Lady Gaga Once Used Bus Seat Material to Make Her Dancers’ Outfits

Lady Gaga has been known throughout her career to wear outlandish outfits, and over the years, the Grammy-winning singer established herself as a fashion icon. But fashionable doesn’t always mean expensive, and in the past, Gaga and her team have had to put together looks with little resources and a lot of heart.

Lady Gaga wore unforgettable outfits early in her career

Many of Gaga’s most memorable fashion moments came early in her career. She was a rising pop star that brought something new to the table, and owned her individuality in everything she did.

One of her first big fashion moments was when she wore a dress made entirely out of meat to the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards. The meat dress was instantly iconic and remains one of Gaga’s signature looks.

Gaga’s streak of memorable looks continued into 2011 and the era of her Born This Way album.

Lady Gaga’s dancers’ outfits for her Grammy performance were made out of bus seat material

At the Grammy Awards in 2011, Gaga performed her hit song “Born This Way,” the lead single off her album of the same name. In the three days leading up to the performance, Gaga lived inside of a plexiglass egg and wanted to have matching latex outfits designed for her dancers.

Latex is an unforgiving fabric to work with, but Gaga didn’t care. She looked back at her and her dancers’ outfits in a 2021 interview with British Vogue.

“I was very particular about the way the fashion looked for this performance, insomuch as the night before the performance, I said, ‘The fashion’s wrong, we don’t have it, we need it to be latex, we need nude latex,’” she said. 

“If you know anything about looking for latex, years ago it was very difficult to find latex in any other place other than a sex shop,” she continued. “Where we found this latex was a bus company had latex that they were using to cover the seats of their buses, and we found the latex and we asked if we could buy it from them. So everybody’s fashion that’s made here was made from the fabric of seats for a bus.”

Lady Gaga used to wear the same outfits because of financial necessity

Even though she became known for serving several different unforgettable looks, Gaga generally had one simple image in the early days of her career. Her look often consisted of large sunglasses and a hood, with the latter being a tribute to Grace Jones.

But she didn’t wear the same style of outfits because she wanted it to be her signature look. It was actually all she could afford at the time.

“I wore probably one of three different outfits for about five years straight because that’s what I could afford at the time,” she said. “I wanted people always to recognize me. So this was my initial iconic look.”