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"  Nicola Formichetti, the 34-year-old stylist turned designer responsible for ordaining Lady Gaga a high priestess of the fashion world and subsequently masterminding her awe-inspiring look both on and off stage, would like to point out that the iconic pop star, though a best friend and ongoing collaborator, is not actually his muse. &amp;quot;My muse is the digital world,&amp;quot; Formichetti says, settling into a black leather sofa to watch the final edit of a video he created with Gaga and the famed fashion photography team of Inez Van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin for his second Paris women&amp;#039;s fashion show as creative director at the house of Mugler. The video, featuring a phantasmagoric Gaga breathlessly disciplining the audience\u2014&amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t fuck with Mugler,&amp;quot; she intones\u2014is muted in contrast to Formichetti&amp;#039;s splashy women&amp;#039;s debut six months earlier, when Gaga herself strutted the runway in a peekaboo top paired with a black latex skirt, trailing three-foot ponytails and a dragon puff of cigarette smoke.  For spring/summer 2012, his sophomore act, Formichetti kept the focus on the clothes: provocatively sliced dresses in beige and white leather and jersey that are purposefully tamer and softer but still hold a hint of the sizzle that Thierry Mugler made famous throughout the &amp;#039;80s with his peaked-shoulder glamazon silhouettes. &amp;quot;Last time we did a big show, but people didn&amp;#039;t know that we sold a lot\u2014even those shoes that the models kept falling in!&amp;quot; Formichetti says. &amp;quot;This time, I wanted to show people that we make clothes.&amp;quot; Formichetti&amp;#039;s sense of the theatrical and otherworldly is serendipitously in sync with the founder of the house, whose retirement in 2002 left the brand operating without a name designer until 2005, when it closed the ready-to-wear line and focused only on its lucrative fragrance business. The designer&amp;#039;s unconventional approach to his new role, in which digital savviness and tweet-friendly showmanship trump fashion&amp;#039;s stuffy exclusivity, has resuscitated the brand. (It&amp;#039;s not his first foray into merch\u2014he has also served as fashion director of Japanese chain Uniqlo since 2006.) But despite his lofty new position\u00AD, Formichetti\u2014like Gaga\u2014is loyal first and foremost to the fans who got him there, so he blogs live before, during, and after his runway shows, allowing folks at home, including 100,000-plus Twitter followers, a preview before any fashion editors, journalists, or live streamers know what&amp;#039;s on the runway. &amp;quot;It was definitely a taboo,&amp;quot; Formichetti concedes of this season&amp;#039;s unscripted preshow peep show, &amp;quot;but the people were going nuts!&amp;quot; He also launched the aforementioned Gaga video the morning after the show on MSN in more than 300 countries. &amp;quot;Yes, the [runway] show is great, but for me it&amp;#039;s not the most important thing,&amp;quot; he says, grinning. &amp;quot;The people at home need to enjoy it just as much.&amp;quot;  Such unorthodox methodology is an ongoing theme for Formichetti, the result, he says, of &amp;quot;feeling like an alien&amp;quot; growing up in Japan and Italy with an Italian father and Japanese mother, who both worked for Alitalia and kept the household very intercontinental.  In 1995, at age 18, Formichetti moved to London, promising his parents that he was going to study architecture, but instead spent his nights clubbing and his weekends working at Vivienne Westwood and, later, the edgy Soho boutique Pineal Eye. His own discerningly scruffy\u00AD style\u2014the beard, the black wardrobe, the perfect widow&amp;#039;s peak\u2014soon caught the attention of editors at indie style mag Dazed &amp;amp;amp; Confused, where he began to make his mark by styling his slacker skater friends in high-fashion shoots. &amp;quot;By doing the unexpected and mixing polar opposites,&amp;quot; he says, &amp;quot;you find something new.&amp;quot; Or you hit the jackpot, as Formichetti did when he hunted down Lady Gaga some three years ago, when she was blooming as a pop sensation with her hit &amp;quot;LoveGame&amp;quot; but was still under the fashion radar. &amp;quot;No one wanted to put her in a magazine back then,&amp;quot; he remembers. &amp;quot;No one had tapped her.&amp;quot; But Formichetti admired her raw, original style and called her up for a V Magazine cover shoot. &amp;quot;We were just like two kids going, `Oh my God, look at that!&amp;#039;\u2009&amp;quot; Formichetti says of the high-end designer labels on set. &amp;quot;Then I was like, `Let&amp;#039;s shoot you naked!&amp;#039; Afterwards she said I was just as crazy as her.&amp;quot; The next day, at Formichetti&amp;#039;s suggestion, Gaga wore a futuristic metal orbit hat on Ellen. The oddball headgear created an online tidal wave, setting their affair in motion. Now Gaga doesn&amp;#039;t go to the grocery store (assuming she does, in fact, go to grocery stores) or step onstage without the sartorial imprint of Formichetti, her full-time fashion director since 2009. &amp;quot;My assistants are with her at all times,&amp;quot; he says.  Their partnership offered Formichetti an original platform to refresh the MTV airwaves with visionary high styling, starting with the iridescent, reptilian Alexander McQueen dresses and &amp;quot;armadillo&amp;quot; shoes he dressed Gaga in for her 2009 &amp;quot;Bad Romance&amp;quot; video. &amp;quot;No one had really been dressing well since Madonna,&amp;quot; Formichetti observes with typical directness. &amp;quot;There was no fantasy or art anymore.&amp;quot; This season, Formichetti mined the MTV of his teen years, including the high-class vixen costumes\u2014fringed microshorts, motorcycle-handlebar bustier\u2014Mugler did for George Michael&amp;#039;s 1992 &amp;quot;Too Funky&amp;quot; video. &amp;quot;It was more than fashion,&amp;quot; he recalls. &amp;quot;It was entertainment.&amp;quot; Formichetti, too, exists in that overlap. On his ELLE shoot, when the designer stands in front of the photographer, cigarette smoke enveloping his face, I can&amp;#039;t resist snapping a photo. &amp;quot;If you don&amp;#039;t tweet that right now,&amp;quot; he warns me, &amp;quot;you&amp;#039;re crazy.&amp;quot;  What the exclusive video here! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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