Confidence equals style for the Grammy-winner, and her voluptuous figure is now much in demand by the A-list labels.
When Adele takes the stage at the Hollywood Bowl next Sunday alongside Etta James, it will be a dreamgirl moment. More than her stint at the famed BRIT School, the performing-arts breeding ground that also spawned Amy Winehouse, Adele credits her prodigious talent to the high priestess of soul, whose albums she listened to religiously in her bedroom as a teen.
But style, not song, first hooked Adele (born Adele Laurie Blue Adkins). At 13, she spotted an Etta James CD in a bargain bin at the HMV store in her native London. She had never heard of James but was instantly smitten. "Her blond weave and her catty eyes and her curves and her tight gold shimmery dresses, and just that attitude in her face and figure -- I was like, 'Oh my God, to die!' "
Replace the blond weave with a brushed-out beehive and the shimmery dress with a baggy "jumper," as she calls her oversize sweater, and Adele could easily be describing herself: a soul diva for the MySpace generation. Her figure, hair and liquid-lined eyes confer a retro swing that her dressed-down cool simultaneously refutes. When she thrusts out her hand to show off the 16-diamond Tiffany ring she gave herself for her recent 21st birthday, it's clear she's patrolling the border between streetwise girl and glamorous woman.
Lounging in the courtyard of the Greenwich Hotel in Manhattan, a far cry from her South London roots, Adele sips an espresso and drags on a Marlboro Light, exhibiting a poise that belies her years -- more Beyoncé than Britney. That outsized confidence is matched by outsized features: down-pillow lips, gem-green eyes, flame-red mane, rosebud complexion, heart-shaped dimpled chin. She exaggerates nature with plenty of nurture. "Oh, I love looking like a drag queen," she gushes. "Hair back-combed beyond belief, eyelashes galore, heavy contour. And I love my big, square, ghetto nails."
Her body is also big, if we're talking fashion-world metrics. Adele says she weighs 11 stone (154 pounds) and wears a British size 14 (size 12 in the U.S.) Does she feel pressure to slim down? "I've been the same since I was 15 and went on the contraceptive pill. I've got this far without looking like Britney Spears. I think I can go a bit further," she says with a satirical bite worthy of Jay McInerney.
Despite some to-be-expected snarkiness about it in the blogosphere, Adele's voluptuous figure is working in her favor. If a chance record-store encounter was her fashion awakening, her christening was landing a four-page spread in Vogue for this past May's annual "Shape" issue as the "curvy" icon. Topping that, Anna Wintour, Vogue's editor in chief, dressed her for the Grammys in a custom Barbara Tfank black satin dress belted to show off her waist, with a Stephen Russell 19th-century diamond brooch perched atop her generous décolletage.
Adele walked away from the night with two Grammys, and the event also placed her irretrievably in the fashion spotlight. Which is not entirely where she wants to be. "I'd much rather dress comfortable than become a trendsetter. I'd much rather be like this," she says, gesturing at today's outfit: a striped H&M baggy sweater over black American Apparel leggings, ankles peeking out of Chanel ballerina flats.
"I'm not that fussed about fashion," she says bluntly. But she's hardly ascetic. She raids the racks of Topshop, H&M and American Apparel for basics. She names Donna Karan, Moschino and Vivienne Westwood as beloved designers. Her London apartment is too tiny to accommodate her shoe and bag addiction -- Louis Vuitton, Gucci, tons of Manolo Blahnik and Chanel -- so she keeps stuff in storage at her dad's place. "I get bored of things after two months," she says. Yet she has an adult savvy about investment pieces, like her seven Chanel bags. "They'll be nice to have when I'm older," she says. "My favorite Chanel [a navy quilted-lambskin purse] I could probably still buy in 30 years."
Siren in waiting
Adele has come a long way since her early grunge days. More recently, she has shed kewpie bangs for the side-swept beehive that's now her signature -- "a neat housewifey one, not like Amy Winehouse's," she explains. Her go-to trapeze shapes are yielding to tailored silhouettes.
