Lady Gaga says 'eccentricity' always defined her, even in her pre-fame days as Stefani Germanotta

Before she was Lady Gaga, she was just a brunette named Stefani with a penchant for skimpy clothes.

Rare photos of the flamboyant pop icon give a unique glimpse into her pre-fame days, when she had to strut her stuff in a derelict, graffiti-covered street instead of on stage in front of thousands of adoring fans.

Before she was Lady Gaga, the pop starlet was brunette Stefani Germanotta.

The shots were taken in July 2007, when Lady Gaga was Stefani Germanotta, a struggling artist working part-time as a burlesque dancer in the lower East Side.

Beside her in many of the photos, wearing equally revealing red hot pants and a black vest, is her long-time confidante and creative collaborator Lady Starlight, aka Colleen Martin.

"Lady Starlight and I would spin vinyl in my apartment, sewing our bikinis for the show and listening to David Bowie and the New York Dolls," Lady Gaga said during an interview with New York magazine about her early days in showbiz.

"We thought, 'What could we do to make everybody so jealous?' We did it, and everybody was so jealous. And they still are."

While modern day Gaga has bleach blond hair and sports outfits so flamboyant that her face is often obscured, back then she had to resort to slightly more conventional props: a glitter ball, '80s boombox and fingerless black leather gloves.

But her need to bare all is clearly not a new phenomenon. Gaga left little to the imagination, posing in a figure-hugging blue swimsuit and a pink bra and pale pink-colored leggings.

"The assumption is that my eccentricity is not who I really am," she has said. "But it is."


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