Here we go again: Gucci and Lady Gaga are shoving each other aside like second cousins squabbling over family things.
We’ve already seen Lady Gaga and Gucci do battle.
Not long after it was announced in September that the artists would each collaborate on a capsule collection under the label’s “Night From the Muse” collection, Gaga showed up in a Gucci gown. That dress was a look, a white bodice with an empire waist and square sleeves that nearly took on the torso of Lady Gaga.
By the end of the year, the songstress called out the brand when it didn’t timely replenish her wardrobe in a video clip for “A-YO.”
Gaga added that her 2017 performance in Venice, where she dressed as a man, was meant to be a statement against the “transphobic” way of dressing.
“I didn’t want to look like a sex worker when I came on stage,” she said in the video. “I was so disgusted and upset that women have to dress this way. To me, to look like that isn’t sexy.”
How did Gucci respond? It made a pretty spot-on statement about solidarity with those who spoke out against it in a similar way that Lady Gaga also spoke out in support of transgender artists by having performances modified with models who could have been transgender. Gucci closed the season with the first transgender model in the official company archives, the Guardian reported.
In the run-up to Sunday’s Grammys, Lady Gaga was still talking about her intention to get political during the show. Once the G-Men’s rain came down, she didn’t mention any of it, except to call up Matt Damon at the end of the show to invite him to a Lady Gaga birthday party and give him some advice on weed.
In her interview with Variety magazine, it also came up that the actress won a lifetime Grammy in 2002, seven years before Gaga came into existence. And she wouldn’t be accepting the award either.
When it was announced in September that the musician was collaborating with designer Alessandro Michele on the capsule collection, Gaga made an appearance on the Gucci Instagram account, wearing a Gucci gown.
In the photo, Gaga is wearing another Gucci dress and ends up in a Pucci pouf attached to the dress’s waist. (Gucci later posted a picture of Gaga wearing a different Gucci dress with the pouf, to which it added in the caption: “We kept the woman, [but] of course the work holds its own.”)
Now Gucci is selling the gown on its web site for $1,750. And Gaga is releasing a new, decidedly more casual collection of “performance costumes” on her fashion label, Maison Gaga.
The line does include some of her previous Gucci looks, including what she wore when she made an appearance on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.”
But it also features a serious black sheer jumpsuit with gold-sequined collar that she sported in a New York Times interview in December. Gucci is trying to find the same level of perfection in its own designs that Gaga’s label supposedly does, like those of Christian Dior, that it deems important in its “catwalk experience.”
The press release for Gucci’s new capsule line for Gaga says the fashion house has been a “valued and essential partner” to her in “innovative and creative ideas” that have helped transform her into a “fashion icon.”
And in a statement, that same statement reveals that Gucci expects the partnership to lead to two more collections and more collaborations.
As Gaga said, she did not understand the fashion house’s initial strategy, which she said “gave a strong message of disapproval” for her and the transgender community.
“I didn’t have the communications or empowerment to be able to speak about it and say, ‘That’s not OK,’” she told Variety. “It’s important to me that I reach out and say this is what I did, but I didn’t need your help to do it.”