"When she walked into my studio, she reminded me of Lynn Redgrave in 'Georgy Girl,' " says Tfank, a Los Angeles designer who is creating Adele's outfit for the Hollywood Bowl. Tfank saw a '50s Hollywood siren waiting to be tapped. "She needs to show her body, not hide her body," the designer says. "She is more like Marilyn Monroe, who said, 'This is who I am.' "
For her part, Adele says, "Barbara brought out that thing of me wanting to dress up. People my age in the public eye -- a lot of them are, like, sluts." In the July issue of Nylon, she parades her newfound look: black, waist-defining dress with three-quarter length sleeves and knee-skimming skirt, black tights, vertiginous heels.
With the demands of stardom eating up her calendar -- she has spent more than a year touring her debut album, 19, which has sold more than a million copies worldwide -- Adele has enlisted a stylist, Gaelle Paul.
"The first time I met Adele she was in this incredible Ralph Lauren poncho," Paul says. "She was like, 'Can you believe my friends said this looks like a dishcloth?' I thought, 'She's rad!' "
Paul caters to the singer's classic-bohemian balance: "Very simple dresses from Prada look great. Anything Chanel fits her like a glove. Edgier labels like Isabel Marant speak to her hippie side."
These days, there's no shortage of A-list labels clamoring for a piece of Adele. Isn't that the ultimate fantasy, to be lavished with swag from the fashion gods? Adele enjoys the spoils, but is careful to maintain the rights to her image. "If they give me free stuff, I have to wear it. But I'm not into being an advertising board," she says.
She would consider a fashion campaign but has zero interest in runway posturing, à la Beth Ditto, the lead singer of the Gossip, who sat in the front row at the most elite shows of Paris fashion week this spring. And don't expect her to follow J. Lo's lead with a line of denim or fragrance. "I don't want to do 'Adele by Adele' perfume!" she wisecracks. As for singer-songwriter Duffy's star turn in a Diet Coke advertisement? "I think it's selling out," Adele says, though she's quick to praise Duffy's beauty. "I wonder if they did a Coke advert if they would do a voluptuous girl," she says with tongue in cheek.
Adele may not give a toss about fashion-industry norms, but there's no denying they remain the elephant in the room. When Ditto lands the debut cover of Conde Nast's new biannual Love, it still reads as provocation. Sure, Ditto was naked, but arguably what grabs attention are her resplendent ripples (the accompanying article put her weight at 170 pounds). Adele sloughs the whole thing off: "That cover was phenomenal. But if that's controversial, I think it's . . . lame."
She is similarly proud of her Vogue appearance, and dismisses the rumors first generated by Perez Hilton that the pictures had been Photoshopped: "Who doesn't get airbrushed? No one says anything when some skinny, blond, [busty], white-teeth girl gets airbrushed. Honestly, I've never looked that glamorous in a photograph. I was lying on a bed in a Michael Kors coat with my legs hanging out!"
To Adele, the equation is simple: Confidence equals good style. Asked who inspires her, she cites Beyoncé, because she knows how to dress her body; Sarah Jessica Parker, for pulling off gutsy clashes; Sharon Stone in the movie "Casino," Julia Roberts in "Erin Brockovich," Michelle Pfeiffer in "Scarface" -- all characters with a fearless self-possession. "The most important thing is the way that someone carries themselves. If they feel comfortable, they carry themselves differently," Adele says.
She practices what she preaches. "There is nothing apologetic about the way she looks. It's very celebratory," says Vogue's Hamish Bowles, who escorted Adele to the Grammys. "She might have reservations about showing some parts of her body, but I think she's a very healthy role model because she's sort of, 'Take me as I am.' "
Busy masterminding her second album, Adele is determined to remain honest, in her music style and her fashion style. She refused efforts to be paired with what she calls "dirty pop" producers because it doesn't suit her any more than Winehouse's cut-off jeans or Duffy's pin-up frocks do. "I'll just put my foot down and be like, 'No, I don't like that,' " she says. For her Devil Wears Prada moment, she even challenged Wintour's initial notion to put her in a tight dress. "I was like, 'I've got five bums, one extra belly. I'd rather do one that just flows over the bad parts.' "
Fans respond to that empowering stance. Heavyset girls crowd around her tour bus and praise her for helping them feel comfortable being themselves. "I think it's that I'm not trying to look 'normal,' " Adele says. "I don't feel the need to look good all the time. I want people to see me how I am."
