"MY SHADOW"
ISABELLA wears BRA + HEELS by WOMEN'S HISTORY MUSUEM, PANTS from STYLIST'S ARCHIVE, JEWELRY by MARTINE ALI
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I DIED AND WENT TO ISABELLA LOVESTORY HEAVEN
In a media landscape crowded with copy-paste industry plants, this self-proclaimed DIY popstar is a breath of fresh air. She's not afraid to surprise us and in doing so, leaves the door open for another Cinderella story to happen... but this time it’s absurdly sexy.
Read the full interview below where we discuss everything from Tumblr Academy to Eurotrash summers.
ISABELLA wears BRA + HEELS by WOMEN'S HISTORY MUSUEM, PANTS from STYLIST'S ARCHIVE, JEWELRY by MARTINE ALI
Hey Isabella, nice to meet you.
Ooh, ciao Bella. I'm in Montreal and this is my dog.
What's their name?
His name is Flaco which means skinny. But he's not skinny, he's chubby. That's the irony of life.
I heard that the vibes on set were amazing. I was so sad that I couldn't be there.
It was so fun. It was crazy vibes. I've always wanted to shoot with Joaquin because I've known him forever. I met him like five years ago in Mexico and yeah… he tore that. We didn't want to leave, we just wanted to keep going.
Were you feeling gorgeous on set?
Gorgeous as always. It was a whirlwind. I've been nonstop for three months. Well, this whole year. I'm not complaining at all, I'm so happy. But sometimes I'm like, “Where the fuck am I?” Like, I don't know where I am. I just go and do this thing and then I go to sleep. I think I was feeling tired but excited. I always put my Lady Gaga mode on.
ISABELLA wears FULL LOOK by BALENCIAGA.
There were a lot of Tumblr vibes happening, were you a Tumblr girl?
Yessss back in the day I grew up with Tumblr Academy. That’s what we call it…for students. I think I went on Tumblr when I was 13 and I met so many of my best friends on it. And now I see so many creative people killing it. Like, Hari Nef was on it and Dara from Interview Magazine. So many random successful creative people were on Tumblr Academy. It was amazing because I was always an outsider in my schools and everything. I was such a freakazoid and I went online and I met all my freakazoid friends.
I feel like that style is kind of coming back a little. Is that an aesthetic or are there any aesthetics that you didn't think you'd be down for and now you're experimenting with?
Yeah, totally. I think people are feeling nostalgic. Honestly, I was always super inspired by the 90s Japanese fashion vibe and 80s fashion as well. But now it's called Indie Sleaze…and I'm like, well… I hate when things get a name and they categorize things. I’m just super anti and I always want to be against the grain, which I guess can be very annoying and pretentious. I hate to say that I’m a gatekeeper but I totally am.
Sometimes you have to be.
That’s something I love about K-POP, they really exploit the trends so much and I try to be like that too and have that troll-y mentality of I'm just going to wear one super, super trendy outfit to troll.
So kind of making fun of it, but also you still get to wear the cute outfit?
Yeah, exactly. It's all performance art.
ISABELLA wears DRESS by WIEDERHOEFT, JEWELRY by MARTINE ALI.
The last time that you spoke with office was in 2020 which is crazy!
That's when I started my career. It was with Ivan. Wait. Oh, my God. I think you guys did my first article! I had no Botox in my face. Nothing. Just pure youth. Oh, this is so cute.
You had just started collaborating with Chicken that year. I see you guys are still going strong in your creative partnership. Does it mean a lot to still be working together now that there's been so much growth?
Yes, we've really been through the trenches with our creativity and what we can do. He's a Scorpio, so he's very deep, very intense. I'm very deep and intense as well so I think we appreciate that about each other, that we can just go really deep and raw in our creative process. We have very similar tastes and we really went deep with this album. We could do a lot of experimenting because we both come from a very experimental punk mentality of what music can be because we both didn't study music at all. We come from a fine arts school background…Well, I'm a dropout. He's not. He's smart.
We really have fun with not having a structure or a rule book when we make music. We come from a very open mind so I think that's what we love about each other.
So you guys can be really free and do random stuff together?
Yeah, exactly. Like, we never think, oh, we can't sample this or we can't mix this cumbia beat with this 80s new wave sound. We have a very open mind and free playground to do whatever we want. We're also super down, now that we’ve figured out what we like to do in music, to work with other people. I'm super excited to explore new grounds and see what I can do for sure.
