Lady Gaga’s fave designer sells Chelsea pad

Thierry Mugler, the French fashion designer whose work inspired singer Lady Gaga to make her catwalk debut in Paris last year, has found a buyer for his penthouse at 245 Seventh Avenue in Chelsea, a source told The Real Deal today.

Mugler listed the two-bedroom apartment for $7.99 million in January with Sotheby’s International Realty brokers Stephen McRae and Debbie Korb. A buyer closed on the unit last Friday, paying $7.89 million, the source said.

The 4,100-square-foot duplex features an 800-square-foot private roof deck and a floating staircase, according to the listing. It also boasts an African mahogany library with a wood-burning fireplace, two master suites and a home office. Mugler travels back and forward to Paris for work, and had not been living in the apartment at the time of the sale, the source said.

He bought the apartment for $4.5 million in 2004 from Ed Bazinet, the eccentric millionaire who was hospitalized earlier this year after going on a manic five-day spending spree. He reportedly spent more than $20 million at the New York International Gift Fair in February before checking himself in to a psychiatric clinic.

McRae and Korb were not immediately available for comment.

Mugler employs Gaga’s stylist Nicola Formichetti as his creative director and Gaga notoriously purchased every item from his last collection, in every color.

Before strutting down the runway in one of Mugler’s designs last year, Gaga reportedly said: “I want people to see me walk and say ‘she is a Mugler woman.”

When contacted by The Real Deal, Core broker Adrian Noriega, who represented the buyer, said only that the purchaser was an LLC whose principals were based in New York State. The new owner will be doing extensive work on the property, he said, to turn it into a three- or four-bedroom home.

The buyer was attracted to the property because of its dynamic mix of modern and traditional interiors, Noriega said.

“Every room is different,” he noted, “but it flows really well.”