Lady Gaga was born this way.
The American Horror Story: Hotel actress appears in Issue No. 7 of CR Fashion Book, and though she's made up and looking glam, the photos were not retouched prior to publication. According to the magazine's editor, Carine Roitfeld, the move was deliberate: "I wanted to show her completely natural, all herself."
Bruce Weber snapped the striking shots of the pop culture chameleon.
Gaga was happy to do the photo shoot to combat the pressure to be perfect. "As a 29-year-old girl, at this stage in my pop career everybody goes, 'Oh she's getting old,' and everybody's so worried about having a perfect body, a perfect face, and perfect hair," she says. "When, you know, actually, legacy and longevity is about having some sort of story and footprint to leave in the world when you die, chasing your talent until you're dead. And that, as an artist, you love your art 'til death."
"It's the antithesis of what I was taught growing up, which is that at this age I would have to fight in order to continue to look young, in order to continue to be trendy," the six-time Grammy Award winner says, explaining that she "never was trendy."
In fact, the singer-songwriter insists, "I was always anti-trend."
For Gaga, beauty and fashion are just two ways she can express herself.
"I believe it's everyone's natural right to express themselves beyond what we learn as children. I'm much better at communicating through my work," the "Cheek to Cheek" singer says. "Sometimes I feel like, even with my fiancé [Taylor Kinney], I'll tell him I feel a certain way, but then he understands me better if I create a song and play it for him. I wrote a song for him the other day and it really sat with him because it was something I couldn't say with words, only through song."
CR Fashion Book Issue No. 7 is on newsstands Sept. 3.