Are there any people that you've been looking at maybe collaborating with that you haven't yet?
I'm always working with people but it always has to feel really organic. I'm working with my friend Mechatok a lot and we have a song coming out and I also just met with Zach Hill from Death Grips which was epic. And who else? Let me think. Right now I'm working with Mechatok, Kamixlo, and friends. I'm always going to gravitate towards friends because I can have my opinion on the production more as well.
TOP LEFT + BOTTOM RIGHT: ISABELLA wears DRESS by DENIZ BLUMENSTEIN, HEELS by DSQUARED2, NECKLACE + EARRINGS by MARTINE ALI, BRACELET by ALEXIS BITTAR.
BOTTOM LEFT: ISABELLA wears FULL LOOK by BALENCIAGA.
I was watching your music video for Telenovela. So much happened all at the same time. Tell me more about what the process was like for making that.
I always want to exaggerate everything and with my themes, I take it to an absurd, surreal level. So I think with Telenovela, I had so much to play with, and I was inspired by tv and technology (super David Cronenberg vibe). I made a moodboard and sent it to Charlotte Rutherford, who's a genius, and we just kept talking about ideas texting non-stop manically about what we could do. She's crazy and she’s done a lot of K-Pop videos with crazy CGI. She just wants to take it to another level. We both have satirical brains so we just clicked really well and had so much fun. We just always want to take it to the next level, like I got pregnant with the tv at the end it was perfect. We're crazy, it was a perfect match.
The baby at the end was the cherry on top.
I miss him. I don't know where he is right now. Did he have a name? Barbarella (tv baby’s name).
Did you watch telenovelas growing up?
Yeah I watched so many because I grew up there [Honduras]. My favorite was this one called Floricienta which is an Argentinian modern day take on Cinderella. Her fashion is just amazing. She was my fashion icon because she had this scrappy y2k fashion Cinderella vibe so it looked like she made her outfits herself.
Were there any plot lines that stuck with you?
This one. At the moment I’m obsessed with Cinderella. I'm obsessed with modernizing fairy tales and making them more realistic or darker somehow. [She sends me a pic of the girl from Floricienta] She's cute right? I love the way she dresses and her storyline. I love a Cinderella story because I feel like I'm Cinderella.
LEFT: ISABELLA wears DRESS by DENIZ BLUMENSTEIN, HEELS by DSQUARED2, NECKLACE + EARRINGS by MARTINE ALI, BRACELET by ALEXIS BITTAR.
RIGHT: ISABELLA wears BRA + HEELS by WOMEN’S HISTORY MUSEUM, PANTS from STYLIST’S ARCHIVE, EARRINGS + BELLY BUTTON RING by MARTINE ALI.
Why do you feel like you're Cinderella?
Because I’ve always done things myself. I'm a self-proclaimed DIY pop star which is a conundrum. Pop stars are supposed to be some sort of product or machine-made, impossibly beautiful object but I kind of just did it all myself which is crazy. It's kind of part of the joke… the concept is a conundrum to me. It's like Frankenstein or something. I crafted this janky persona but that's part of the charm.
Do you feel like you would have an alter ego version?
You could never have enough alter egos. To be honest, I don't think Isabella Lovestory is an alter ego, it's more just an exaggeration of who I am inside and I’m putting it out. But…I do want to become a spy. I want to have a spy alter ego, after this crazy, psychedelic, and colorful era I’m gonna go back to being like Irma Vep. I always want to do something completely different from what I did before.
I mean if you do become a spy no one will ever know because you won't be able to tell us.
Exactly, I just love how spies have different looks and different wigs. I already feel like I'm a spy because I have so many different places where I live. Like when I go to LA, I'm the bimbo, health guru, yoga girl. And then when I go to London [she says, in a British accent] I'm a rock star. And then in New York I’m a [lets out a pretty sigh] party girl. I love having different personalities.
Do you have any Eurotrash on the schedule this summer?
Yes I was actually just doing my little Eurotrash moment in Paris and Spain. I performed at Primavera and We Love Green and did a trashy fairy tale performance with little unicorns dancing and twerking in the back…my DJ was my Prince Charming but with like… a Freddy Krueger mask and I was the trashy little Cinderella girl. Well, in Paris I was a French maid and in Spain I was a princess so I went from the maid to the princess.
Keep them guessing.
