“You’re looking good!” SZA screams to a woman from out the window of a black Uber SUV as it idles through the snowy streets of Soho in Manhattan, back to her hotel on the Lower East Side. She explains, “Everyone in New York dresses up during fashion week, even if you’re not going to the shows.”
The singer is in town for New York Fashion Week, during which she will attend a handful of shows and parties. She is en route back to her hotel for an outfit and hair change to prep for the upcoming night of festivities, which include the Jeremy Scott show, a possible appearance at VFiles (if there’s time to make it uptown to the show, given the fashion week congestion) and parties for Fendi and Raf Simons. The 26-year-old SZA, aka Solána Rowe, has been to fashion shows before, but this season—ahead of the release of her debut album CTRL next month—she is exploring more of the scene, though perhaps with some caution.
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“I have a more sentimental, emotional connection to fashion than a technical, ‘Who is this designer?’ point of view,” she says. “Growing up, I didn’t care because my mom’s connection to fashion—and my mom is my role model—was very organic. We would go to the thrift store, but she would pull out the Oscar de la Renta, and then the Prada. But it was casual. I used to wear stuff out of her closet all the time. She threatened to put a padlock up—of course, I ruined all of my mom’s clothes.”
Hand-me-downs aside, Rowe has continued the tradition of thrifting while on tour, hitting up any local shop she can find, including one in Lansing, Michigan, where she found one of her most successful hauls. “That was a really good store. We got so much stuff, we had to buy a new suitcase!” she says. “There was so much fishing memorabilia in Lansing. The natural paraphernalia, the Realtree and other camo, the windbreakers. It was old Champion sweatshirts at $2 a piece. But it was also like a weird, old Ralph Lauren dad vibe as well.”
Nostalgia has long held influence on the runways and has been looping on the ’90s for a little while now, which works in Rowe’s favor, as she herself is a child of the decade. Vintage Champion sweatshirts, Tommy Hilfiger overalls and Fendi logos are all in her wardrobe rotation. “I was raised Muslim, so my dad put me in a lot of overalls,” she says. “And I was really comfortable too in the overalls. I played really hard, so it always made more sense for me to wear that.”
With her boyish baggy denim, sweatpants, crop tops and an overall vibe of athleticism, it would be easy to peg Rowe’s style to that of, say, early Aaliyah, but the singer is hesitant to name any fashion icons. “That’s so specific and difficult. I feel like most of my fashion icons are just lifestyle icons. Not even lifestyle icons, but just moments. I watch movies, and I write music with movies in mind. I watch movies with hair and fashion in mind and I listen to music, and that’s it.”
Rowe’s latest single, “Drew Barrymore,” which was released in January, was no exception, and it turns out that aesthetics and style have a lot to do with her writing process. “I love the language of film beyond what’s being spoken, beyond the dialogue,” she says. “There are so many nuances in a nail color and hair choice. Look at Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. She had the blonde frizzy, puffy hair, and she wore all white the whole movie, even though she was murderous as f–k and crazy. Or Sharon Stone in Casino. She’s going HAM! I’m very into Sharon Stone fashion.” Rowe used Drew Barrymore’s ’90s on-screen characters as inspiration for the recent track, from the 1992 flick Poison Ivy to 1999’s Never Been Kissed. “She’s so casual. There’s nothing more beautiful than people who are comfortable and casual in their selves but also filled with energy and good vibes and bubbliness, and that’s her vibe. She’s chill, but she’s confident, but she’s shy. So when I wrote this song, I imagined different moments of seeing her.”
Much of the upcoming album was recorded on the road while Rowe was on tour, everywhere from Michigan, Minnesota and Atlanta to L.A. (where she currently is based) and downtown New York. “It was wherever I could catch a vibe,” she says. “It takes me a while to absorb information, figure out how I feel about it, and then translate it in a way that makes sense for me. The only thing that keeps me not anxious is the natural, the feeling that it comes from a place, the part I don’t understand. I don’t know how I write things, I don’t know why they sound the way they sound or what they mean. My secret brain is absorbing and processing.” She is currently in the process of whittling down her album to 10 to 12 songs, from 20 tracks.
Back at the hotel, Rowe sits with her stylist, Dianne Garcia, to pick out jewelry for the night’s look, which is a Windex-blue Jeremy Scott sweatshirt, a pair of relaxed leather trousers, ten-inch Versace platform sandals and a bright, lime-green fur coat by Tzarina by Ollia, the color of which is reminiscent of Lil’ Kim’s brightly-hued look from her “Crush On You” video in 1996. The statement outerwear soon proves itself to also be useful for the night’s chill, as another Uber brings her to Jeremy Scott’s show, where Rowe will join Kylie Jenner, Sofia Richie and Young Paris to take in the show and later head backstage to meet Scott, who compliments her “great style and color and flare.”
As for her own impressions of the show? “I would wear everything, including those panties with the fishnets. The orange coat was crazy. There was another one that looked like a cropped bomber. It was like Almost Famous, slash Riding in Cars With Boys. It was very Drew Barrymore.”