G.U.Y

It’s no real secret that the fashion and music industries are, now more than over, heavily dependent on one other. Take the recent slew of bi-annual Fashion Weeks and look at their headlines; Katy Perry pissed everyone off by being drastically late to Jeremy Scott’s Moschino debut, Rihanna divided her time between a trolley dash in the aisles of the Chanel supermarket and countless Instagram snaps with Olivier Rousteing and, finally, Versace’s couture collection gained more column inches from Lady Gaga’s appearance than any of the looks shown on the runway. The love between Gaga and Donatella is clearly mutual; ever since Donatella loaned out archive pieces from Gianni’s vaults to accompany Lady Gaga’s ‘”Edge of Glory” music video, the friendship has resulted in the popstar fronting Versace’s latest campaign as well as devoting a song on her ‘ARTPOP’ album to Donatella’s unattainable wealth, sass and general brilliance. It seems natural that Gaga’s recently-released G.U.Y video seems, via the use of a floor-length platinum wig, a visual extension of the advertisement campaign and more like a fashion film than any traditional music video. The Lady is known for her outfits; here are five of the best.

PERFORMANCE

It generally goes without saying that, when successful, performance art has several intentions. Whether it be to visually convey a story, argue a point or act as a social commentary, the real defining element of performance art is that it has a purpose. It is true that the same cannot be said of fashion – sometimes, collections are designed purely for commercial reasons, with no underlying intention. However, if the clothes are the paintings then the runways are the gallery; it is here that designers can free their inhibitions and utilise every medium at their disposal to create surroundings which represent their collection. Some designers (thankfully) use their creative minds to build sets and props which visually reference their clothing, resulting in interactive experiences which challenge our perceptions in the same way that art does. This season, there were two designers that combined their set with their surroundings to fantastic effect, reiterating the idea that fashion shows are still one of the most powerful mediums for self-expression.

ANGELS & DEMONS

There is dispute as to whether it is this collection (video link here) or ‘Plato’s Atlantis’ that should be classed as McQueen’s last – although S/S 2010 was the last that he completed, this posthumous collection was around 80% complete at the time of the designer’s death. I have chosen to take a further look at it both for reasons of posterity and also because the pieces revealed a more elegant side to the designer’s palette, taking classic works of art and superimposing them onto a series of breathtakingly beautiful garments. It’s perhaps ironic that McQueen became truly fascinated with religion and its concepts of the afterlife just months before his suicide, and although the posthumous collection has no official title it is known as ‘Angels and Demons’ – a title which fits the collection perfectly.

PLATO'S ATLANTIS

After symbolically collating the last 15 years of his work with his ‘Horn of Plenty’ collection, ‘Plato’s Atlantis’ (which can be seen in full here) saw Alexander McQueen draw a line under his past and move firmly towards the future. Utilising technology to its full potential, the designer announced a collaboration with renowned fashion photographer Nick Knight which would see the entire show streamed live on the photographer’s influential website ‘ShowStudio’ – a move which would take the notoriously exclusive world of the fashion show and smash it apart, broadcasting this usually private event to an audience of millions. It was only when international superstar Lady Gaga tweeted that the show would also debut her new single that excitement reached fever pitch, leading to the servers crashing immediately from overwhelming demand and representing a new peak in the designer’s career.

POP ART? OR ARTPOP?

‘POP ART’. The term has been used so often that people are no longer quite sure what it was ever originally supposed to be – is it  a movement, is it a concept, is it a hybrid or is it just a neologism? I myself used to be sceptical of the term, my knowledge of the movement extending only to the Campbells soup cans of Andy Warhol and the cartoon prints of Roy Lichtenstein, an American artist whose fabulous exhibition at the Centre Georges Pompidou truly ignited my interest earlier today.

Lichtenstein Poster

The exhibition was a walk-through of Lichtenstein’s fascinating career – his flirtations with cubism, his years of ‘image duplication’, his use of abstract materials and even his comic-strip commentaries on wartime America. However, despite all of this, the beginning of his career was the era which caught my eye the most; the time period in which he was intrigued by the brutally direct slogans and ubiquitous imagery of the advertising industry. Everyday items such as coffee cups and hot dogs became staples of American culture through advertising, therefore becoming (due to America’s worldwide dominance) representations of ‘pop culture’. Lichtenstein created sculptures and paintings of these everyday objects in three primary colours – pillarbox red, lemon yellow and marine blue (and, on occasion, green). The striking impact of the graphic paintings was made to imitate the eye-catching statements of American advertisement, a commentary on the way that advertisers would shove the ideal of ‘the American dream’ in the face of their prospective consumers.

'APPLAUSE' - THE OUTFITS

It is no secret that Lady Gaga is beloved by the fashion industry. Designers such as the late Lee McQueen, Donatella Versace and Hussein Chalayan have all clamoured to dress her in the past, and she is good friends with elite fashion photographers such as Nick Knight and Inez & Vinoodh. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that Gaga's new video for her single 'Applause' is a fashion orgy of spectacular proportions. Featuring instantly recognisable designs by Gareth Pugh, John Galliano and Maison Martin Margiela, the singer pairs haute couture with D.I.Y creations from her own 'Haus' of Gaga in order to craft a truly memorable aesthetic. This blog post details some of the most eye-catching designs from the video alongside the collections that they came from.