Last year, drug I was whisked off to Omaha, ask Nebraska to work with Lady Gaga on her music video for the single You & I. I had worked with her several times before and she wanted me to design some nails for the story she had created with the song. Fortunately, generic my friend and fabulous make up artist, Val Garland, was there too as was Gaga's long term stylist, Nicola Formichetti and his great team.

The video was shot in the countryside of Omaha with its vast cornfields and beautiful wooden barns. It was also 40deg and humid!! I took a vast suitcase full of 'stuff' and a few ideas in my head. I had the help of a great local nail technician, Judi Wendt and we arrived at a trailer 'village' in the middle of a cornfield and got stuck in!!

The result was a fantasy story created by Lady Gaga and her rich imagination and she acted out a love story of loss and determination and eventual happiness that overcame all adversity!!

 Gaga had walked many hundreds of miles from New York to Nebraska in her designer clothes to find her first love. Along the way she got damaged and changed and tried her best to repair herself with things she found. The nails I made for her were broken and shattered but repaired with bits of metal. Some were held together with a silver wire and others were riveted so they swivelled. The rivets were just normal rivets from a craft store and the wire was held on by a clear gel but designed to lose bits during her 'journey'

She found her first love and he picked up the damaged Gaga and carried her to his laboratory to try to fix her. he tried everything to make her whole.

 Lady Gaga wore a dress made from cork for this scene that was decorated with pins. For her nails I used bespoke Minx that were wood grain and I pierced them with brass pins.

 Her love saved her and changed her! She was changed to a mermaid! He still loved her though.

For this scene, Gaga wore an amazing mermaid tail and had gills in her neck and cheeks. To follow the fantasy, I used latex tubes as her nails with an idea that they could be an 'alternative breathing apparatus'.

 During her transformation, Gaga remembered the time, when she was younger, when she was with her first love in the corn fields of Omaha. She played and sang for him. In this scene, her 'love' was played by Gaga as her alter ego, Joe Caldarone (a character that I witnessed emerge during a L'Uomo Vogue shoot with Nick Knight and also made a special appearance to collect a Grammie award!).

The nails for this were a bespoke Minx that I had made for the Mugler show in Paris that Lady Gaga 'walked' in.

 It was a music video being made and Gaga is a dancer! This is the dance scene with her dancers in the barn.

Her nails were far more in the usual design Gaga wears. There were a very deep blue with silver studs at the base.

The last scene was her wedding. I made nails that symbolised the whole story but Gaga decided to have natural nails. She wore her Mothers actual wedding dress and he Mother had natural nails so this seemed fitting.

The picture compilations with stills from the video are by Gaga Fashionland with thanks