Exactly! This summer I’m gonna practice for my tour that's coming up in the fall and finish two music videos that are almost done. I'm just super down to have fun this summer because I've been working so hard on this album. I just want to go to the beach.
LEFT: ISABELLA wears BOW by BALENCIAGA.
RIGHT: ISABELLA wears DRESS by WIEDERHOEFT, JEWELRY by MARTINE ALI.
So you said you're working on two new music videos right now… can we know anything about that or is it a secret?
Well one is the Eurotrash one that I shot with this girl named Victoria Davidoff. She's in LA and she's amazing. We shot it in LA a month and a half ago and it's me in a carriage with two Eurotrash girls (hotties) with lots of green screens. The other one is for Vanity, the main track of the album, which I shot in Paris. That one is really crazy and epic. It’s shot with film and it's kind of an Alice in Wonderland vibe… but like in an office it's kind of weird. I love making videos, that's my favorite part.
What are the ingredients for a good Eurotrash summer?
Lots of plastic wigs. Lots of plastic everything. Lots of plastic rhinestones. Fake bootleg handbags… the more bootleg the better. Just become the most bootleg princess that you can be.
Is there anything you're doing after this?
Releasing more music! After this album comes out, I’m putting out a deluxe or remix. And then after that, more music and then after more music and more music. I really want to release two more projects this year because I feel like I've been working on making it all last year and the year before so I just want to release release release release so be on the lookout for my next music videos.
Okay I'm so excited. Ciao bella.
Ciao, have fun in Italy. I love Monica Bellucci.
TOP RIGHT + BOTTOM LEFT: ISABELLA wears TIARA by UNTITLED & CO, SKIRT by DENIZ BLUMENSTEIN, HEELS by CALVIN KLEIN ℅ GRAILED, BELLY BUTTON RING by MARTINE ALI.
TOP LEFT + BOTTOM RIGHT: ISABELLA wears BRA + HEELS by WOMEN’S HISTORY MUSEUM, PANTS from STYLIST’S ARCHIVE, EARRINGS + BELLY BUTTON RING by MARTINE ALI.
Listen to Vanity here.
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Beyond Time: Adriatic Sound Festival's Debut Summer
Following the festival, I was able to meet with Luca Lewis over Zoom to get to know more about how all of this came to be in such a short period of time. Only getting into the music scene once he moved to New York to play for the New York Red Bulls after COVID, Lewis is brand new to this world. He moved to Pesaro in 2001, spending nine years growing up there before moving back to New York. Read below for the full interview where we talk through everything from the architectural inspirations to his family members surpisingly raving all night long.
Did you get to enjoy the festival or were you running around the whole time?
I walked fifty-six kilometers on day one. It was good, hopefully from the outside it was all smooth.
Have you done any other music festivals before?
No, actually I've never worked in music or done any events in my life in any way. I was born in New York and my mom is from Pesaro, Italy which is next to Fano. I had this crazy idea but we had no idea how to start. I was driving with one of my friends from Fano named Nicolo, and we passed the airport and I thought it could be a really great place for a music festival. It's perfectly gated, right off the highway, right on the beach, right off the main train tracks…everything. Then he said, “Well, there's a new mayor coming into town so let's just make something up.” So I made a deck, almost as a joke. This was a year ago in July. That's the crazy part.
What were you inspired by when coming up with this one?
We created this theme of Ancient Romans being beyond their time which led to our slogan “Beyond Time.” Fano has a very close connection to Ancient Rome which inspired us to create the temples and arches. During the Roman Empire, Fano was the capital of the Adriatic Sea so this was a very important part of their history. Julius Caesar and Augustus marched from Rome to Fano to conquer the Adriatic then went into Croatia and all the neighboring countries. So I was able to convince them in July, came back to Italy to go to preseason, and then decided to stop playing and started focusing on the festival 100%. The city actually announced the festival. I saw it on the news and that’s how I knew we were 100% doing it. At the end of November, we met STUFISH who designed the stages but nobody really wanted to sign up as it was a year one festival nobody wanted to take the risk.
How did you change their minds?
I feel like we created a very strong brand and the stage design especially is what got the attention of the artists but at first it was extremely difficult. I just really stayed on top of them. Then once one big artist signed up it triggered everything. Rufus [Du Sol] took quite a bit of time to convince. It all happened super super super fast and became bigger than what we expected.
