Thank goodness for Lady Gaga! The bonkers blonde from New York has single-handedly rescued a week that on paper should be one of the high points of the entertainment calendar, but instead was fast becoming a car crash of disappointment. Punctuated by the Oscars at one end, and the start of Paris Fashion Week at the other, the dreary, fag-end days of February should be a final raging of all that glitters to carry us into a new Spring. It should be a week of glamorous visual fantasies - of unbelievable clothes on unbelievable beauties - that we mortals can gorge on amongst our very grey reality.
Lady Gaga's runway photoshoot
But what we got instead was a dark mirror to a dull age of anxiety. The red-carpet outside the Hollywood Kodak theatre groaned with actresses prettily but boringly styled to offend nobody while Paris imploded with the ugly implosion of its most revered designer, John Galliano.
The party felt like a complete damp squib until the platinum blonde vision of Stefani Germanotta, otherwise known as Lady Gaga, arrived on Wednesday night, making her catwalk debut at the Thierry Mugler show.
Her white latex dress and giant lampshade hat over fake pigtails was practically conservative compared with the raw meat dress she sported last year, although it is still not a look in any way likely to be replicated on the high street. Yet, that is exactly what made it so brilliant and makes Lady Gaga, who in just over a year has conquered the world of pop, a joyful blast of fresh air in these fearful times.
The last time a pop star made such a splash on the catwalk was a decade ago when Victoria Beckham turned out for Maria Grachvogel in a pair of hot pants and knee-high boots. It was a crowning moment for the girl from Herefordshire made good but it was an outfit that told the story of the Noughties - how glamour was something that could be attained by anyone, whether through a bottle of St Tropez fake tan or a Louis Vuitton handbag. Indeed pop stars, from Kylie Minogue to Lily Allen, looked just like us, only with better stylists and personal trainers. Even Madonna was more often to be seen in a sensible pencil skirt and carefully ironed hair rather than ripped fishnets or her old conical bra.
But the arrival of Lady Gaga once again has saved us from the tyranny of the safe, the attainable, the mundane, or in the case of Galliano, the downright depressing. The extremity of her look is not designed to make her more beautiful than us mere mortals - it is meant to look unlike anything we have seen before and that going on the constant rate of her costume changes - we will see again. It is meant to inspire us with the idea that anything is possible.
And just as importantly, she is funny. Like a cross between Derek Zoolander and Dr. Frank-N-Furter from the Rocky Horror show, Gaga's style extremity embraces and celebrates the ridiculousness of high fashion.
Despite being awarded three Brits last year to almost unanimous acclaim, I don't think Gaga is a musical genius sent to save the world. Her latest single Born this Way is like a speeded-up rehash of Madonna's Express Yourself and a lot of her songs have a histrionic, sledgehammer quality to them that makes them sound brash and hollow in the cold light of day. But they are all written and sung by her with an impressive operatic commitment and they celebrate pop music as a global life-force, with choruses literally big enough for the world to sing along, too.
And clearly, as she stalked down the catwalk on Wednesday night, arms aloft, she adores being that beacon. No matter how bonkers she might seem, there is an infectious joy to Lady Gaga's delight in being able to stop us in our tracks, to make us gawp and make us sing.
While her fashion extremity seems daring after a decade of dull tastefulness, Gaga stands in line of our most beloved, larger-than-life entertainers - Grace Jones, Freddie Mercury, Elton John and Liberace - performers who saw it at their duty to be exceptional for us.
