The MET Gala 2010: Lady Gaga left as a legend.

[asana15 16,648]

They arrived to put on a show and left as legends.

William Norwich recalls witnessing a star being born with Lady Gaga at the Met Gala.

(William Norwich is a writer, editor, and video and television reporter. Currently the editor for fashion and interior design at Phaidon Press, he has also written and edited for The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, Town & Country, Architectural Digest, and New York magazine. )

In 2010, Gaga was the new, big thing. I’d met her a year or so prior, when she’d stopped by Vogue wearing, for daytime, an exquisite white floor-length slip dress and a Philip Treacy headpiece with feathers spelling out “Vogue.” So I knew she wasn’t messing around.

Oprah Winfrey hosted that year, and I sat with Michael Kors.

Gaga arrived with a small entourage in the late afternoon, but wasn’t at dinner. By around 9, the wine was running out and she was still nowhere to be seen. The museum president, as I was told later, went to fetch her. Still more time passed, and this wasn’t a hang-out type of crowd. The decorator, a talented man named Raúl Àvila, started to panic; in a room of a thousand people, every American and European designer, he saw the one woman he thought could maybe talk Gaga onto the stage: Oprah. He didn’t know Oprah, but he went and leaned over to her and said, “I’m so sorry to bother you. We need you to please go talk to Lady Gaga.’’

Oprah agreed, and backstage she discovered Gaga and her group in a prayer circle. And Oprah, being Oprah... It’s like God at your door. So Gaga was comfortable telling her what was going on. She said she found herself incredibly anxious about performing in front of all these people at the Met, because growing up she’d been a student nearby, at the Convent of the Sacred Heart. And she used to smoke and carouse with her schoolmates in the bushes behind the museum. And it was just all too much.

I was told that Oprah, in her cut-the-crap Oprah way, soothed her, but basically said, “Get out there. You’re a pro now. And the Mayor of New York is waiting for you to perform.” Which apparently worked because Oprah introduced Gaga that night, and explained, “The reason we are delayed is because Lady Gaga and her team were backstage praying. Because she understands that what they are doing is more than just art. This is somebody saying to the world, ‘Be the best that you are.’”

And so what Gaga represents, Oprah went on to say, is the best in all of us: the identity of the American woman and her ability to look inside, and not say, “I want to be more like you,” or “I want to be more,” but rather, “I want to be more of myself.”

And then Gaga came on and did her thing. And she was extraordinary.

https://vmagazine.com/article/rsvp-lady-gaga-prada/

[GypsyBabe 22,836]

The nostalgia 

[LaLa 19,519]

Our sweet girl 

Is this the only picture we have of her non-performance look?

[Twitter 14]

They knew talent the moment they laid eyes on her. 

[ZiggyZiggs 30,056]

wow 

[James Gibson 3,471]

Damnnn she became such an icon so early in her career 

And how breaking the expectations of her not to attend the red carpet when she was the outfits queen

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"She said she found herself incredibly anxious about performing in front of all these people at the Met, because growing up she’d been a student nearby, at the Convent of the Sacred Heart. And she used to smoke and carouse with her schoolmates in the bushes behind the museum. And it was just all too much."

Oh woah, that kinda explains why she avoided the Met gala like the plague for half a decade after that. My course right now is focussed on who has access to museum spaces and how that affects and is affected by curators so this article is total catnip in a weird way. We had a whole discussion about the Carters at the Louvre, of course, but it's really interesting, in hindsight, to randomly come across an article where a journalist asks Gaga why she chose the Guggenheim for her perfume launch and she's like "well, I went to the Guggenheim every day after high school." 

“I want to be more of myself.”

Of course Oprah can synthesize Gaga's whole artistic endeavor into the perfect adage  

[Renie 7,909]

Life comes full circle! Look where she is now, she is the star of the show this time. It’s really bittersweet. She should be proud 

[Andrea B 16,733]

I love Gaga so much 

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Why she couldn't walk on the red carpet? I mean, she was performing, Anna didn't trust her yet? 

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What was the theme that year? 

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42 minutes ago, LaLa said:

Our sweet girl 

Is this the only picture we have of her non-performance look?

I think so! Miuccia Prada looks so cute here haha

[Brie Candy 18,642]

I am emotional 

[weed 72,973]

it really hits me reading older stories how one-of-a-kind she is.. like 1 year into her career!!! only ONE year, and she did soo much, commanded soo much respect and attention. Imagine the MET Gala waiting on anyone just one year into their career, it's crazy

[Galagala 4,606]

That Bad Romance performance is one of my fav.