In her distinctive, theatrical, and always dramatic style, Lady Gaga marked the end of an era. At The Grove, a shopping center in Los Angeles, the pop icon thrilled the audience with a performance that symbolized a funeral procession. Accompanied by brass music and the dark tones of her Mayhem hits, the artist arrived at the AMC theater with 40 performers for the premiere of the concert film Apple Music Live: Lady Gaga Mayhem Requiem. This unique performance announced the release of the album recorded in January during an intimate performance at Los Angeles’s Wiltern Theatre. Mayhem Requiem features completely new arrangements of songs from her 2025 album Mayhem, reinterpreting the familiar sound through a dark, gothic aesthetic and stripped-down piano passages.
For this farewell to the Mayhem era, Lady Gaga chose a dramatic creation from the Givenchy haute couture collection for the Fall/Winter 1997/98 season, the second collection that resident enfant terrible Alexander McQueen designed for the Parisian fashion house at the time. Gaga, a great admirer of McQueen’s dark signature, appeared at the symbolic funeral procession in a red and black creation reminiscent of traditional Spanish flamenco costumes, with a dark twist, of course. But her choice was by no means based only on her fondness for McQueen’s eccentric aesthetic. Namely, the dress Gaga wore to wave goodbye to one part of her musical opus is part of the second collection McQueen designed for Givenchy, which, after its debut in bright and golden tones, was met with mixed reviews. His vision, and especially the sources from which he drew inspiration, were considered controversial by many. The Eclect Dissect collection was presented at the École de Médecine (the Faculty of Medicine in Paris), and the talented designer found inspiration for the collection in the story of a fictional 19th-century surgeon and collector who travels the world, collecting exotic objects and women, then “disassembling and reassembling” them in his laboratory. Models walked the runway like ghosts created by the scientist in his laboratory, accompanied by dramatic music and ominous lighting, while the creations were composed of a patchwork of cultures, Spanish lace, Japanese kimono, Scottish tartan, and even taxidermied animals. Through this dissecting and reassembling, McQueen at the time delivered a kind of critique of haute couture, and for Gaga this archival creation carried beautiful symbolism: it was the final touch to an entire journey during which she dismantled her 2025 pop album and reassembled it in the form of a dark requiem.