Lady Gaga Opens Santa’s Workshop in Barneys

While Santa's elves couldn't envision a chair made entirely out of hair, Lady Gaga could.

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REUTERS/Kena Betancur

People pass by the display of Gaga's Workshop at luxury department store Barneys in New York November 22, 2011. Barneys is teaming up with flamboyant pop singer Lady Gaga for a Christmas holiday campaign and window display called "Gaga's Workshop," the pop singer's interpretation of Santa's Workshop.

Lady Gaga has worn many large, strange hats over the course of her near-meteoric rise to fame. Now she can include Santa’s little helper on her resume. The performer has taken over both the holiday window displays and an entire floor of luxe fashion store Barneys New York and converted it into her interpretation of Santa’s Workshop.

Every year, tourists line up to see Barneys’ holiday window displays and, this year, there is no doubt that fans will go Gaga. The singer teamed up with fashion director Nicola Formichetti and Barneys’ creative director Dennis Freedman to create four seasonal window displays. But don’t expect elves and candy canes from the outlandish performer. One of the windows contains a boudoir scene fashioned entirely out of hair. Because, nothing says Christmas like a bedroom set made out of hair. According to the New York Daily News, Gaga and her creative partners contacted hair artist (yes, that’s a thing) Bob Recine, who created the entire room — from floor to window treatments to furniture — out of both synthetic and human hair. As Freedman explained to the Daily News, “There is nothing in that window that is not meant to be worn as a wig.”

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The over-the-top performer’s holiday vision couldn’t be contained by four windows. Barneys also turned over an entire floor of their Upper East Side store for Lady Gaga to transform into her version of Santa’s Workshop. The store-in-store known as Gaga’s Workshop is a Gaga-fied mishmash of Willy Wonka, Tim Burton, and jolly old St. Nick. Large cartoonish sculptures by the artist Eli Sudbrack decorate the space with an ominous Gaga spider looming large over the black, white, and pink shop. The fanciful shop features 220 Lady Gaga-themed gifts, including an egg spin toy, flame press-onnails, spike moto gloves, and a Gaga face cookie. Also for sale, according to the New York Times, is a $95 chocolate shoe that is an exact replica of the Alexander McQueen designed armadillo-shaped shoe worn by Lady Gaga in the video for “Bad Romance.”

If you can’t make it to New York to shop in person, Gaga’s world is also available for sale online. Your purchases won’t just be making people on your Christmas list happy. In honor of the special project, Barneys New York is donating 25% of sales from all items featured in Gaga’s Workshop to the Born This Way Foundation. According to the Times, the store hopes to raise over $1 million for the foundation. That’s a figure that would make even Santa Claus proud.

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