INYIM Favorite Slayyyter’s Taste for Beautifully Cursed Things Remains Impeccable
INYIM favorite Slayyyter may have a new album and sold-out shows to talk about, but the story that really stopped us was considerably more hazardous: she collects vintage showgirl costumes, and one of them apparently came with a little extra history in the form of lead paint and a rash.
During her visit to Late Night with Seth Meyers, Slayyyter revealed that she is a self-described hoarder of old stage pieces and has learned where to hunt down the kind of showgirl relics most people would probably leave exactly where they found them. One recent score came from Italy but had originally belonged to a cabaret in France. Gorgeous provenance. Questionable materials.
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Slayyyter Loves a Beautifully Cursed Find
The pop favorite’s vintage collecting habit includes old showgirl costumes, strange dolls, rhinestones and at least one piece of wardrobe with a toxic little surprise.
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Slayyyter said she actually wore the vintage costume in a music video — only to discover afterward that something was very wrong with her back. The culprit, she explained, was the kind of hazardous material sometimes used in old costumes, including lead paint. Seth Meyers’ response was basically the only reasonable one: after hearing that sales pitch, nobody is going to fight her for the next piece.
She is not giving up the hunt. Touring Europe apparently doubles as treasure-search season, where Slayyyter looks for the stranger side of vintage: weird dolls, creepier objects and little rotten stuffed animals. Her luggage by the end of a tour can contain showgirl pieces, rhinestoning supplies, rubber ducks and whatever else has been drafted into the visual universe.
The DIY Instinct Has Only Gotten Stronger
The collecting habit makes more sense once Slayyyter starts talking about how hands-on she has become with her visuals. Early in her career, she imagined reaching a point where more of the work could be handed off. Instead, success seems to have pushed her in the opposite direction: she likes the control of doing things herself.
She credits her stylist Hunter and the rest of her team for helping bring everything together, but the process remains collaborative enough for Slayyyter to squeeze in her own strange little details — her example being a rhinestoned rubber-duck shoe. That tells you quite a lot about the visual philosophy, frankly.
She Thought This Album Might Be the End
Elsewhere in the interview, Slayyyter admitted she went into making her upcoming fourth album, wor$t man in america, telling collaborators it might be her last. She was feeling done with the whole thing — a declaration she now laughs off as “very dramatic artist behavior” — but that freedom appears to have unlocked something.
Instead of worrying about whether people would like it, she made the music she wanted to hear: more distortion, more screaming, more abrasion. Songs such as “OLD TECHNOLOGY” felt so aggressive to her that she wondered whether the record would become the nail in the coffin. The reaction had the opposite effect. Slayyyter told Meyers that seeing people connect with the music has made her feel re-inspired to keep creating.
That same looseness has carried into the live show. She says she has thrown a lot of the rules away, rehearses fewer fixed moves and lets performances find their own ebb and flow. Meyers described the screaming between Slayyyter and her audience as unexpectedly joyful. Her term for it is even better: “happy screaming.”
Watch Slayyyter Talk Toxic Showgirl Costumes, DIY Fashion and New Music
Slayyyter joins Seth Meyers to discuss the strange vintage pieces she collects, becoming more hands-on with her visual world, and why making wor$t man in america changed her mind about walking away from music.
Source: Late Night with Seth Meyers / YouTube. Images: Late Night with Seth Meyers video / YouTube.
