4 Fashion Statements after Our Own Heart

The music lover can’t go wrong these days, an age when there’s no accounting for taste and the styles of music have grown so varied, so fast, the recording and playing devices have gotten so much more amenable to suit everyone’s needs - that it’s hard to imagine a space inside this dimension of ours where a [insert genre here] buff can’t listen to his or her mix. Also in step with this spectacular growth and openness is a tolerance like never before as regards the stunts pulled by our beloved music idols.

Whether you’re watching live gigs on YouTube via your charter internet, replaying concerts on EPIX or actually getting into the groove in the mosh pit, you can be sure that you’ll be treated to some sort of fashion(?) bonanza or horror show when the performer is, say, Lady Gaga.

However, most of us living in the now with such gusto tend to forget she wasn’t the first to use her appearance to shock, to draw eyeballs and set tongues wagging, or to make a statement. The list of forerunners is actually pretty long and so, we venture a prediction, will the roster of names following on Gaga’s coattails. Or fur tails.

4. Björk’s notorious swan dress she wore out of pure love for the bird at the 2001 Oscars, drew so much fire it even has its own Wikipedia page! So, in the wake of that MarjanPejoski-designed disaster, it is mind-boggling to see others try to pull a similar fast one on the fashion police - like Daphne Guinness did when she showed up at the 2011 Met's Costume Institute Gala in a white, feathered and crinolined Alexander McQueen. It must have been a fashion statement… we just need to figure out the message.

3. At the 2010 Scream Awards, singer M.I.A. made quite a splash when she appeared in a burka - her eyes throwing proud glances around through a slit in the garment that covered up everything else, save for her high-heeled feet and velvet-gloved hands. The fashion pick was arguably meant to shed light on the State-mandated burka bans that were infringing rights left and right around Europe at the time.

2. Next up, ex-Moloko vocalist Roisin Murphy has always been a bit cuckoo in her choice of garbs, but the lower-half of a bird she wore as a hat for the 2008 British Fashion Awards took the cake. And then, there was the pink tutu she wore over her shoulders to, presumably, hide her baby bump - taking the age-old practice of masking the inherent beauty of womanhood farther than no pregnant woman had dared, or thought to before.

1. Number one on our list is Lady Gaga herself, who, as it turns out, doesn’t always just put on the craziest outfit for the fun of it - the meat costume she sported for the 2010 VMAs was her way of alerting us to our rights, “I am not a piece of meat,” as she curtly put it on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

Nowadays, it seems that just about everyone can be construed as making a point if what they prance around in is out of touch with reality - but, really, most of us just choose to wear ties made of tactical nylon because they’re cool. Either way, the time for worrying about what others think is, thank the stars and starlets, behind us.