For Twigs, everyone wanted to look their best. And, for Twigs, everyone was willing to wait. The waiting was the point, to foment in the hot rooms a tangible pressure.
Half her head was shorn. The thirty-seven-year-old Twigs, born Tahliah Debrett Barnett, is a holistic artist. The choreography informs the singing which informs the production which informs the styling, and so forth. She is a paragon of seriousness, even studiousness: she can do humor, but she will never do irony. She is a true believer in living her art. She makes the effort of her performance known.
As a child, she trained with an opera singer and studied ballet. People knew her first as a dancer; she had long chronicled her rehearsals on Instagram. A brilliant performer, she could be merely graceful, whether she is pole dancing or sword fighting, and yet she pushes past finesse to an expression more ravenous, as if she would spend her body to annihilation.
Is there a tendon unflexed? She has for years radiated a kind of untouchable, It Girl energy. But some of this mystique dissipated in the lead-up to her latest album, her third LP in a near-fifteen-year musical career. This time, Twigs seemed dead set on being properly understood. She spoke of healing modules, of breathing techniques. In interviews, Twigs disbursed the meanings behind her neologism, her philosophy. It was petals against skin. Authorship is everything.
Twigs has navigated a tabloid scrutiny disproportionate to her work. Romances with celebrities, such as Robert Pattinson and Shia LaBeouf, had brought her into contact with a hostile crowd—people who bullied her for her race and her apparent unconventionality. For more than four years, she has been locked in a legal battle with LaBeouf, whom she has sued for sexual and physical abuse.
