Top, Gucci; Shoes, Kalda; Chain link bracelet, Messika; Other jewellery, Olivia’s own
Olivia Dean is still slightly awestruck when she dials in a little late for our Zoom interview. The singer-songwriter and now fashion darling has just come back from the A/W 24 Gucci show, and as is common for anyone attending Milan Fashion Week—whether for the first or trillionth time—she experienced both the mega-watt front row as well as the scale of the legendary traffic jams. “I’m really sorry; I just met Solange and it was kind of a moment,” she says, now back in her hotel room, having changed out of her tailored Gucci shorts suit and platform loafers to relax in a white tank top and grey hoodie. “What’s Solange like?” I ask, fascinated. “Oh my gosh, so gracious. I didn't want to say ‘hi’ because I was too embarrassed. I was like, ‘I’m a really big fan’ and she was like, ‘Thank you.’”
One day very soon (if it hasn’t happened already) another young artist will feel the same way about Dean. The 25-year-old’s die-hard fanbase is skyrocketing. Her debut album Messy dropped in June of last year and reached number four in the UK charts before being shortlisted for the prestigious Mercury Prize, and her songs have over 200 million streams overall. “When I was 16, I had goals that I was working towards: [appear on] The Graham Norton Show [and] Jools Holland’s Annual Hootenanny, be nominated for a Mercury; and all these things [have] happened,” Dean says. After dubbing 2023 “the best year” of her life on Instagram, the gratitude is strong, because she’s aware of how privileged she is to do what she loves. Whenever I directly acknowledge her career-changing milestones or honeyed throwback vocals, congratulate her on her three Brit Awards nominations and compliment her gorgeous rendition of Kelis’ “Millionaire,” she thanks me earnestly. “Being widely known kind of freaks me out but I would love to sell out the Royal Albert Hall, play Red Rocks [Amphitheatre] and Carnegie Hall, and build a really iconic, unmissable live show,” she says.
Cardigan and shorts, Chanel; Shoes, Jimmy Choo; Socks, Wolford; Earrings, Misho
Right now, Dean is reaping the rewards and revelling in the recognition and validation of her work, especially as we spoke days before the 2024 Brit Awards. She was up for Best New Artist, Artist of the Year and Best Pop Act. “I’d like to win but I’m not feeling confident, and not in a self-deprecating way,” she said at the time. “I’m very talented, I’ve worked hard and I deserve to be there. I had a big cry when I found out [about the nominations]. I’ve watched it on the telly and it feels bizarre to be a part of it.”
When Dean collaborated with Loyle Carner [another Brit School grad] on Homerton (2022), Messy was 70% done, and she says she appreciated his advice about being authentic and not making music for the sake of it. Then she collaborated with Leon Bridges last year on her first-ever trip to New York. “I picked up cool energy. I’d seen him live and I didn’t think he’d want to sing lyrics about my ex-boyfriend,” she says. They harmonise beautifully on a new version of The Hardest Part—yet another moment she says she never could have imagined.
Photographer: Nick Thompson
Photography Assistants: Ben Kyle, Isaak Hest and Harry Burner
Stylist: Remy Farrell
Styling Assistant: Millie Smith
Hair Stylist: Pashcan'el Mitchell
Makeup Artist: Emily Engleman
Manicurist: Sabrina Gayle at Arch the Agency
Art Director: Natalia Szytk
Editor-in-Chief: Hannah Almassi
Videographer: Remi Afolabi
Writer: Felicia Pennant
Producer: Town Productions
Executive Director of Entertainment: Jessica Baker
Dress, Alhuwalia; Earrings, Misho; Chain link bracelet, Messika; Other jewellery, Olivia’s own
COVER FEATURES | March 20, 2024
By Felicia Pennant
Olivia Dean Is Soaring—2024 Will Be Her Year
Fashion, football anthems and finding her sound.
Cardigan, tank and shorts, Versace; Tights, Wolford; Shoes, Russell & Bromley
Coat, Mithridate; Shoes, Jimmy Choo; Earrings, Messika
My purpose is to help people feel their feelings. That’s so fulfilling.
Cardigan, tank and shorts, Versace; Tights, Wolford; Shoes, Russell & Bromley
Dress and shoes, Lurline; Ring, Olivia’s own
I feel excited and I’m becoming a lady. I feel like people are more beautiful at 30, and what a slay to get to 90.
