The Best Lady Gaga Outfits Of 2011

There could be no Best of 2011 here at MTV Style without Lady Gaga. (Claws UP!) A true chameleon and total renegade style-slaya of the highest order, Mother Monster makes our jobs so much easier every time she steps onto the stage or street. Every moment of Gaga's life is a style moment, as you little monsters know, and Mama loves to turn it UP and OUT from head-to-soul-to-toe with every single ensemble. This year alone we've witnessed everything from pantlessness and icicle eyebrows to an Armani zombie and futuristic Paco Rabanne fashion parade. It was tough to choose just ten looks (wooo-eeee we were stuck in the deliberation chamber forEVS trying to lock this bizness down), but we've narrowed down Gaga's best style moments of the year. We think you'll agree that even though practically every outfit is Best Of-worthy, that these beauties have something extra special.

FIRST LADY OF VINTAGE VERSACE

Lady Gaga in Taiwan for Lady Gaga Day.
Photo: Getty Images

It's no secret that Lady Gaga loves Versace. Earlier this year, she told a German TV program that she was having a love affair with the brand and had been given access to rarely seen pieces from the archives thanks to Donatella Versace. She rocked out several multi-print, hyper-color ensembles throughout the year, but the all-over Versace outfit she wore to celebrate Lady Gaga Day in Taiwan was truly something else. A lovably garish mix of tomato red, loud leopard print, gold buttons, and old skool bell bottom swing pants accessorized with a matching leopard bag, sky high spiked platforms, and a hat that featured a twisted braid of her dual colored hair, this hodgepodge Versace fantasy number was a CRAY-tastic masterpiece.

POST-APOCALYPTIC WHITE SWAN

Lady Gaga wearing Alexander McQueen at the 2011 Bambi Awards.
Photo: Getty Images

Gaga channeled late Alexander McQueen muse Isabella Blow at the 2011 Bambi Awards in Germany. Her McQueen gown transformed her into an elegant swan trapped in a golden acid rain shower as the top half was an intricate array of shimmering doodads that covered her entire head and bodice before giving way to unctuous layers of white ruffled frill. It was a beautiful off-kilter look that had us all gasping for its high-fashion audacity. When paired with that expression and golden fawn, Gaga looks vulnerable and also totally FIERCE.

  CRUELLA CATWALKER

Lady Gaga in Paris on March 2.
Photo: Getty Images

Oh, Gagalicious, you can get away with anything can't you? Look at this see-through cat suit right here. Gaga doesn't care; she'll strut her bare bazooms where and when she pleases with a glass of champers in hand, thank you very much. This shot came after Gaga's appearance on her style guru, Nicola Formichetti's catwalk as he made his design debut for Mugler during Paris Fashion Week's fall 2011 collections. We love the heavily-rimmed eye with a fanciful touch below, red lips, and her gigantic blonde ponytails from the show piled high into buns. Looks like Mama M kept on her nudie panties from the show and topped off this whole Parisian sensuality bomb of an outfit with some thigh-high boots and leath-ah jacket used as an accessory. Bravo, Lady, BRAVO.

PACO RABANNE ALIEN WARRIOR PRINCESS

Lady Gaga wearing Paco Rabanne and displaying her multiple awards at the 2011 MTV EMA.
Photo: Getty Images

Gaga has the power to singlehandedly make a designer's career happen. Or, in the case ofPaco Rabanne, resurrect it. Even though the namesake designer of the line stepped down some years ago, the luxury brand has a new designer at the helm and showed a well-received collection in Paris. But you didn't really hear the name of the house making headlines until Gaga chose to showcase not one, not two, but FIVE Paco Rabanne outfits at the 2011 EMA thereby ushering the house back into the fash-vernacular seemingly overnight. The very next day, everyone wanted to know more about this 40-year-old brand (we even took it upon ourselves to give you a crash course on all things Rabanne). Gaga wore a new version of a vintage Rabanne fish-tail gown from the 1960s and did so with alien green eyes, matching lipstick, and a three-tiered side pony. This gown made our Best Of list not just for its well-heeled nod to the past, but for its otherworldly Barbarella-esque audacity.

JO CALDERONE

Lady Gaga as Jo Calderone at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards.
Photo: Getty Images

Oh, Jo Calderone, you insouciant, chain-smoking, garbled, crotch-grabbing grubtasticness of a manly man, ohhh how we loved ye this year at theVMA's! Besides carrying off a total style metamorphosis that included a short greasy wig with sideburns and makeup that darkened her brows and upper lip, Lady Gaga kicked out a Brooks Brothers suit and messy white v-neck tee with the kind of confidence that only befits overly confident man-folk of the type in which she wished to portray. It's a little scary, this transformation, because it's TOTALLY BELIEVABLE. Did we mention Gaga stayed in her Ralph Macchio, we mean Jo Calderone, persona the entire night?

