Cyndi Lauper performs on ABC's 'Good Morning America'. (Jemal Countess / Getty Images)

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By ROD HAGWOOD

Quick … imagine a picture of Cyndi Lauper in your head.

Chances are you flashed on her post-punk thrift-store-chic look from the music videos attending her 1983 monster-hit album “She’s So Unusual.”

But Lauper’s look has evolved steadily since that first oh-so-fab foray into global pop-culture consciousness. Over the last 11 albums she has morphed herself into a stylish chanteuse.

“I look at every album and album cover as a performance piece,” Lauper said during a telephone interview. “I create a little scenario where you can see and hear that character and why they are there.”

Lauper has a new look to go with her new Memphis Blues album and concert tour. The pop icon will bring the blues to Adrienne Arsht Center Tuesday at 8 p.m.

But she’s the first to admit she doesn’t do it alone. Working with photographer Ellen von Unwerth and stylist Nikki Fontanella this time around, Lauper has sampled from the so-called “dark divas” of the 20s and 30s with more than a nod to Jean Harlow blowsiness.

Fontanella said, “I went to Memphis and I got that vibe in the recording studio. We always operate the same way [for the photo shoot]. We pull like it’s a movie. It’s all a work in progress. Ill have one piece that we all agree on and I’ll work off of that. It’s art. It’s creation. Of course everything she does is art.”Cyndi Lauper said she went through crates and crates of photos to get the right visuals for her new “Memphis Blues” album cover and concert tour.

Fontanella’s fashion claim-to-fame first came with uber-hip vintage/custom must-stop The Dressing Room Bar & Boutique on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, which she co-owns with Alexandra Adame and Paul Frazier. The stylist/designer has worked with Lauper for the last 8 years and 3 albums and done stage costumes for Pink, Janet Jackson (Velvet Rope tour), Britney Spears (Skecher ads), No Doubt and Tweet.

Lauper has always borrowed from the past, filtering vintage through her punk music origins (not to mention a penchant for peacockish colors).

“So did black suits, but in all leather,” Fonanella said. “I thought it looked like some of the old images of a blues singer after a gig, but modern. We tweak it. And hair and makeup – that is very important in making it modern. It a whole collaborative process. It’s so wrong, it’s right, y’know?”

Said Lauper, “Women popularized the blues,” Lauper said. “I looked at their pictures. Or of Robert Johnson and his suits. Bessie Smith had a very particular look. She was another one I looked at. Then I just brought all those pieces together. I went through crates and crates of photos. ”

Lauper channeling the boudoir blowsiness of Jean Harlow and the Beale Street toughness of Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith.

But it was tough-as-nails blues crooner Ma Rainey that she latched onto.

“Ma Rainey was gangsta before there was gangsta,” Lauper said laughing. “She had a grill and wore lots of chains. I looked at her clothes, which were strong, you know? She was like a feminist in a time when women didn’t have their own money or any control in their life. You were either a Madame or an entertainer. Or you were a writer under a man’s name. But Ma Rainey did it all by herself under her own name. You know that just got my little feminist heart to beat fast.”

And then to give it all a fashion patina, Lauper enlisted the help of fashion shutterbug von Unwerth.

“Like I had done this Viva Glam thing [Limited edition lipstick that raises money for AIDS] for MAC and it was shot by Ellen von Unwerth. Ellen did this book [Original Sin] in a bordello and I said, ‘This would be perfect.’ I thought it could be modern, but still show interest in the past. We put it all together and made art.”

Too much art as it turned out.

“We ran out of time,” said Fontanella with chagrin. “I had about 20 looks. We finished maybe 10. I think 6 or 7 looks are in the album: flapper; men’s leather; boudoir; housewife – the sexy version; a glitzy stage look which everyone thinks is a nightgown and chains. It was really, really quick.”

Lauper – one feels – doesn’t need a lot of time. When it’s the right look, she feels it viscerally. For her, fashion is about self expression. If you know yourself, you know the right fashion.

“It’s all the story – fashion,” she mused. “You wake up and fashion is what story are you telling today. You are the story teller. Fashion tells where you are on the inside that day.”