has designed one-off outfits for Lady Gaga including a scarlet Victorian ensemble for her Royal Variety Performance last year, when she met the Queen, and the red latex nun's habit worn in the video for Gaga's latest song, 'Alejandro'. 'I just called all my coolest art friends and we sat in a room and I said that I wanted to make my face light up. Or that I wanted to make my cane light up. Or that I wanted to make a pair of dope sunglasses. Or that I wanted to make video glasses, or whatever it was that I wanted to do. It's a whole amazing creative process that's completely separate from the [record] label,' says Lady Gaga.
Formichetti, along with Dada, is the other central player in the collective. He introduced Gaga to London's underground fashion scene, of which she has become such a champion. Half-Japanese half-Italian, Formichetti lives between Tokyo, New York and London and is the creative director of the magazine Dazed & Confused, fashion director of Vogue Hommes Japan, a stylist for brands including Uniqlo and was recently named creative director of the Clarins-owned French fashion label Thierry Mugler. He met Lady Gaga on a photo shoot in 2009 and the two formed an instant connection. Since then he has been responsible for dressing her in everything from that controversial meat dress by Argentinian designer Franc Fernandez, to sparkling costumes by Giorgio Armani. 'Nicola has always been a brilliant stylist whose energy is infectious. I've seen him in New York pushing down doors to elevate Lady Gaga,' says Mandi Lennard, head of brand consultancy Mandi's Basement, who has known Formichetti since he started working as a stylist after years at the avant-garde Soho boutique Pineal Eye. 'He really is a visionary,' says another fashion insider, 'and has helped Gaga enormously by introducing her to all these young designers. It is a symbiotic relationship. He is very nice and gentle and she is very grateful to him, but of course the relationship has benefited him, too, and increased his profile.'
'I love him, my friend the genius, my collaborator, more than any piece of clothing or closet I possess. But don't tell him I said that – he'll die. He picked them all out,' says Gaga. Most crucially, Formichetti introduced Gaga to London's designers, initiating them into the Haus. Fashion designer Gareth Pugh, accessories designer Fred Butler, prop and set designer Gary Card, milliner Nasir Mazhar, Kudo, sculptor Alex Noble, wig- maker Charlie Le Mindu the list of British Haus-mates is ever-growing. Membership of the Haus is of great benefit to a young designer, as Butler, who designed a pale blue geometric headpiece featuring a telephone handset that appeared in the video for 'Telephone', discovered. The prop stylist and designer's career has rocketed, she has given talks on design at the Barbican and has had requests for props from the singer Kelis that she's too busy to fulfil. 'It has given me an instant international platform that is unparalleled. The attention I receive is very bizarre, from Lady Gaga fans stalking me on Facebook, to people calling me asking for replica hats. She has singlehandedly elevated the profile of all the emerging designers in London and that is a great credit to her,' says Butler. Namalee Bolle, editor-in-chief of London's hipster fashion magazine SuperSuper, explains the Gaga effect: 'She goes out of her way to represent the clothes in the biggest, brashest, most media way possible. All the young designers were almost waiting for her, ignored by the pop industry who found them too OTT for mainstream tastes. London was Gaga's avant-garde wardrobe in waiting.'
At the moment, 50 per cent of the Haus is from London. Hackney designer Card, who previously worked with Louis Vuitton and Stella McCartney, made skeletal costumes for Gaga's Monster Ball Tour, customised her 'Keytar' – a guitar-style keyboard – for her Glastonbury appearance last year and recently completed a sculpture for the Lady Gaga Paris exhibition (which also contains work by Viktor & Rolf and Thierry Mugler). 'The turnaround is a lot faster than most people I work with,' says Card. 'If she asks for something it usually has to be in the States in a matter of days, so I have to start work on a Gaga commission immediately. It's a great privilege to be involved when I can. Usually after a show a whole group of us who have contributed to the performance go backstage and hang out with Lady Gaga. She's always very humble and sweet.'
Lady Gaga's life is her work: 'I am Lady Gaga 24/7 – I have no day off. You have to live your art. You won't ever catch me in sweatpants and a hoodie. Even in bed I wear my pearls and high heels.' As a result, the members of her Haus have become her closest confidantes as well as her collaborators. They travel together, party together and work together. 'They are my best friends. It's a real bond and relationship, and that's what I think music and art is about,' she says. 'They are my heart and soul. They believe in me, and they look at me like a mother and daughter and sister, with pride and love.' After shows, Gaga and her entourage like to visit grotty disco dens where she will drink whisky or red wine and smoke cigarettes, sometimes accompanied by her famous 'pet tea cup' a fine bone china cup and saucer that, for a time, went everywhere with her. The collective creative process is ongoing, and ideas are constantly ricocheting among the crew. 'We just allow ourselves to be very stupid with each other, and then you get ideas like sunglasses made of cigarettes,' explains Jonas Akerlund, who directed the video for 'Telephone'. When they are not on tour the Haus sometimes congregate in a warehouse in downtown New York to come up with ideas for forthcoming projects, and for a long time Gaga didn't make a profit because all her money was reinvested in the Haus. 'Money is completely boring to me. It means nothing, except it feeds my art. Every penny I make goes back into the Haus of Gaga. I do make a lot of money, but I don't want to own flash cars. I want to make Lady Gaga the biggest star in the world, and that takes a lot of work and creativity,' she says.
In fact, Gaga believes so completely in her 'Haus' that it is now an established brand in its own right, with its own merchandising sold on her website, a range of T-shirts in Topman, and even an App that features news and blogs on the Haus members, along with Gaga tour dates. But, of course, as with any collective, there is a dark side and once-close relations have been known to sour. Destiny's Child producer Rob Fusari was an early collaborator who helped to mould Gaga and introduced her to influential music business people. He was also her lover. But Lady Gaga responded robustly when he sued her for $30 million last March, claiming he was entitled to a 20 per cent share of her production company's earnings. The case was dismissed by the Supreme Court in August. 'Nobody made me, nobody f***ing made me who I am today,' said Gaga in Vanity Fair when questioned about the Fusari affair. 'How dare anyone that treated you like dirt on the bottom of their shoe try to turn around and tell you that they made you? The minute that you have a glimpse of sunlight on your eyelids, they made you that mascara.'
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Still, for all the loyalty she shows to her inner circle, and that they show to her, there are detractors. In a New York Magazine article this year it was claimed that she had changed her mobile phone number so that her old friends could no longer get in touch with her. 'You know, she used to send out texts in New York inviting everyone on the Lower East Side to her shows, and not too many people would come,' said Brendan Sullivan, also know as DJ VH1, who collaborated with Gaga in the early days. 'And after the vocal coach, dieting, exercising, and all the rest, now everyone wants to go. She has gotten annoyed by that: "Why didn't they come before?" You know, once she blew up, and everyone wanted a piece of her, we stopped calling her Gaga. We started calling her Stef again.'
But whatever she is called, Lady Gaga's passion for fame and performance is such that the Haus of Gaga bandwagon will keep rolling, with its London members ensuring ever more fabulous extravagance and eccentricity.