So what will Adele wear to meet her hero at the Hollywood Bowl? She and Tfank are plotting something similar to the Grammys ensemble: a flocked black taffeta dress, this time with an open neckline and a cascading back, and likely diamonds galore.
But for the record: "I still love my leggings and jumpers," Adele says. "I would probably wear that if Barbara wasn't making my dress!"
Vogue Article
Photographed by Annie Leibovitz.
"I feel so proper," says Adele, laughing, as she eyes herself in the mirror of a Los Angeles hotel room while trying on the shapely black satin dress that Barbara Tfank has made for her to wear to the Grammy Awards. "From ladette to lady!" Adele's hair has been frantically teased and back-combed and looks "a little messed up," says her hairdresser, Kevin Posey, "like she could have done it," and her gray-green eyes are elaborately framed à la Dusty Springfield. "You look gorgeous!" says her manager, Jonathan Dickins. "I'm all proud!" Her product manager, Doneen Lombardi, comes in to see the effect and promptly bursts into tears.
"I feel like my nana!" Adele declares appreciatively. But with her voluptuous figure, peaches-and-cream complexion, and hair that she aptly describes as "ginger biscuit" color, there is something more period than merely old-fashioned about the way this soulful singer (who turns 21 in May) looks. She might be one of Charles II's court favorites, perhaps, or an actress painted by Reynolds or Romney, and her healthy bawdiness would certainly have been celebrated by Wycherley and Fielding.
It is this romantic quality that designer Tfank has played up. ("I'm gonna wear a big balcony bra and get me boobs up!" Adele announced when she first saw the portrait décolleté.) Tfank adapted the dress from a sleeveless model in her collection; Adele adroitly requested the just-above-mid-calf length, and sleeves to the elbow. "I don't like my arms—my upper arms," she explains. "It's the only feature I don't like about myself. I used to wear minidresses with jeans, but I get my legs out now."
Adele spins in her jive skirt. "I've got three bums, and this just sort of glides over them!" she says, laughing. She has few inhibitions about the way she looks. "Fans are encouraged that I'm not a size 0—that you don't have to look a certain way to do well.
"I like being comfy more than anything," she adds. Whether onstage or in her private life, Adele has a preference for trapeze shapes, or enveloping sweaters and cardigans in luxurious fabrics (she also likes "old vintage cardies with beads and pearls sewn into flowers"), worn with leggings and ballet pumps for a look that Posey characterizes as "Goldie Hawn on the Go-Go, or early-nineties hip-hop—but as though Chanel had done it. Really elegant but very urban and a little bit ghetto." Adele gleefully mixes high street—H&M, Miss Selfridge, Topshop—with British designer labels, including Vivienne Westwood and Aquascutum, and regrets that she no longer has time to rummage in street markets. She was delighted, during the American tour for her debut album, 19, to discover the "great vintage places in Portland, Oregon. Twenty on one block, all amazing. Better than Brick Lane."
"I'll go proper glam," Adele told Vogue when she first discussed her Grammy outfit. "Lots of diamonds!" The paste buckles on her vertiginous Manolo heels picked up the motif. She already owns a pair in blue, and another in silver—"They're the Carrie ones," explains the Sex and the City fanatic. "I buy a load of shoes, but I can't wear them!" Moments later she is bellowing, "Burns! Burns! Burns!" Johnny Cash-style as the strain of those heels begins to tell.
The following day, on the Grammy red carpet, Adele's prim look (given an edge with the "ghetto fabulous" black-on-white nails she had put on at a little place on Sunset Boulevard) sets her apart from the coruscating crowd. When she performs, standing shoeless on the darkened stage of the Staples Center, she looks oddly vulnerable and fragile—until her achingly powerful voice swirls and eddies through that vast space, revealing the force that roils within her.
