Lady Gaga Explains Herself

Her outrageous style is well documented. She has served as a mascot for the house of Mugler, and she will receive an icon award in June from the Council of Fashion Designers of America. But if these were qualifications for magazine work, Cher should have been named the editor of Harper’s Bazaar decades ago.

Nevertheless, when Gaga e-mailed Stephen Gan, the editor in chief of V, asking for the job, he gave her a shot.

“She’s got a lot to say,” he said. “She’s got her own very personal, very special viewpoint that comes from a well-informed place. She is almost Vreeland-esque in her analysis and critique of fashion.”

In her debut column in V’s summer issue, Gaga takes pains (in 1,445 words and two footnotes) to establish her credentials: “I myself can look at almost any hemline, silhouette, beadwork or heel architecture and tell you very precisely who designed it first, what French painter they stole it from, how many designers reinvented it after them and what cultural and musical mo