Joycelyn Tibwell: Lady Gaga Pal Lady Starlight Recalls Their Bargain Costume Days

Thứ Hai, 30 tháng 5, 2011

Lady Gaga Pal Lady Starlight Recalls Their Bargain Costume Days

'We stuck to the dollar bin and panties,' Gaga confidant tells MTV News of their old-school creative crafts.
By James Dinh, with additional reporting by James Montgomery

Lady Gaga
Photo: MTV News

If there's one way to pay homage to Lady Gaga, it's by dressing up as the pop phenomenon in one of her many signature costumes. Little Monsters did just that when MTV News invited a select few to our studios to watch "Lady Gaga: The After-Show," our special live stream on Thursday night, where, following the airing of "Lady Gaga: Inside the Outside," we spoke with a few of the entertainer's close friends and collaborators.

From Gaga's one-of-a-kind red-laced VMA look to the barely-there hazard-tape outfit from the "Telephone" video, Little Monsters came decked out in their own Gaga gear. Among Mother Monster's close confidants, one who knows a thing or two about crafting outfits from scraps includes her longtime friend Lady Starlight.

After admitting that she just visited Michaels the other day, Starlight told MTV News' James Montgomery about their bargain-bin costume days. "Well, we didn't basically have any money, so we'd go to the dollar store," she said via Skype. "We didn't go to the $2 bin because that was too expensive. We stuck to the dollar bin of panties."

With a few crafts in hand, the duo went to craft store M&J Trimming and picked up the tool that held the outfit together — literally. "We would take this thing called Gem-Tac, and we literally would have it in our bags in case anything went wrong or we needed to make a costume on the fly," she said, adding, "Gem-Tack, dollar panties, something shiny — done."

Asked if Gaga has changed as a person or an artist since experiencing fame, Starlight was quick to deny any difference, citing the "fact that she can be friends with the same people that she was friends with before she was famous."

Lady Starlight was the center of one story during the MTV Lady Gaga documentary, which described one of their many shows at the Lower East Side's Rockwood Music Hall in New York.

"This was, like, super-inexpensive, but nobody on the Lower East Side was doing anything even remotely like it," Gaga says of her early performance show sets. "In fact, it was kind of uncool to be doing it, so it became cool because we were the only people doing anything like it. We would plug in all these crazy party favors, and we would throw glitter, and we would dance in these matching bikinis that cost us $4 to make. I got dubplates pressed in Brooklyn with my beats on them, so [Lady Starlight] would spin the dubplates."

What is your favorite Lady Gaga outfit? Tell us in the comments.

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