Was it important to you to do the festival in Fano? Was your connection to the community something that mattered to you?
Yeah 100% it’s where I grew up. My whole family on my mom's side is from here and no one thought it could actually be done (laughs). Bringing a festival to Fano… I mean nobody knows Fano. When you see the dates of the artists you see Ibiza, Madrid, and then you see Fano.
Did the people from Fano want to get involved with the festival?
A lot of people wanted to get involved and we had a lot of volunteers. Towns can be a little strange sometimes because they can be a little negative and hesitant so there was a lot of chit-chat. But yesterday we had a press conference and it was very positive because all the hotels in Fano were one hundred percent booked and everything was sold out. We brought a lot of tourism to the city. It was actually the most tourism that they've ever gotten so that was a big achievement. Even going forward, we’ll have a lot more support from the city because we’re bringing a lot of money to the city between the hotels and the restaurants and all that. That part meant a lot, especially because I did it with one of my best friends who was born in Fano.
Did your family come to the festival?
Yes, my dad was very supportive of this. He really liked the idea and helped me navigate all of the contracts with the agents because he's a lawyer. He was very involved in it. All of my family came. They all thought it was going to be a big rave. That was the word around town.. Everyone kept calling it a rave. Actually my mom stayed for ten hours with her friend and had so much fun. My Uncle who usually goes to bed at 9PM came and he was hanging on the techno stage smoking a cigarette. It was hilarious. To see that was amazing.
Did you help at all with the design or architecture for the stages?
Actually, I really don’t like festivals. I think they're very boring and all the same with a square stage and big LED screen. I just get bored. I get suffocated. So I wanted the stage to be in the middle. It creates this kind of flow where it could be empty in some areas, but that's the beauty of it because you can still see the DJ and dance but you're not stuck being too close to someone else. When I met with STUFISH I had drawn this really funny sketch on my iPad. At first, I showed him an image that I made with AI and they weren’t into it and then I showed them this stupid sketch and they loved it.
They had always wanted to do 360 design but no one wanted to do it. So we sat down and studied Roman architecture. It was inspired by the Arch of Augustus, which is located in Fano. So from my sketch, Zarya and Ric from STUFISH created that monster [The Temple]. It was risky to do 360 design. People in industry were completely against it.
Why is it risky?
Because it had never been done so nobody knew how it would go but I think it worked out and next year it'll be even bigger and much more full. I think we needed a strong brand to tap into the festival market, it couldn't just be another copy paste. Our marketing team did a really exceptional job with the storytelling.
Thanks for sharing all of this with me.
Thanks for coming, are you going to come back next year? It’s going to be even bigger.
Our Indian Fairy Raveena Aurora
How are you? It's so nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you. I'm so excited to dive into all of this with you. Thank you so much.
Of course! So, I saw the photos from the shoot, and everything really looks amazing. What has it meant to you with the album coming out? How does it feel?
Oh, it's really beautiful. The photos are all basically a reflection of the show itself. The show is this really dreamy, ethereal production involving dance, multi-instrumentalists, and split into many acts. It's been incredible because it's a show that spans all of our albums. We tried to be pretty intentional about making sure it felt balanced between all the different albums, so it feels like a celebration of all four.
This album [Where the Butterflies Go in the Rain] is all about returning to softness, returning to ease. Especially with the dance elements of the show, I was trying to figure out what it would look like if I incorporated it because I didn't train in dance and I don't dance in a style that really works for a pop show. I was trying to incorporate dance in a high-energy show, but made it more ballet-inspired, contemporary-inspired, ballerina-inspired. So it's all those elements coming together.
That's amazing. What inspired you to separate it into acts?
The reason why we set it up into acts was because we just have so many different types of sounds. Especially amongst the three albums, there are so many different genres we explored.
There's music that's more melded with Indian music. There's also really soulful R&B stuff. There's rock-influenced stuff. There's super experimental music in there but it's tied together with this dreamy, cinematic, ethereal feeling that wraps it all together.
How did you organize them?
We needed the acts because it’s a lot to shift from sound to sound or from movement to then playing instruments.
Act 1 is a brighter side of our music and has a very energetic, sunny, and light energy. It's a lot of my more joyful songs like Pluto, Temptation, Smile For Me and Lose My Focus. And then, Act 2 is this voyage to an Indian space where it's all of the Indian-inspired music. (like Honey, Nectar, Secret, Junebug and all those kinds of songs). That's where all the dancing happens. Act 3 is, this very emotional, open road kind of feeling. It's all the more ballad type of songs like Headaches, Baby Mama, and If Only. The show really takes you on a whole journey.
