Add Colette Justine to the List of Lady Gaga Detractors

Lady Gaga has had her fair share of rip-off rumors, especially charges of repurposing references from New York’s downtown art scene. Now another name has surfaced with a video claiming that Gaga’s holiday window at Barneys New York, a play on Santa’s Workshop, was also cribbed.

The charge comes from Colette Justine, a Tunisian-born artist who has been on the fringes of the New York art scene since the early 1970s. Her gripe? That Gaga’s hair-covered boudoir is a remake of her own Pearl Street apartment, which was covered, lamps and all, in silk. The installation was a familiar downtown landmark for the better part of a decade, and Colette would often include herself as a living doll, a role filled at Barneys by a reclining mannequin.

In this video, Looking for Gaga, Colette Justine heads to Barneys dressed in her signature Victorian-punk finest and is promptly mistaken for the pop star. She then proceeds to sign her name—Colette, the Artist—to the sidewalk outside the window, finishing just in time to get rousted by security.

Whether it’s a case of inspiration or imitation, her complaint may be too late; Gaga’s Workshop closed its holiday run on January 2.

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