The decision to put Lady Gaga on V’s cover wasn’t a hard one. It began when Stephen Gan, editor in chief and creative director, was mulling cover options with photographer Mario Testino. Then he saw Gaga’s graphic video for her pop hit “Poker Face,” and he knew immediately. “We wanted someone new and fresh that kind of embodied pop culture today,” Gan says. “I just sent [Testino] that link to Gaga’s video and sent him some of her music. I said, ‘There’s no body else.’” The next step came at the show for Marc Jacobs' Fall/Winter collection, when he saw a pink hooded coat come down the runway. “I said, ‘This exactly what Gaga should be wearing’—and it was exactly what was Marc was saying.” For V’s cover, he put Gaga in the coat, along with a peel-off version of Jacobs’ blue and pink peel-off glasses. “I remember saying to myself: This is the artist we’ve been waiting for,” Gan says.
Mario Testino / V Magazine issue #61
It may look like the inside of a hard drive, but Gaga is actually wearing one of her own designs. These are sunglasses from Haus of Gaga, her new line. “You know, the glasses, the hair, the glasses, the tan–I’m known for that,” Gaga told V. “So we just made me übertan.” And because everything else about the shoot was outrageous, hairstylist Oribe told The Daily Beast that he “wanted to keep her hair simple and graphic.” He added: “I achieved the look with a few hair pieces." But her real signature is a pair of crazy sunglasses. She may be taking the world by storm with her music, but, according to Gan, “she’s probably single-handedly keeping up the whole eyewear business right now.”
Mario Testino / V Magazine issue #61
“Mario wanted me naked all day long,” Gaga told V of her shoot with Testino. “It was my stylist, Nicola, who kept sneaking in the designer stuff… But Mario, he really understands me, and he said, ‘I want this to be about you. I don’t want it to be about the clothes.’” And it shows: Gaga posed in nothing but a poufy pink confection, which consumed her head and body—and saved her from getting a bikini wax.
Mario Testino / V Magazine issue #61
Gan picked Gaga for the fashion issue because she matched the magazine’s DNA. “There is that downtown-New York, slightly underground-but-about-to-burst-into-the-mainstream quality about her,” Gan says, “And all the while being totally obsessed by fashion.” And though she may be lacking clothes here, Gan explains that come Fashion Week, Gaga is the celeb every designer will want to dress. “She’s an artist that six months ago couldn’t borrow clothes from anyone,” he says. “This season, everyone is throwing clothes at her!”
Mario Testino / V Magazine issue #61
Gaga arrived on the set of the shoot, straight off the plane from the Toronto MuchMusic Video Awards. “We haven’t slept,” she admitted. “We just got off the plane and came here. It’s like, ‘Get some orange juice and coffee, motherfuckers! Let’s get to work!’ It’s not every day you get to shoot with Mario Testino.” And on the shoot that day, the mood was inspired. “It just felt like a fashion moment,” Gan says of the spread. “It was a fashion moment that had to happen. And it had to happen through the lens of Mario Testino.”
Mario Testino / V Magazine issue #61
