The LA Times has a curious article about Lady Gaga’s meat dress and the taxidermist who preserved it for the Rock and Roll of Fame. Yes, a taxidermist, the type of guy who usually preserves deer’s heads or other dead animal parts for display, the horrible hunting trophies that totally disgust me.
Anyway, Sergio Vigilato, a taxidermist from Burbank CA, said that the 35-pound meat dress was unusual work for him (no kidding!) but not the weirdest assignment he has ever done.
He said he was contacted by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum 2 months after Lady Gaga wore it at the MTV Video Music Awards, and his first reaction was:
‘Where is the dress? This thing could have maggots by now, I understood them to say it was in a room with air conditioning. I said make sure it's in a freezer.’
Good for him it had been kept on ice and totally frozen, but when he defrosted it, the dress had begun its decomposition and basically was stinking!
It took him a month to clean and preserve the meat (he was paid $6,000) as he treated it with bleach, formaldehyde and detergent to kill bacteria. But there was another challenge, he had to make the piece of meat look like the original one made by artist and designer Franc Fernandez and stylist Nicola Formichetti. There is no way, the thing was still looking like red meat after the bleach-formaldehyde treatment, so he dyed it dark red, and glued the meat to a mannequin outfitted with a pattern cut.
The dress is now on display and part of the ‘Women who rock: Vision, Passion, Power’ exhibit, which will tour other museums ‘if it holds together’, said Jim Henke, chief curator for the Hall of Fame.
And what was Vigilato's weirdest job he has ever done? ‘A movie producer with an elephant-skin bar had him create a soda dispenser from the elephant's penis’
And Lady Gaga thinks she is an eccentric freak?