ANTEBELLUM CHANEL DEBUTANTE

Lady Gaga wearing Chanel Haute Couture at the opening of Gaga's Workshop at Barney's New York.
Photo: Getty Images

So, as the tally now stands, Gaga's worn everything from McQueen and Versace to Paco Rabanne and menswear. What else does that leave us? Oh, yes, CHANEL. For theopening of Gaga's Workshop at Barney's in New York, Our Lady wore not just any Chanel, she wore antebellum haute couture Chanel complete with a voluminous white coat with massive crinoline underneath, black fingerless gloves, a mini Chanel purse with black and white flowers, and a towering ribbon headpiece with a white flower in the middle. We couldn't actually see if she was wearing interlocking C contact lenses (though that would have been rad), but everything about this look screamed Chanel while also screaming ladylike awesomness.

ACID WASH JEAN QUEEN

Lady Gaga signs autographs in a still from the book 'LADY GAGA X TERRY RICHARDSON'
Photo: Terry Richardson/'LADY GAGA X TERRY RICHARDSON'

It was a big year for Lady Gaga overall, and one of the highlights was the mammoth coffee table book, LADY GAGA X TERRY RICHARDSON, which featured 350 photographs shot by Terry Richardson over the course of a year in her life. Apparently, he took over 100,000 photos of her (don't know HOW he narrowed them down) and the result is a peek into moments in Gaga's life that we've never seen. When flipping through this book (which we've done a million times already), it was hard to choose which one represented the best from the insane selection of choices. But this particular one really stood out to us. For one, she's wearing head-to-toe denim, which is unusual. Also, this isn't any jean-on-jean pairing, it's a panoply of ACID WASH. With a not-so-subtle tip o' the hat to the '80s, ripped knees, and black metal groupie booties, we LOVE this look for Our Lady. It takes us back to what we imagine she looked like prowling around the Lower East Side, her blonde peroxide bob, red lips, and Ray Bans commanding attention from the corner of Stanton and Ludlow. Also, her expression in this pic, as she's trying to sign autographs, looks as if she still in disbelief that peeps are this hungry for her, and we like that sense of playful humility.

MOTHER HAIR MONSTER

Lady Gaga wearing a hair outfit in London.
Photo: Getty Images

What's this? Ohhhh, just a giant walking MERKIN out on the streets of London-town. This tip-to-toe hair outfit was such a fashion moment that we had to include it in our Most Outrageous Outfits of 2011 round-up, too. Look at this thing. It's hair GAHHH-LORE. What's that, a hair sombrero? You bettah believe it. Then, there's this merkin dress with flowing brunette tendrils that look like they had the best blow-out ever before being trimmed then attached to this V-shaped wonder. Throw in some green mermaid hair, ubiquitous Ray Bans, black Loubous, and a picture of the Bride of Frankenstein held at thigh-level just BECAUSE, and you have the makings of ZOMG fashion mastery.

'VOGUE'-ER

Lady Gaga on the March 2011 cover of 'Vogue'.
Photo: Mario Testino/Courtesy of 'Vogue'

Oh, HAI. We DIE a million TIMES for this unbelievably beautiful cover. The whole severe pink bob on mint green background with fuchsia cover lines and a hella drapey Greek goddess Haider Ackermann gown has us crying mega magazine aficionado tears at the sheer brizilliance of the March 2011 issue of Vogue featuring Our Lady of GaGAH. It doesn't get any better than this, people! Look at these peroxide brows and wine-stained lips that are bringing this POWER (because this is the "Power Issue") to life even though the arms look purposefully airbrushed to more sinewy proportions, we don’t care because this is GAGA and this is GAGA ON THE COVER VOGUE.

MINT GREEN FAIRY

Lady Gaga out and about in London.
Photo: Getty Images

Last but not least we come to the bookish mint green fairy look that Mother Monster sported on the streets of London earlier this fall. If you've seen her "Marry the Night" video then you're already well aware that "mint will be very big in fashion next spring" as Gaga decreed in a voiceover while she was being wheeled along the ornate corridors of some sort of insane asylum/medical clinic by nurses wearing "next season Calvin Klein." Gaga hinted at this trend with her faint mint green hair piled high in a subdued unicorn bun as well as mint green, wrapped-ankle platforms. The whole look is so much more feminine than we're used to seeing, and we especially like the pastel glitter green on her cheeks, the white baroqueMoo Piyasombatkul glasses, white lace ice skater dress, and pale pink fur stole. If this is the shape of things to come for 2012, we'll hold her to her mint green word. Thus, we encourage all little monsters to start scouring stores for this mint loveliness NOW.