Meet the man behind the Lady, Nicola Formichetti

Remember the 16-kilos raw meat dress Lady Gaga donned at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards?

Of course, you do.

Now, meet the man behind that and the pop superstar’s other ground-breaking fashion moments.

Lady Gaga and Nicola Formichetti at Gaga's Workshop, Barneys New York in 2011. (Getty Images)

Nicola Formichetti, better known as Lady Gaga’s stylist but also the creative director of French fashion house Mugler, was in town (for the first time) this week, naturally for the biggest fashion event of the year in Singapore – the Audi Fashion Festival 2012.

Tickets for the opening Mugler show were sold out in a jiffy, but we did get to sit down for a chat with the 34-year-old star style creative.

Now also fashion director of Uniqlo and Vogue Hommes Japan, Formichetti practically worked his way up the clothing industry with zero fashion training, unless cleaning windows at a London store in his early twenties counts.

In between his jumping from interview to show rehearsal to interview on his big night, Yahoo! Singapore caught up with the Japanese-Italian designer to ask him about our city, his famous friends Lady Gaga and Rico a.k a Zombie Boy, and his ongoing and upcoming lines.

You only landed in Singapore three days ago but how do you like it here so far?
It’s a shame I have to leave tomorrow but I’m definitely, for sure, coming back. I have a completely different impression of (Singapore, now). I thought Singapore was gonna be very cold and boring, from what I heard, but it’s so exciting. I associate here really well with me because I’m half Asian and half European, it’s like it’s my town. Very modern things and very traditional things all mixed up and it’s super high-tech, lots of green… It feels like it’s a mixture of Tokyo and Beverly Hills!

How do you like working with Singaporeans then?
I met so many cool people. Kids are great, and the tai tais, I love. I love people who love fashion. Sometimes in Europe, people try to be cool. They think it’s not cool to be crazy. People here are interested and for me, it’s very, very fresh because you don’t see that anymore in Europe.

Do you think Singapore has what it takes to become one of the leading fashion capitals?
I think we’re in such interesting time here – lots of companies and supporters of the fashion industry, fashion in general. It’s great, but that’s also why we have to take risks now. If not, it’s just gonna become a city with boring things, which could happen here. But I’ve seen too many cool things, we really have to push it and I wanna be part of it.

We’re sure you get inspired almost every other day. Tell us, what’s on your radar now?
I’m very interested in what’s happening right now. I’m of course interested in the past and the future but I try to live (in) ‘now’. And at the moment, I’m in Asia, all these months. I was in Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Bali, and Singapore. My collection was about Asia, it’s about me becoming an adult and I feel more confident, I feel proud to be Asian. So anything (related to) Asia, I’m kinda obsessed with at the moment.

I wanna know all about young designers here. I went to shops and it’s pretty good stuff, I just want more people to see it so I’m gonna start tweeting and blogging more about it.

And of course we’d wanna hear you go on about your best friend – Lady Gaga.
Gaga is just great. For me, I don’t consider her a celebrity – she’s an artist, performance artist. I don’t like working with celebrities, I’m not interested in celebrities. For me, they’re great for what they represent but as a designer or stylist, I wanna collaborate new things with people. Most of the celebrities have their own image already so they just go to the shop and buy their clothes.

What was it that you saw in Lady Gaga that no one else could then? (For those who didn’t know, Formichetti is often credited as the stylist whose vision turned a not-so-famous Lady Gaga three or four years ago into the infamous icon she is today)
Look at her, do I have to explain? She was so inspiring, fresh and raw and sexy and I was like, finally – it’s about time.  Madonna was so cool and I was very inspired by her but since Madonna, there was nobody – twenty years – for me, personally, to get excited about pop culture, fashion, to take avant-garde fashion into a performance. She was completely right so I’m glad that she exists.

That wicked meat dress – just how’d that come about?
We did a shoot for my magazine, Vogue in Japan and we made a bikini out of meat.

Lady Gaga poses in her first raw meat ensemble on the September 2010 cover of Vogue Hommes Japan.

So we actually did a meat bikini first, couple of weeks before, and then we were talking about what we’re gonna do for this event. We felt it’d be funny to just do a dress version of the meat bikini and that was it. It’s always a continuation of what we do and it was an inspiration to surrealism and American beef. It’s more like an ultimate surreal art… a little bit tongue-on-cheek, just saying ‘Look, we’re having fun.’

By any chance, will we see you again at Gaga’s upcoming concert in Singapore?
I’ll be back to Paris with Mugler so, not that possible… But I want her to wear Singapore designers when she’s here so I’ve asked someone to get me some young designers’ info and I’ll try to see if there’s anyone cool… I saw some already.

And we miss Zombie Boy (a.k.a Rick Genest, a.k.a Rico, a.k.a that guy with the mad skull tattoo on his face and all over who Formichetti hunted down to make him the face of Mugler last year).

Canadian model Rick Genest aka Zombie boy presents a creation by Mugler in 2011. (AFP photo)

Will we see Rico working with you again soon?
Of course. It’s like he’s part of our family. He wasn’t a marketing thing or anything like that. I really, truly got inspired from how he looked. I found him on Facebook two weeks before the show. I had no one in mind then, we were just gonna do a presentation and I wasn’t really unhappy… and then I just found him on Facebook and that’s it. I really feel very, very happy for him. He was homeless, he had nothing. And because of what we did in fashion, now he’s acting, he’s doing all these projects, he’s making money and he’s helping other homeless youths in Montreal, Canada, and supporting them. It’s so beautiful that from fashion, we actually helped someone, and other people. I’m so glad that we did that.

You were misquoted on a few occasions (for suggesting there’s no room for “fat” or “old” people in fashion) earlier… do you try to be more careful with your words nowadays?
No. I was going to and then I thought, ‘You know what? I don’t wanna be fake.’ I wanna say what I really feel and if I get misquoted, so be it. I don’t wanna just read you a press release, I can do that, you know. I wanna tell you what I really feel at the moment, right now. That’s why I’m not very good at these things and people might take it differently, which is sad… I’m a little bit more aware now but I’m not gonna change what I think.

Tell us a little bit more about your own line.
I’d love to do my own line but next year. I wanna do something new, I wanna change the way we wear clothes. It’s gonna be very technology and very future-fabrication. These things take time so I’ve started already. But at the moment, I’m mostly focusing on Mugler and my fun project “Nicopanda”.

Last but not least, what’s your personal must-buy at the moment?
Nicopanda rings. (Wiggles his fingers)

Formichetti flaunts the different variations of embellished Nicopanda rings on his fingers. (Yahoo! photo/Melissa …

By the time you’re done reading this though, the legendary man would have flown to Beijing to open his pop-up store with luxury department store chain Lane Crawford for “Nicopanda”, or “my little panda thing”, as he likes to call it.

“It’s my own match to Hello Kitty, it's me. You see my hair?”

Nicola Formichetti and ‘his little panda thing’: See the resemblance? (Yahoo! photo/Melissa Law)