Dean’s Brit School education unlocked a natural talent and ignited a confidence that made pursuing music a no-brainer after becoming Rudimental’s backing singer and then dropping out of university to follow her passion. Raised with her younger brother in Highams Park near Walthamstow, London by an English father and Jamaican-Guyanese mother, she says she always loved singing. The possibilities seemed endless as she was “annoying” her peers with Alicia Keys covers in school assemblies, watching her cousin, Top Boy actor Ashley Walters, top the charts with So Solid Crew; buying Leona Lewis and JLS CDs and hearing the likes of Lauryn Hill (Lauryn is her middle name) and Angie Scott at home. Although Dean pivoted away from musical theatre as she progressed down the well-trodden path to stardom that former Brit School pupils Adele and Amy Winehouse took before her, she still had one hand in writing stories—a skill that has helped to articulately shape the feelings and honesty so many fans of Messy relate to. “If music hadn’t worked out, I think I would have gone to Bristol and studied English literature,” she shares. “I read everything Zadie Smith does and I’m working my way through Bernardine Evaristo’s books.”
A self-described perfectionist, EPs Ok Love You Bye (2019), What Am I Gonna Do On Sundays? (2020) and Growth (2021) crystallise Dean’s knack for converting her rawest emotions into compelling songs from her Notes app. “If something in my brain goes ‘write that down,’ I think it's worth something. I start with lyrics and then I’ll add melody in the studio,” she explains. “The best songs I’ve written started with just piano and vocals and I keep wanting to listen to them.” But it’s a constant battle, she tells me, between her desire for excellence and trying not to be so obsessed with it that she can’t start or doesn’t finish. “I wrote ‘Ladies Room’ with specific intent because I wanted women to remember that you don’t have to go home because your man is,” she says. “‘What Am I Gonna Do On Sundays?’ is underrated. When I’ve sung it live recently, I’m like, ‘This is good.’”
As the singer-songwriter finesses her sound and writes her second album, which she hopes to release this year, she’s pitching her new songs lower. “I love to sing low, girl. It’s pretty sexy and my high voice is not all that,” she says. She agrees with the consensus that she’s happy-go-lucky despite the darker, deeper tones of certain songs. “It’s good to clarify that I’m also pretty messy, which is the point of the album. I don’t want people to think I’ve got my life together because I don’t. I need to do laundry, take the bins out and keep my feet on the ground.”
It’s hard for Dean to define her own sound—let alone for anyone else to do so—because she jumps between genres without missing a beat. We can all agree it’s pop music and not R&B, and she rejects the “neo-soul” label too. “There are so many different subgenres of pop, and when I say ‘soul’, I mean Bill Withers.” Such is her breadth that she even managed to revamp the ‘90s “laddy” football anthem trope by co-writing the empowering “Call Me A Lioness” with songwriter Glen Roberts and producer Joel Pott to align with the 2023 Women’s World Cup and spur on England’s women’s team and its fans. “I wanted to write something that I could imagine girls in the primary school playground or women in the pub singing along to, and I felt like we achieved that. It was really fun to not write about myself and my heart.”
Musical theatre taught her how to keep accessing the angst and heartbreak to deliver her songs to live audiences just like the first time she wrote them. “It’s intense but it feels like I’m providing a service [whilst] therapising myself. It’s self-indulgent to write songs about your life and sing about yourself, but I love the gigs so much and I love singing for people,” says Dean. “My purpose is to help people feel their feelings. That’s so fulfilling.” “Carmen” is Dean’s favourite track on Messy—a tribute to her Guyanese grandmother who was part of the Windrush generation. The song starts with a recording of her grandmother's voice and features poignant lyrics like, “You transplanted a family tree/And a part of it grew into me” and “You're stronger than I'll ever be/Never got a jubilee.” She tells me her granny is happy with the song too. “It was difficult in the beginning because she was quite self-conscious about her voice. My mum was saying how beautiful it was for her granddaughter to put her voice on a song and for her to be celebrated. I’m glad I did it.”
