Griff on New Music, Making Her Own Clothes, and Her Epic Brits Performance
It helped that Griff had two other, equally impactful looks to help her through the night. (Post-performance, she slipped into a delightfully flouncy tiered Simone Rocha gown featuring pouf sleeves, a harness detail, and encrusted with pearls.) But it was her first red carpet look—designed especially for the event by the London-based, Chinese-born designer and previous LVMH Prize nominee Susan Fang—that served as the most breathtaking fashion moment. With a shimmering, silvery-blue shadow across her forehead and a single tear painted on her cheek, the final touch was an enormous, ethereal headpiece constructed from geometric wires and sparkling glass spheres.
“I wanted to support an up-and-coming designer anyway, but I also think by going with a newer designer, hopefully they’ve got a fresh look that people haven’t really seen before. It’s also definitely important for me to support Black and Asian talent where I can,” says Griff, who was born in rural Hertfordshire to a Jamaican father and a Chinese mother. “We kind of went all out. I think we accidentally went a bit Met gala to the Brits,” she laughs, “but I was kind of like why not? It was my first red carpet, let’s go big and go theatrical!”
It was certainly the right occasion to go all-out—in no small part thanks to the fact that Griff was finally able to meet one of her heroes, Taylor Swift, for French fries in her dressing room after the show. (Swift had previously expressed she was a fan after Griff and fellow singer-songwriter Maisie Peters recorded a cover of Swift’s “exile” last year.) “It’s so nuts,” Griff says. “I can’t even begin to explain to you how much Taylor Swift has influenced me as a writer. And then I was getting ready in the morning, when suddenly these flowers just appeared. And the note was like, ‘Hope your performance goes well and hope I get to say hi! From your friend, Taylor.’ And I thought: Is there a Taylor I know that I’ve forgotten? Could it be Taylor Swift? And then when she did her speech, she shouted me out and I freaked out, then after the show we hung out for a bit. She was so great.”
Published at Sat, 15 May 2021 21:10:48 +0000