Lady Gaga, fashion tech pioneer
Lady Gaga in her fashion tech outfits, since the beginning of her career
While Lady Gaga has just posed for Paper Mag as a cyborg for a photo shoot inspired by Sci-fi, back on the glam tech surprises concocted by the American singer, since the beginning of her career.
By Ludmilla Intravaia
Her album Chromatica may have been postponed due to Covid 19, Lady Gaga is nonetheless present in the press for the promotion of her new opus, for instance in Paper Mag, where she metamorphoses into a Ghost in the Shell cyborg, in the lens of Belgian photographer Frederik Heyman (more info in this Boudoir Numérique paper here).
Cover of Paper magazine Transformation 2020 : Lady Gaga issue, by photographer Frederik Heyman (©Frederik Heyman for Paper Mag)
A serie of pictures in the purest fashion tech tradition to which the American singer has accustomed us, over her media tribulations. Animatronics, 3D printing, optical fiber and even drones ..., Lady Gaga is without question the high priestess of technological glam. The proof in images below.
One of Lady Gaga's most well-known fashion tech accessories is her iPod glasses, fitted with two LCD screens from Apple's portable digital music player, seen in particular in her Poker Face music video, released in December 2008 in the United States (see below).
The media coverage of these iPod LCD glasses having attracted the attention of the Polaroid company, she was crowned artistic director of the brand in 2010. On January 6, 2011, she presented a range of photo products, co-signed by her, during the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, including sunglasses with integrated camera and screen, inspired by these famous iPod glasses.
In 2007, Hussein Chalayan makes a hit and manages to bring fashion technology to poetic art level, with the six animatronic models of his collection One Hundred and Eleven, transformable according to the mouvements of radio-monitored cables. A show noticed by the soon famous Lady Gaga in the process of finalising the album which will boost her to glory, and appropriately named The Fame, in 2008. The Living Dress, inspired by Hussein Chalayan's animatronic collection, will therefore operate its servo-engines on the Monster Ball Tour stage, the second tour of the star from 2009 to 2011. Technically, the dress was made by Adam Wright, british specialist in animatronics who had already worked on Hussein Chalayan’s collection. The dress, also designed with designer Vinilla Burnham, in collaboration with Jim Henson's Creature Shop, the visual special effects company founded by Jim Henson, the puppeteer of the Muppets, made its first appearance on stage on February 24, 2010, at Liverpool, England. Discover it in the video below.
In 2013, the year of the release of her ArtPop album, Lady Gaga set her sights on two dresses made by 3D printing. The Anemone dress, producing soap bubbles and the Parametric Sculpture dress were born from the collaboration of Studio XO, a London fashion technology laboratory with TechHaus, the technological department of Haus of Gaga, the artists' collective, founded in 2008 and dedicated to the image of the singer, including her costumes and clothes. The dresses were manufactured by Materialize, a Belgian 3D printing company.
Below, watch a video of Lady Gaga in the Anemone dress in 3D printing, on September 1, 2013, in London.
In the video below, Lady Gaga talks about the Parametric Sculpture dress, printed in 3D, on November 10, 2013, in New York, during the ArtRave party, organized the day before the release of her opus ArtPop.
During this party, Lady Gaga took off in the Volantis flying dress, powered by drones, also created in collaboration with Studio XO and its co-founders, Nancy Tilbury and Benjamin Males.
“Do you want me to charge you up?” Lady Gaga is obviously greatly amused when the humorist Alan Carr suggests to rummage under her skirt in order to recharge the battery of her iPad corsage equipped with an Apple tablet on the set of his famous show Chatty Man. The star is laughing from under her optical fiber whig as her host jokes with her, a charger in hand, eventually not so bewildered by the situation incongruity. Below, watch the extract from the show, dated December 6, 2013.
Watch Lady Gaga's musical performance during Chatty Man, below.
Finally, on February 5, 2017, Lady Gaga appeared, during the Super Bowl halftime show, against the background of the American flag, formed by 300 Intel LED Shooting Stars drones. The video is here.
* Continue reading about Lady Gaga and fashion tech with the following Boudoir Numérique papers :
- Lady Gaga, fashion tech high priestess, on the cover of Paper Mag