Adele Laurie Blue Adkins has come a long way from the hardscrabble district of south London where she was born to an eighteen-year-old single mother. (They remain a tight-knit pair. "We've always been on our own," says Adele. "She's the most supportive mum ever. She's my best friend. Hopefully I'll sell 20 million records and she'll never have to work again.")
Last October, when the Grammys were a dream away, I visited her in London's genteel Notting Hill neighborhood, where she was installed in a rental apartment near XL, her record label (she has since bought herself a little flat nearby, which her mother is decorating for her as a present). She had recently got into a scuffle with paparazzi before realizing to her considerable amusement that their intended quarry was Elle Macpherson, who she hadn't known lived next door. "I love it around here," Adele says. "It's really civilized, really quiet at night. Where I lived in south London, if I had scaffolding in my window like I do here, there's no way it wouldn't be broken into by now." However, she ruefully admits that most of her tight-knit circle of friends, living in the farther reaches of the metropolis, "can't even afford to get here"—a challenge for someone whose "friends are my life, and being in love is my life."
Whatever her surroundings, Adele is, unregenerately, a south London girl, with the attitude, street smarts, and salty vocabulary to match. ("I'm a bit mouthy," she admits.) When she found out a boyfriend had cheated on her, she tracked him down in a local pub and punched the living daylights out of him. ("Chasing Pavements," her hit single, was written about the dissolution of that relationship.)
Adele loathed her music teacher in high school ("She wouldn't let me in the choir!") and ran with what might politely be described as a "fast crowd." "It's so weird because my friends from then all had kids at sixteen," she says. "Can you imagine if I had stayed, and I was still in that crowd and did what my friends did? It would be awful."
Luckily, when Adele was sixteen, her mother enrolled her in the Brit School, a tuition-free performing-arts school whose alums include Amy Winehouse and Leona Lewis. "I never got bored, so I was never getting in trouble. I'd always had a problem taking teachers seriously, whereas there, you wanted to listen to them because they'd all done it, practiced whatever subject they were teaching."
She went through the fashion rites of passage of a working-class London girl. "From twelve to thirteen I was a Grunger," she remembers. "Criminal Damage jeans. Dog collars. Hoodies. We used to go to Camden [the raw, style-centric North London street market] all the time because we were, like, 'so dark.' Then I really got into R&B and became a Rude Girl—in Adidas, with a spit curl! Tiny Nike backpacks. Mine was black, with a logo bigger than the bag."
However übercool her teenage tribal aesthetic, Adele admits that she would hide in her room listening to Celine Dion and is still so in awe of the Spice Girls that she'd rather not meet any of them and break the spell. "It was always pop music," Adele says. "I listened to Jeff Buckley and Joan Armatrading because of me mum, but E17 were my boy band, and I loved Backstreet Boys, Aqua, Destiny's Child, Missy Elliott." (She still loves Beyoncé, Britney Spears, Scissor Sisters, Mika, and Katy Perry.)
But Adele's musical epiphany came at fourteen. "I remember being out at the record store HMV with all my friends. Downstairs is the jazz section. They had a two-for-one deal, two CDs for a fiver, and I bought Ella Fitzgerald and Etta James. I bought them because I loved their immaculate hairdos. And Etta James's eyes—the original Amy Winehouse eyes! I loved the vintage look of it." When she listened to Etta and Ella sing, "it changed my life," she says simply. "It was so heartfelt compared with the music I'd been listening to. Etta had a proper distraught life. She was a big heroin addict; her mum was a prostitute." In tribute, Adele often covers "Fool That I Am," one of James's standards.
Following this discovery, Adele's musical tastes were radically transformed. "I kind of got into the old legends—Roberta Flack, Johnny Cash, Diana Ross and the Supremes." However, she says, "it never really occurred to me that I could write my own songs and get away with it!" Then she saw a Lionel Richie interview with the BBC's Michael Parkinson. "When he met Marvin Gaye, he said, 'How can you write? You don't read music.' 'By humming,' he said. So I'd write vocal parts at home and hum to the guitarist."