Watch any of Dean’s live performances from the North American leg of her Messy tour and you’ll understand why this spring’s European leg sold out with added dates. “I find making music videos cringe but I love watching NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts and wanted to re-create that for myself,” she says. Documenting her feelings accurately and showcasing her personality is just as important as the live vocals and visuals so that fans are fully immersed. During a show, she performs some special covers, plays percussion and wows in assorted looks—think sparkles, tulle, double denim and major patterned boots, from homegrown brands such as Molly Goddard and Wales Bonner.
“I love to play with clothes,” she says. “My style is all or nothing and quite London; baggy and quite masculine every day but completely different and tight on stage.” Besides Chanel and Gucci, Dean is into vintage Missoni and wears a lot of Stussy. Talking about her Who What Wear UK cover shoot outfits, she says, “I really liked the yellow [Versace] look with tights and shoes, and there was a really cute stripy Chanel top and some shorts.” It’s clear that she’s hitting her style stride, and not just with fashion. Dean turned 25 this month, and she tells me that she’s now comfortable with her natural hair, and whilst the tooth gems that usually glint from her smile are gone—they lasted two years instead of the intended few months—she’s recently been wearing a gold tooth cap. When I ask her about her birthday, she says, “I feel excited and I’m becoming a lady. I feel like people are more beautiful at 30, and what a slay to get to 90.”
So this is the calm before a whirlwind year that is likely to be even bigger than the last for Dean; following our chat, the news came that she had been given a highly-coveted spot on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury this year—a huge ascension from playing some of the festival’s much smaller stages in 2023. Usually, she paints, cooks, goes to the pub and does yoga in her downtime, and she’s catching up on The Traitors UK. “I missed the whole wave so I’m very fresh to it. Season one is a wild ride; it’s such a weird show,” she says. As she’s currently in Milan, she asks if I have any recommendations and I kick her a curveball: San Siro, the brutalist stadium shared by AC Milan and Inter Milan, because I know she and her dad bond over West Ham. Before we end the call, she equates her ongoing success with feeling happy rather than anxious. “I want to lift women up and make them feel how Beyoncé and Solange make me feel,” she concludes. I think she’s well on her way to that.
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MONTHLY COVER FEATURES | march 15, 2024
By who what wear
The Love Lies Bleeding star joins fellow actor-turned-director Riley Keough in conversation for our March cover.
Kristen Stewart Is Calling the Shots
For the better part of two decades, Kristen Stewart has moved through Hollywood like a chameleon, slipping into a mélange of characters and subverting expectations at every turn. Traversing seamlessly from a fantasy world of vampires and werewolves to that of a legendary 1970s rock frontwoman and jumping from a queer home-for-the-holidays rom-com to an Oscar-nominated turn as the people's princess is Stewart's speciality. You can't pinpoint any kind of project-picking philosophy (by choice, I imagine) other than maybe a desire to play multifaceted women who defy societal norms. Her ability to keep audiences guessing with every project, much like with her unquestionably cool beauty and fashion transformations, is what makes Stewart one of the most impressive actors of our generation.
In Rose Glass's sophomore film Love Lies Bleeding, Stewart's performance is as liberated as they come. The heart-pounding romantic noir thriller is a roided-up, sweaty, violent fever dream set against the backdrop of 1989 rural New Mexico. Stewart plays Lou, a reclusive gym manager with a shaggy mullet and a dodgy family led by her gun-toting father (Ed Harris). Lou seems to be going nowhere fast in her seedy small town until Jackie (Katy O'Brian), an aspiring bodybuilder, shows up from Oklahoma and irrevocably shakes things up. The pair quickly become an item with big plans of getting out of town when a terrible decision, spawned by a growing steroid habit, leads to murder.
Love Lies Bleeding first premiered to rave reviews at the Sundance Film Festival in January, where Stewart was honored with a Visionary Award and declared she wouldn't act in another film until her own directorial debut, an adaptation of Lidia Yuknavitch's memoir The Chronology of Water, got financing. After shopping the project around for nearly three years—"too fucking long," she shouts—Stewart finally found her funding. And not a moment too soon. On the verge of a life-changing career milestone, she jumped on the phone with her good friend and fellow actor-turned-director Riley Keough to talk about going bombastic for Love Lies Bleeding, the divine timing of directing her first film, and coming up in a different era of Hollywood.
Theophilio jumpsuit and thong, Saule earrings.
olivia dean
