MIX MISTRESS
Take a cue from Sky Ferreira and let an artful assemblage of statement pieces amp up your summer look.
Despite the title of her hit single, Sky Ferreira doesn’t exactly believe that “Everything Is Embarrassing.” But the pop star does tend to get flustered. “I’ve always cried really easily, ever since I was a kid,” she admits. “Sometimes even in public. I don’t weep or anything, but I definitely well up, and it’s super embarrassing.”
With her first full-length album slated for a late-summer release, there’s little reason to get angsty. The broad appeal of Ferreira’s ’80s-tinged, easy-on-the-ears synthpop has already cultivated enough fans to bring Ferreira a deal with Capitol Records and a nationwide tour with the High Highs and How to Dress Well.
“I sometimes tour in a van, but this time, I had a bus,” she says of the experience, which opened the L.A. native’s eyes to the charms of the Midwest. “When we had days off, we’d go to a mall and walk around—I went to so many malls!—and I would buy random stuff out of boredom to turn the bus into a party bus. I went to Spencer’s and bought all these glow-in-the-dark stars and strobe lights. There’s even a fog machine.”
Ferreira’s flair for aesthetics is what made her a fashion-world favorite even before word got out about her music. While working on her first EPs, As If! and Ghost, she spent her extracurricular hours modeling for the likes of Saint Laurent, Adidas, Vigoss, CK One, and H&M. Her look—grungewear, bleached-blonde mop, bedroom eyes, unimpressed expression—is a contemporary spin on Fiona Apple circa “Criminal,” which Ferreira admits was among her first MTV fixations. “In music, the image is part of it,” she says. “Maybe not for everyone, but at least in pop. I still wear combat boots, flannels, and cutoff shorts, but now I’m trying more things.”
A new hairstyle, for one. “I just cut my hair for the first time ever,” she says. “It’s sort of like Tank Girl. I was so worried about it, but I’d been bleaching my hair for like a year and a half, and it was so dead that it was actually breaking off. Now, I don’t have to deal with it, which is nice. I never combed it anyways, but still.”
Ferreira is also exploring a new neighborhood in New York, where she now spends most of her time. “I’m moving to Greenpoint, because I need space,” she says. “I live in a studio in the East Village now, but it’s at the point where I feel like I’m on an episode of Hoarders or something. This will be a whole new experience, almost like moving to New York all over again. But at least I have all these lasers and stars. My place is going to look like a rave.”