In December 2006, her friend Jack Peñate (who had just released his debut single, "Second, Minute or Hour") asked her to open for him when he played at the Troubadour, an atmospheric venue in London's Earls Court, with space for little more than 100 people.
"I went on first and I was on my own, and the whole room was packed," she remembers. "It was hot. It was disgusting." Then she began to sing. "The whole room was silent, and I saw these random girls just, like, crying. That was the time I was like, 'Oh, my God, this is amazing, can't live without it.' There's nothing more freeing than playing live, nothing."
Adele still loves the intimacy of a small venue. "I like to hear people, their glasses tinkling and all that. I'd hate to play to people I can't even see and can't even hear. That'd be horrible." At a recent performance at Manhattan's China Club, her easy rapport with the small, industry-heavy audience was delightfully unprocessed. During the Q & A session she was asked, "What are you looking for in a boyfriend?" "I like a bit of drama!" she said. "Twenty-first-birthday plans?" "I'm going out to drink at every bar!" (Adele actually gave up alcohol after Christmas. "I'm quite enjoying it," she says. "I can remember everything that I do!" She does, however, smoke Marlboro Lights ceaselessly.)
Powerful though her live performances were, Adele's talents reached a much broader audience after a friend created a MySpace site for her. Adele admits she didn't really know what this was—until Lily Allen reinvented the rules of the industry when she launched her career through her own site (to date, Allen's songs from her site have been listened to 36 million times) and "MySpace blew up."
Nick Huggett of XL Recordings contacted Adele through MySpace, assuming that she already had a record deal and a manager. When he found out that she had neither, he set her up with manager Jonathan Dickins, and suddenly she had an album deal. 19 (her age at the time) was the result.
"It didn't even occur to me that a million-plus people would hear my record," she says (the album has sold 500,000), "and that people were gonna love it and criticize it. And it kind of frightens me sometimes 'cause I think my record's really honest—there's things in it that I'd never admitted to myself, that I would never just say in conversation. But then the other side of it is that I always get people coming up to me after shows and telling me that it helped them through their relationship at the time, which is an amazing feeling."
In a stroke of serendipity last fall, Adele was booked for Saturday Night Live on the same night as Sarah Palin. Seventeen million viewers tuned in. "It had been kind of underground till then!" says Adele, laughing. "I've had a really smooth ride. KT Tunstall played empty pubs for ten years."
Back in London in early December, Adele was in bed—"Googling to see if Leona Lewis had been nominated for the Grammys"—when Perez Hilton E-mailed to break the news of her first nomination. When Adele realized that she had been nominated for four Grammy Awards, "I locked myself in the bathroom and cried for an hour!" she remembers. "Then my agent—who was crying, too—came over," she says, adding, with characteristically deadpan drollery, "He was really stingy and brought round a bottle of champagne that I'd bought him for his birthday."
In Los Angeles for the Grammy Awards, Adele is as independent as ever. She eschews the industry parties, and instead, she and her new beau (a soft-spoken London lad with the looks of Michael York in Cabaret) have gone to catch up on the movies—Doubt, The Wrestler, Milk.
Her mother is not here to see her, and Adele guiltily confesses that she hid her passport. "It would be great to have her here," she explains, "but I feel really awkward if she's around when I'm working." Instead, she rings her from the red carpet to announce that she has won her first Grammy (for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance). Her mother just screams (it would be difficult to hear anything else above the roar). By the time she performs, Adele has beaten out the Jonas Brothers and her friend Duffy for Best New Artist.
After the ceremony, she skips the Woodstock-themed official Grammy after-party and what promises to be the achingly cool after-after-party that Coldplay have told her about down in Santa Monica. Instead she repairs to an In-N-Out Burger on Venice Boulevard. Her publicist Benny Tarantini takes the order. "Maybe I should get two milkshakes," she says, laughing. "To match me Grammys!"
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