Lady Gaga Wears Car Part Dress, Reveals She Played Five Shows With COVID at ‘Gaga Chromatica Ball’ L.A. Movie Premiere

Lady Gaga was in typically outrageous form on Thursday night (May 23) at the Los Angeles premiere of her Gaga Chromatica Ball concert film. The singer known for her resplendent red carpet looks showed up in a white strapless Selva dress comprised of car parts, including what looked like a bumper molded into a kind of automotive bustier.

“On the red carpet I told them it was a car part. They said what kind and I said I don’t know, I’m not a mechanic,” the singer wrote on X; Gaga also posted a series of pics of the sculptural dress, along with a poetic ode to her fans, on her Instagram.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, during a Q&A at the premiere, the singer revealed that she played a number of Chromatica dates while sick with COVID because she didn’t want to let her Little Monsters down.

“This was such a special time. This tour went on during a time that people didn’t think that you could tour [amid the pandemic] and stadiums were packed all over the world and they were sold out, all dressed up and dancing and singing. I’m just so excited for you all to see what we made up close,” she said.

“I did five shows with COVID,” she told the assembled press. “I shared it with everyone on my team and I said, ‘I don’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable at work and you don’t have to perform and you don’t have to work that day, but I’m going to do the show,’ because I just didn’t want to let all the fans down.”

She explained her thinking about playing sick, adding, “The way that I saw it also is that the fans were all putting themselves in harm’s way every day coming to the show. During all my quick changes, I kept going. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’”

THR reported that Gaga also said the tour and the album represented an “end of a time in my life and the beginning of a totally new one. And I feel like that time is actually maybe a few albums of time that I was sort of saying goodbye to old wounds or scars or challenges and with this tour, I felt really renewed to do something entirely different… I felt like the Chromatica Ball was a time where I took myself to the next level and it was something worth documenting and seeing for people that I love — not that I didn’t love my other tours,” she explained. “I’m sure we all can relate to that feeling of when you personally feel proud of something is really different from when everyone around you feels that way.”

Though she’s been chronicling the ongoing sessions for her upcoming album, Gaga also spoke at length for the first time about the follow-up to Chromatica, revealing that she’s in the studio “every single day. I have written so many songs, I’ve been producing so many songs, and it’s nothing like anything that I’ve ever made before. I love to break genre and I love to explore music. There’s something really beautiful about knowing that you will be loved no matter what you do.”

Gaga Chromatica Ball — which chronicles a Los Angeles stop of the 2022 tour at Dodger Stadium — debuts on HBO on Saturday (May 25) at 8 p.m. ET.

Check out Gaga’s red carpet post below.