Fernandez was approached by fellow designer and stylist Formichetti to produce the dress, with it planned out over the course of a week, Formichettti having styled the look. The dress was asymmetrical, with a cowled–neck. Fernandez specifically chose cuts to ensure that the dress kept well. Flank steak was chosen as the material to use, with the meat coming from his family butcher. The dress required Gaga to be stitched into the outfit backstage.
Fernandez reporting Gaga's opinion in an interview said that Gaga herself said it smelled good, because it smelled like meat. The designer talked of what was to happen to the dress after the awards show, "The dress will be put in an archive with all of her dresses. The Gaga Archives, I suppose. It won't last, that's the beauty of it. When it is brought out again, hopefully it will be in a retrospective, and it will be a different dress, which is the best thing. I like the idea of it changing and evolving into something else". He later explained that the dress would be preserved and made into a type of jerky before being archived.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame paid $6,000 to taxidermist Sergio Vigilato to preserve the dress. It had been frozen following the two television appearances, although Vigilato discovered signs of decomposition on the dress which had occurred prior to it being frozen, and noted it was emitting an odor once it was defrosted. It was treated with bleach, formaldehyde and detergent to kill any bacteria which had formed, and was reconditioned by being dyed dark red once it was preserved so to give it the same appearance as when first worn. However, after the preservation there were several pieces of beef left over and not included in the reworked dress.
Previously, Gaga had worn a bikini made of meat on the front cover of the Japanese edition of Vogue. It was originally worn by Gaga at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards to accept her award for Video of the Year. Although it was Gaga's third costume change of the evening, the meat dress was immediately described as "most outrageous fashion moment" of the evening. Gaga wore the dress for additional press photos and once more on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.
Fernandez credits the dress with an upturn in his career, saying, "I feel like I have a voice now as an artist and as a designer". He had previously created items for Gaga, including a costume for the Bad Romance music video for which she won the MTV Music Video Award, and went on to create a hat that she wore to the 53rd Grammy Awards in February 2011.
During halloween in 2010, re-creations of the meat dress were popular in New York, and in 2011, a group of students from the University of Cumbria made a recreation of the dress with the help of local butchers. The dress went on display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in 2011 as part of an exhibition entitled "Women Who Rock: Vision, Passion, Power".
A poll by website MyCelebrityFashion.co.uk placed the dress as the most iconic outfit of 2010, beating Catherine Middleton's engagement dress into second place. In summing up 2010 through a series of lists, Time voted the meat dress as its top fashion statement of 2010. When "Weird Al" Yankovic did a parody of Gaga's "Born This Way", titled "Perform This Way", he included a lyrical reference to the meat dress ("I strap prime rib to my feet / Cover myself with raw meat / I'll bet you've never seen a skirt steak worn this way") and had a dancer dressed in a similar outfit in the music video. Following the VMAs, media outlets attempted to analyse the meaning of the dress with suggestions by BBC News ranging from anti-fashion, to feminism, aging and decay, and society's attitude to meat. Chef Fergus Henderson explained this meat attitude as "People often don't want meat to look like meat. They want it to be neatly wrapped in plastic from a supermarket." PETA condemned the dress, releasing a statement that said "wearing a dress made from cuts of dead cows is offensive enough to bring comment, but someone should whisper in her ear that more people are upset by butchery than are impressed by it." The Vegetarian Society also condemned the dress, releasing a statement that said "No matter how beautifully it is presented, flesh from a tortured animal is flesh from a tortured animal. Enough animals die for food and they should not be killed for stunts like this."
Fernandez reporting Gaga's opinion in an interview said that Gaga herself said it smelled good, because it smelled like meat. The designer talked of what was to happen to the dress after the awards show, "The dress will be put in an archive with all of her dresses. The Gaga Archives, I suppose. It won't last, that's the beauty of it. When it is brought out again, hopefully it will be in a retrospective, and it will be a different dress, which is the best thing. I like the idea of it changing and evolving into something else". He later explained that the dress would be preserved and made into a type of jerky before being archived.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame paid $6,000 to taxidermist Sergio Vigilato to preserve the dress. It had been frozen following the two television appearances, although Vigilato discovered signs of decomposition on the dress which had occurred prior to it being frozen, and noted it was emitting an odor once it was defrosted. It was treated with bleach, formaldehyde and detergent to kill any bacteria which had formed, and was reconditioned by being dyed dark red once it was preserved so to give it the same appearance as when first worn. However, after the preservation there were several pieces of beef left over and not included in the reworked dress.
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