Lady Gaga and haute couture are like the peanut-butter-and-jelly combo of showbiz: they go together perfectly no matter the time of day or the occasion. That probably explains why the headline above isn't even half as shocking as it would be if it were about anyone else.
When you show up to one of the highest-end MTV awards wearing an entire dress made of raw meat – with a matching fascinator on your head and matching shoes! – you've set the bar for yourself pretty high up. Lady Gaga did that back in 2010, and ever since, she's been working hard to hone in on that image of herself as a provocateur, an avant-garde artist doing it for the art and the shock factor in equal measure.
With that in mind, it should come as little surprise that her most recent choice is a brutalist, almost cyber-sygilistic look that is part fashion, part automotive design, and all haute couture. It's a dress by Argentinian designer Selva Huygens, created for his eponymous Berlin-based fashion house as part of the [BFAM] series.
[BFAM] stands for Brutalist Functional Art Movement and relies heavily on the integration of discarded auto parts and materials in haute couture pieces, or their upcycling as street furniture and objets d'art.
Photo: Twitter/Lady Gaga
For those readers not familiar with the term haute couture, we should note that it's different from high fashion and designer clothing in general. Haute couture is the most showy, outrageous, and visionary form of fashion, and it qualifies as art. As such, it comes across as impractical and downright ugly to the casual observer, especially if considered from the perspective of its applicability for daily wear.
That out of the way, this SELVA dress is perhaps the highest-profile and most daring instance of upcycling. Established carmakers have long started to consider this aspect of their business, repurposing car parts or leftover materials for the fashion segment, but with a more practical approach. This dress is upcycling turned haute couture.
It's an all-white off-the-shoulder pleather gown riddled with reinforced eyelets and oversized zippers, featuring what looks like the modified bumper of an older-gen Mercedes as a collar of sorts. Other SELVA outfits with the same kind of statement collar allow the wearer to put their arms through the added round holes, creating the illusion of brutalist angels.
In Gaga's case, the dress bore comparisons to a Transformer caught mid-transformation. Gaga herself is a fan of this type of outlandish look, so no wonder she was happy to model it on the black carpet for the premiere of her concert docufilm Gaga Chromatica Ball, now streaming on HBO. She also showed it off on social media, where she dropped a hint that showing it off is all she'll do. Read: don't ask her what car part that is.
"On the red carpet I told them it was a car part," Gaga wrote in the caption to her post. "They said what kind and I said I don't know, I'm not a mechanic."
Even Mother Monster has her limits.
On the red carpet I told them it was a car part. They said what kind and I said I don’t know, I’m not a mechanic.
Elena has been writing for a living since 2006 and, as a journalist, she has put her double major in English and Spanish to good use. She covers automotive and mobility topics like cars and bicycles, and she always knows the shows worth watching on Netflix and friends. Full profile
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