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"  Strip away the pink and blue extensions, the bras rigged with whipped-cream cans, and other frills of her cartoonish persona and another side of pop star Katy Perry emerges: a sophisticated femme fatale. &amp;quot;A super power woman,&amp;quot; she faux growls at a bistro in the Los Angeles enclave of Los Feliz.  &amp;quot;I have multipersonality disorder\u2014in a very good way, of course\u2014when it comes to my fashion choices,&amp;quot; she says of her ability to slip from party girl to polish. &amp;quot;When I first started playing around with my look, it was more of a Dita Von Teese pinup thing.&amp;quot; But the burlesque look is too high maintenance. &amp;quot;Dita&amp;#039;s really dedicated,&amp;quot; she says.      Today, Katy, 26, is wearing little makeup other than eyeliner, her black hair loose and a flowery Topshop corset-style top, jeans, and sky-high black pumps. She&amp;#039;s driven herself in an Audi sedan and seems more like Katy Hudson, the pastors&amp;#039; daughter who grew up in the lower-income end of Santa Barbara, than the international phenom she&amp;#039;s become.  To the world, Katy sings radio-friendly anthems like &amp;quot;California Gurls&amp;quot; on one of the year&amp;#039;s best-selling albums, Teenage Dream, which features her naked on the cover with little more than a wisp of a cloud covering her bum. She&amp;#039;s marrying British comedian and actor Russell Brand, and her 2010 exploits include getting banned from Sesame Street for a cleavage-baring Giles Deacon outfit. Both Katy and Brand have been in the center of a supernova this year. &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s no slowing down, my God, no,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re at the highest pace right now.&amp;quot;  Katy and her big sister, Angela, her maid of honor, have just wrapped up the last meeting before the big day. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m up to my hairline in planning. It&amp;#039;s a lot, especially when you&amp;#039;re a woman of detail,&amp;quot; she says with a sigh. Not to mention the challenge of maintaining total secrecy. She and Brand often find themselves in Spinal Tap\u2014worthy situations: &amp;quot;We go through kitchens, wear disguises.&amp;quot;  The two met in 2009, thanks to a kissing scene in this past summer&amp;#039;s Get Him to the Greek that got cut. They reconnected later that year at the MTV Video Music Awards, and by New Year&amp;#039;s Eve, Brand was proposing under a blue moon in Jaipur, India. Modern celebrity being what it is, Katy caught wind of his plans. &amp;quot;I saw it on Google [Alerts]. The press was like, Sorry, Katy, if you&amp;#039;re seeing this, but ...&amp;quot; The two seem like they are from different worlds, but it clearly works for them. Brand, a recovering alcoholic and reformed heroin and sex addict, has made a career out of mining his hard-partying past for comic relief. He suffered abuse as a child and is estranged from his father\u2014a far cry from Katy&amp;#039;s upbringing at Christian school and camp with her sister and younger brother, David. &amp;quot;We are like the Three Musketeers\u2014actually the Three Stooges,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I feel really blessed because of where I come from.&amp;quot; Brand, whose sober and spiritual quest includes a friendship with guru Radhanath Swami, fits right in, says Katy, who has an unmissable JESUS tattooed on her left wrist. &amp;quot;I always knew I wanted a great man of God, someone who was going to be an inspiration for people and also be a lovely husband and father,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re at different places in our lives, but we can still grow together. He&amp;#039;s thought-provoking, articulate, a real advocate. I also definitely wanted to have a laugh. I have all that in him.&amp;quot;  He&amp;#039;s already made a mark on her life, literally: They have his-and-hers tattoos on their inner arms reading GO WITH THE FLOW in Sanskrit. His vegetarianism is another matter. (Brand gave up eating meat at 14.) &amp;quot;I unfortunately still crave chicken McNuggets and bacon, which is the meat candy of the world,&amp;quot; she says.  The couple are decorating two new love nests: a place in New York and a vintage-Hollywood-style estate near Los Angeles&amp;#039;s Griffith Park, where they ride their bikes. Katy has already painted the three-car garage pink and turned it into a closet. &amp;quot;It looks like a stylist&amp;#039;s dream,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;My friends love it. They never have to shop.&amp;quot;  Brand is also inspiring some of that chart-topping music. Katy wrote the ballad &amp;quot;Not Like the Movies&amp;quot; with him in mind. &amp;quot;The song is an encouragement to others. They don&amp;#039;t have to settle for anything besides spectacular,&amp;quot; she says.  Spectacular is something Katy has been working for ever since she was discovered singing in church and began working on her first gospel-rock album in Nashville at age 15. Two years later, she left Santa Barbara and headed to Hollywood.  Katy adopted her mother&amp;#039;s maiden name to distinguish herself from Kate Hudson, Goldie Hawn&amp;#039;s daughter, and hit the radar with 2008&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;I Kissed a Girl.&amp;quot; Despite their nice girl&amp;#039;s naughty streak, Mom and Pop Hudson have proven to be extremely supportive, even popping up in the video for &amp;quot;Hot N Cold.&amp;quot; As Katy explains, &amp;quot;My parents are very quirky, eccentric. They have their own world.&amp;quot;  Such paradoxes in Katy&amp;#039;s tale both endear her to fans and enrage foes. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m kind of a good girl\u2014and I&amp;#039;m not,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m a good girl because I really believe in love, integrity, and respect. I&amp;#039;m a bad girl because I like to tease. I know that I have sex appeal in my deck of cards. But I like to get people thinking. That&amp;#039;s what the stories in my music do.&amp;quot;  She is part of a new wave of pop stars\u2014among them, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, and Fergie\u2014who are reinstating the exuberant celebration of outlandish wardrobes, the wackier the better. But she says her fellow quick-change artists are more sisters than competitors. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re all unique. That&amp;#039;s why we all win and we all can exist. People don&amp;#039;t want just vanilla. They want 31 flavors. I couldn&amp;#039;t do what Rihanna does. I couldn&amp;#039;t do what Gaga does. They can&amp;#039;t do what I do.&amp;quot; Her particular flavor tends toward the saucy. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ll tell you about my boobs and fashion,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;It can be hard to wear those looks&amp;quot;\u2014like the ones shown here\u2014&amp;quot;because they&amp;#039;re best on people who have no curves or thighs. I don&amp;#039;t have a Kate Moss body, but I&amp;#039;m very proud and happy with mine.&amp;quot; Yet, at 13, she pined for a breast reduction. &amp;quot;I had really bad back problems and was a little bit thicker. Then I grew up and lost the baby fat and said, &amp;#039;Hey, this isn&amp;#039;t all that bad.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; That is a matter of debate with the parents who had Katy&amp;#039;s duet with Elmo pulled from Sesame Street because of her d\u00E9colletage. &amp;quot;Well, thank God I was wearing Giles!&amp;quot; she says cheekily. &amp;quot;If there had been a problem on the set, they would have said it to me at the outset. We had many different options.&amp;quot; She came back with a sketch on Saturday Night Live in which she squeezed into a red Elmo T-shirt, the neckline slashed to showcase what all the fuss was about. &amp;quot;How do you respond otherwise?&amp;quot;  Right now, Katy is enjoying all of her exposure. &amp;quot;Honey, I am the chief of my train,&amp;quot; she says with a California-girl smile. &amp;quot;If critics want to hop on board, fantastic. There&amp;#039;s plenty of room. The KP train is fun.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.harpersbazaar.com/fashion/photography/a606/katy-perry-interview-1210/>