Photo: AFP
It no longer smells like anything. That's the first thing worth knowing about the most notorious garment in awards-show history.
Lady Gaga's raw-beef gown from the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards currently hangs behind glass at Haus of Gaga, the museum-style exhibit inside the Park MGM Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, where it has been parked since 2019. Per the Park MGM website, it's still on view heading into the 2026 VMAs, displayed alongside the matching shoes and headpiece.
The dress — designed by Franc Fernandez, made from real raw flank steak — arrived on the 2010 red carpet as a dare, and the night escalated from there. Gaga, now 40, won Video of the Year for "Bad Romance," and on her way to the podium handed her purse to Cher. The purse was also meat.
"I never thought I'd be asking Cher to hold my meat purse," she said onstage.
Ownership stayed with Gaga, but the dress went on the road. By early 2015, MTV reported it was traveling with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's "Women Who Rock" exhibition, moving between cities in a climate-controlled truck and, by then, fully converted into beef jerky — reportedly "very hard" to the touch. That September it settled into the Hall of Fame itself in Cleveland, where MTV said it would remain for "the foreseeable future." Four years later, Vegas called.
Asked during a 2025 Vanity Fair lie detector interview whether raw beef could ever return to her wardrobe, Gaga said, "I don't think so, no."
The examiner called the answer inconclusive.