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This is from a story in the LA Times about a local taxidermist preserving Gaga’s meat dress.  The dress wasn’t well preserved, and was rotting when it was delivered to his shop.  But this brave soul was like, “they paid me upfront so fuck it.”  That’s dedication to your craft.

Fortunately, requests to preserve clothing made out of raw meat are rare, Sergio Vigilato admits.

But when the Burbank taxidermist got the call to turn Lady Gaga’s infamous Argentinean beef gown into a museum display, he bit at the opportunity.

Vigilato was contacted by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum two months after the pop singer wore the meat dress on stage Sept. 12, 2010, to accept the trophy for the year’s best music video at the MTV Video Music Awards.

“The first thing I asked was, ‘Where is the dress? This thing could have maggots by now,’ ” Vigilato said. “I understood them to say it was in a room with air conditioning. I said make sure it’s in a freezer.”

Actually, the 35-pound dress made of a dozen thin-cut flank steaks was being kept on ice. It was frozen stiff — and maggot-free — when it was delivered to Vigilato’s American Taxidermy shop 3 1/2 weeks later.

As he defrosted it, Vigilato found that the dress had begun decomposing before it had been frozen. As it thawed out, it developed an odor.

“But the Rock and Roll museum had already paid me upfront — $6,000 — so I went ahead with it,” he said. It took more than a month to clean and preserve the meat.

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