Gaga's Meat Dress Just Won't Rot

Photo: Getty Images

A dress cobbled together from raw meat? Meh. Lady Gaga's bloody 2010 VMA look certainly was unusual, but we find her nerdy Avril Lavigne getup at Monday's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" rally in Maine far more shocking. Wearing a mere blazer and tie with oversized Sally Jesse Raphael glasses strikes us as strange for its pedestrian un-Gaganess. After the fashion curveballs the Lady's thrown our way in her short career, a dress with the potential to rot was only a matter of time.

What's more, Gaga's was not the first carnivorous couture we've seen. Jump back five seasons ago to Cycle 10 of America's Next Top Model and you'll find a whole photoshoot's worth of meatwear. The models sported panties, necklaces and tops carved from slabs of beef, set against a meat locker backdrop no less.

Perhaps the most shocking thing about Gaga's Franc Fernandez-designed ensemble is that it's being preserved. Just wait, it gets better. Fernandez told MTV that the meat will be dried until it becomes "jerky." Does that mean it's going to shrink four sizes?

"It won't last, that's the beauty of it," Fernandez said on MTV Style. "When it is brought out again, hopefully it will be in a retrospective, and it will be a different dress, which is the best thing. I like the idea of it changing and evolving into something else. My butcher said I could taxidermy it if I wanted it to stay the way it is, and I didn't want to stay that way. Seems like a waste to keep it that way, than to watch it change."

-- PHILLIP B. CROOK

Previously > Cleaning Haus: Lady Gaga Dominates MTV's 2010 Video Music Awards