Lady Gaga‘s Meat Dress Designer Reveals Gruesome Preservation Process, Ongoing Harassment
LOS ANGELES, CA – The designer of Lady Gaga’s infamous 2010 meat dress, Franc Fernandez, detailed the unsettling process of creating adn preserving the controversial garment in a recent interview, revealing a months-long effort involving freezing, re-stitching rotting flesh, and even managing online harassment campaigns. The dress, worn by Gaga at the MTV Video Music Awards, remains a cultural touchstone, sparking debate about art, celebrity, and animal rights.
Fernandez recounted a frantic hope that Gaga would actually wear the dress after its creation. “I just remember it happening so fast. More than anything, it was like, ‘I hope she likes it, I hope she wears it,'” he said. Following the event,the dress was placed in a trash bag and stored in his parents’ freezer for approximately two months,alongside the matching shoes,while a plan for its preservation was devised.
The eventual solution involved taxidermy. Fernandez explained, “After she wore the dress, I went to pick it up the next day and put it in a trash bag and carried it out…we decided what to do with it. And this idea came up about taxidermying it. I took it back to my friend’s house and at that point it had rotted a bit. It was kind of gross, but we put masks on and we sewed it back in place.”
The dress’s impact extends beyond a single awards show moment. Fernandez monitors its cultural legacy through Google Alerts. “Ther will always be an article about the 20 most shocking dresses of all time – björk in her swan dress or J.Lo in the Versace dress – fashion moments that are shocking that ultimately are not that shocking. They’re just a moment in time.”
However, the creation of the dress also drew intense backlash.Fernandez received aggressive emails from animal rights activists, some of which he reported to detectives. He proactively created both pro- and anti-meat-dress Facebook groups, secretly moderating both to observe the discourse. He also described encountering bizarre conspiracy theories online, including claims the dress was made from “dead babies,” and noted the early appearance of the letter ”Q” associated with the QAnon movement.
The refrigerator used to store the dress during the preservation process, located in a downtown Los Angeles loft, remains a perhaps historic artifact. “Well, he moved out,” Fernandez said with a laugh. “Landlords probably still have that fridge. I should’ve asked.That would be a fun piece to have. I guess.”