It sounds like each part also explores different themes as well. This is your first time headlining a first tour in three years. Has the creative process been different this time?
Absolutely. It's been very, very different. It was a lot to incorporate dance and playing many more instruments. It took three years of study to get to that point. In the past two years, I was practicing both instruments and dance in a really intense way. I was really inspired by jazz and classical musicians and the way that practice is everything to them. They navigate their whole musicianship through constant practice.Like yes, as a songwriter and a pop indie musician, practice is inherent and comes with it. But it's not as intentional sometimes as jazz and classical spaces. It's not the focus.
I just wanted to lock in and get to a new level with all of my performance capabilities. Now, I feel a lot more energetic as a performer and I can do a lot more on stage now because of all that practice. Almost like an athlete trying to expand their endurance or expand their capability, you know?
Completely. I totally know what you mean. We have a classical guitarist in my family, so I know allll about the constant practice. It's cool that you kind of took that in your own way.
Yeah, it taught me so much. I feel like when you’ve been making music for so long, you sometimes feel like you already know your pocket and everything you’re good at. But there's always more. You can do music for 20, 30, 40 years, and there's always more. It's never ending.
That's what makes it so fun.
Yeah, absolutely.
I heard that there's four custom looks for the show. How involved were you in designing those and how do you feel like they shape the show?
You know, I can't take any credit for the beauty of these designs. That was all the designers but I definitely asked them to come into my world and take stock of the colors, schemes, and the overarching visual theme of an Indian fairy.
Oh, that's such a good phrase.
Yeah, it was really sweet. The brief we told a lot of our visual collaborators was Indian fairy so they just created with that in mind. It was incredible working with some South Asian designers too. This incredible designer, Rohit Mane, is really new and he's already working with SZA and on some huge looks. He's so sick. And then Kate Broadrick did some of my favorite designs like the pink corset look. It's really gorgeous. I really love it.
I also loved imagining within the confines of what we had to plan. Dancing is so specific and you need such specific things for the type of movement and type of show it is. We created around those needs and I think it flows really well, especially dancing with all that fabric.
During this process who's the first person you would go to with a new idea? Were there any particular people you collaborated with in this project that felt really instrumental?
I worked with two amazing creative directors. Bijan Berahimi, who did the bulk of the graphic design for this album, has been my longtime collaborator. He has a really incredible sense of how to take my Indian background and incorporate it into something experimental and fresh.
More recently, I worked with Tin Mai of this Earth-focused collective called Aerthship on a short film. We worked on a lot of the creative direction for the tour together. Both of those people are really integral. Also, I've really loved working with stylist Natalie Roar recently who's a London based stylist.
For the looks, where did you pull some inspiration from? I know you mentioned the Indian fairy idea, but do you remember when you first started coming up with the vision or moodboard?
Let me pull up that styling mood board because it was so comprehensive. It was literally a thousand pins.
Oh, my gosh. I love that.
This was so secret, but it's like my life is in there. Literally 834 pins. It was a lot of early 2000's couture when they were using a lot of Indian embroidery. Now they're kind of back on it with using a lot of Indian influence in fashion spaces which is really interesting and fun to see and sometimes funny also [laughs]… But anyways who else was I looking at?
It was all very intricate beading work and embroidery like Chanel Couture 97 was so beautiful. I was looking at a lot of early 2000’s eveningwear like Zuhair Murad (2004). Two years in the making [the 834 pin moodboard].
Well, it paid off you have such a distinct vision. Were there any colors and textures that you tried to bring in and did they have any bigger symbolic meaning at all?
No, absolutely. There was also a whole color board and it was all surrounding baby blues, baby pinks, light yellows, sea moss green, and a lot of iridescence. Iridescence was a huge theme. A lot of this album was referring to my earliest roots as a musician musically.
In collaborating with many talented artists to bring her vision of an Indian Fairy to life, Miss Aurora has been able to get involved all across the creative board. It was amazing to see how something as specific as the baby blues and baby pinks represents a larger full circle moment happening in her journey as an artist. It was a pleasure to learn more about her devotion to continuously improving her craft and we can’t wait to see what she does next.
Go stream Where the Butterflies Go in the Rain here.
