Lady Gaga's Comeback Costumes: From Boiled Egg To Fried

Lady Gaga  plans on wearing perhaps her most daring outfit yet to this year's MTV Video Music Awards - and this coming from the woman who once famously arrived at the Grammys encased inside an egg. The singer recently went on a six-month break while she recovered from painful hip surgery, but will stage her comeback performance at the awards on August 25.

"I'm sending a doppelgänger," she joked of her forthcoming appearance. "I'm going this year as a fried egg instead of hard-boiled."

The star is preparing to release her new single,Applause, on August 19 and - along with it - the explosion of accompanying creative craziness that we've come to expect from her. Of course, there's a new image to coincide with the new material - forget the lobster hats and meat dresses, this is a new stripped-back au-naturel Gaga.

"[I'm not] defined by the same designer or defined by the same haircut or defined by the same icon," she told WWD. "The statement is that I'm not one icon. I'm every icon. I'm an icon that is made out of all the colours on the palette at every time. I have no restrictions. No restrictions."

The new artwork for both her single and album (set for release in November) was shot by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, long-term collaborators of the singer and her creative team, the Haus of Gaga. The cover for Applause was taken from the video shoot which took place in Los Angeles last week (marking the first time that the photographers have been at the helm of one of her videos), and sees the singer with a face full of smudged make-up, dressed in a white Gareth Pugh coat.

Lady Gaga

"It's the end of the night after the show," she explained. "When I look at it I see that there is a longing for the applause. I see that there is a void that is leaking onstage, that the performer is leaking, that the art is sort of becoming something else in front of your eyes. Something more human, something more honest."

While much of the artwork we've seen so far involves the singer wearing very little, her fashion director, Brandon Maxwell, hinted at what her new wardrobe will feature: Alexander Wang has contributed custom-made Balenciaga, while Versace, Armani and Saint Laurent by Hedi Slimane - all firm favourites of the singer - are also involved.

"I think that this time it is about letting some of it go and the focus being on the music because now she's comfortable being naked and being who she is. The world has seen everything," he told WWD. "It's more toned down and pulled back and chic - but it's also that we're making suits out of things that they would not normally be made out of, like plastic, but they're super well-tailored and clean. Maybe she's just wearing a simple catsuit and a head wrap like she's wearing here, but we sort of do the craziness on the face."