Lady Gaga’s style is synonymous with many things. Most infamously sex, satire and controversial combinations of both. Her style is also tantamount with avant-garde. Lady Gaga’s wardrobe, on and off stage, is a platform upon which young adventurous designers are finding there own way into the spotlight. Rachael Barett and Bryan Hearns are two such lucky, un-expecting designers. Tangent met them both to find out why.

Lady Gaga’s team of producers and stylists are constantly on the look out for the next big thing with a point of difference. Both Rachael Barrett and Bryan Hearns graduate collections, created half way across the world from each other, turned out to fall into that exact category.

Scottish born and bred, London design student, Rachael Barrett, who graduated from London’s Royal College of Arts in 2009, fell into Lady Gaga’s world via the keen eye of her stylist Nicola Formichetti . Formichetti called in two dresses and a rubber bodice and skirt for Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance music video. Lady Gaga then donned another dress for an appearance on the Ellen DeGeneres show, and yet another dress and chef hat in the Telephone music video. She also wore a selection of outfits on her Monster Ball Tour.

So what was the attraction? Silicone of course, though Rachael’s reason for using it in her graduation collection was entirely opposite to the controversial associations that seemingly drew Lady Gaga to it.

An internship at Philips Design the previous summer lead to Rachael’s fascination with the unusual material. “Its ability to work with minimal seams and detail yet form strong silhouettes. It’s this balance that I feel was the strongest aspect of that collection. I understand the material is seen as being bold mostly because of the fetish connotations of rubber clothing, but the quality of this Silicone- its transparency and appearance of ‘lightness’- to me is quite pure, soft and understated.”  Viewed, as a whole the collection is exactly that, a clean manipulation of the human form, using opacity and translucent line to both define and extend it.

Rachael didn’t expect her designs to end up in the most talked about wardrobe in the world, it didn’t even occur to her that they could become costume, it did occur that they could have a really good stage presence though and they did, but Rachael didn’t lose sight of the original modest vision. She is currently freelancing as a creative pattern maker for Erdem and Heikki Salonen and mulling over the potential of her next collection as an independent designer. One thing is for sure she intends on continuing to explore the potential of industrial style materials  within wearable clothing, no matter who deems them controversial.

At the end of the day, it is the audience who are quick to cast the conclusion of controversial upon the material, when perhaps Lady Gaga, like Rachael, simply has a wider scope of vision when it comes to seeing the beauty in the condemned. What could be more avant-garde than that?

Whilst Lady Gaga is strutting round in Rachael’s gear, over in New York yet another fresh graduate designer is about to be catapulted to a new level of fame by the music star.  The director of Lady Gaga’s fan video, to be featured on her next album, commissioned emerging designer Bryan Hearn’s to create garments for the up and coming video. Ga Ga’s team weren’t the first to sit up and take note of this young man.

Bryan’s charmed fashion journey started in LA at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, where the ambitious designer attracted his own fair share of sartorial attention, picking up his first stockist, Echo Park Independent Co-op and being commissioned to design Marie Antoinette style gowns with a rambunctious twist for the latest music video of the Acid Girls, before even graduating. After recently moving to New York to start his eponymous label officially, Lady Gaga (or more aptly her producers) came knocking and Bryan reached yet another landmark point in his young career.

Bryan’s clean, structured shapes are carved from the juxtaposition of a the whimsy and the masculine. He poses a talent for understanding line and the way it works around the body. For Lady Gaga’s fan video these lines will take on an elusive quality, “I am working with leather and straps. It will be a blank of nudity and being covered up.”  If this subtlety sounds a little to tame for the Lady then not to worry, it won’t be, Bryan took his lead from her style. “I love how extreme and stylized she makes her looks Her outfits tell a story, and she is the main character.” Sounds like a catalyst for something landmark indeed.

Bryan hopes this latest celebrity collaboration will bring him, “a wider platform of exposure and hopefully it will fall into the right hands.” Well let’s face it there is no one quite like Lady Gaga to draw attention to her clothing.

Bryan describes his own favourite attention grabbing moment as the Marc Jacobs Spring Summer 2010 launch party show. “She wore an amazing red lace jumpsuit and a g-string. It was so daring and amazing.”

Rachael also admires the star for her heroic fashion escapades, “She clearly has no fear when it comes to fashion, which is refreshing and really inspiring.”
Rachael and Bryan have a few more things in common than just their respect for the star that make them truly ‘Ga Ga’ worthy; the cleaness of their looks and the use of line to alter, exaggerate and enhance form.  But the main thing that they both share is a vision for what is prescient, one that Lady Gaga has championed from the start and let’s face it, “the next best thing,” has a habit of starting with the seemingly shocking.

As the shock softens with exposure, a new representation of beauty is left behind. We are already seeing silicone in a new purified light.