Lady Gaga Talks Champagne Tastes and Italian Style

What do Lady Gaga and a French Benedictine monk from the 1600s have in common? Perhaps, at face value, not much. But as Gaga herself sees it, she and Dom Pierre Pérignon, a pioneer of champagne production after whom the Dom Pérignon wine brand is named, do align in many ways. Pérignon dedicated his life to making wine; Gaga has dedicated her life to making great art.

This, in large part, is why Lady Gaga has partnered with the champagne brand Dom Pérignon on a limited-edition collection of rosé wines: Dom Perignon's Vintage 2010 and the Dom Pérignon Vintage Rosé 2006 bearing the Chromatica artist's name will be available for purchase in October. In addition, Gaga collaborated with Nicola Formichetti and the house of Dom Pérignon on a sculpture that will be sold to benefit the artist's Born This Way Foundation. The sculpture, Formichetti tells W via e-mail, features a bottle of champagne encased in gunmetal-like material. "The bottle packaging can be interpreted as a wet dress or the liquid inside being frozen outside," he says. "Bringing the inside outside, through the looking glass—different materials that could mimic liquid such as couture latex gowns."

In addition to the sculpture, Lady Gaga worked with the fashion photographer Nick Knight to create a campaign centered around the musician's "Queendom"—in the images, Gaga appears in larger-than-life costumes: one pink dress with frothy ruffles and another look with geometric material in the vein of Iris Van Herpen's designs.

The first time Lady Gaga drank Dom Pérignon, the artist tells me one recent afternoon on Zoom from her post in Malibu, was right after she released her first album. "I was very, very young in my career," she recalls. "It was ordered to celebrate an achievement for The Fame. I just remember feeling excited that I was drinking a champagne that I never could have afforded when I was younger."

Fast-forward 13 years, and Gaga is well-versed in haute beverages. But she insists she doesn't "know anything about the creation of alcohol," and is therefore not compelled to start her own alcohol line à la Post Malone, who has a rosé brand, or Drake, who makes a tequila. "I think I would have to develop a real taste for understanding the way in which to create my own and be an intellectual in terms of my approach, if that was ever to happen," she says. "I'm not sure that I would give my life's work to the creation of a beverage, but Dom Pérignon has, and I have so much respect for that. It's sort of like why I don't have a fashion line, because I don't know that I could keep up with all the seasons."

Gaga worked closely with Dom Pérignon’s chef de cave Vincent Chaperon to create the campaign images, sculpture, and fashion film released alongside the limited-edition vintages.

"There is such a point of view about creativity and passion and commitment to greatness," Lady Gaga says of the winemaking process, which is unique to Dom Pérignon because the brand uses a special blend of grapes to create the rosé. Together with Chaperon, she participated in a rosé tasting over Zoom and spent time learning about the ins and outs of French wine. Lady Gaga has also recently spent time immersed in another European culture—filming House of Gucci in Italy. She notes that although Gucci is a staple in the fashion world, that movie, which is set to premiere November 24 and co-stars Adam Driver and Camille Cottin, is not necessarily about Italian fashion.

"It's about an Italian family," she says. "I had a strong knowledge of Italian fashion on my own before I did the film, but I would say the film was more of an exploration of what was true for my character—what [Patrizia Reggiani] wore, not so much just Italian fashion houses. She also wore other brands, some of which were French. I spent a lot of time researching, what was the Italian style at that time? What was Italian fashion for her, at that time specifically?"

Gaga is no stranger to an unexpected collaboration—in 2020, she linked with the artists Travis Brothers and Isha Dipika Waliawe to create Chromatica merch in the form of a jockstrap ("We just thought that was really fun, and we loved," she says, laughing), and even collaborated with The Weather Channel to promote her song with Ariana Grande "Rain on Me." To her, the partnership with Dom Pérignon is even more organic because Gaga connects with the champagne brand being inspired by their own work. "I can identify with that in my own way," she says. "When Haus of Gaga and I create something together, if we're filming something or we're looking at photographs that we've made and we're all standing around a monitor together, I really can identify with that feeling of connectivity to your own art."