• Wall Street Journal, Friday, September 24, 2010 10:50 AM

How, at age 76, do you get people going gaga over your cutting-edge sense of style? Precisely -- at least in the case of Giorgio Armani, last widely revered for his power suits in the Age of Disco.

The 24-year-old pop star fashionista Lady Gaga has put Armani "in a new creative spotlight -- individuality, edge, futuristic style," retail-brand consultant Tom Julian tells Christina Passariello. He has done this by dressing her in such raiments as a crystal-encrusted silver hoop dress with orbiting rings for the Grammy Awards and a black rubberized dress with spikes sticking out from the breasts for MTV Video Music Awards.

Even as he has expanded his empire -- there are now six separate adult clothing lines -- Armani long ago lost cachet with fashion critics and younger women, who tend toward the likes of Marc Jacobs and Alexander Wang.

There are more Gaga outfits in the works, but the two have never met, at least in the here-and-now physical sense. Says Stefani Germanotta of the relationship between her alter ego and the designer who could be her grandfather: "Gaga is so avant-garde and he is so timeless that they meet" [somewhere out there, presumably].

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