For Dua Lipa, Just Being a Pop Star Isn’t Enough

Dua Lipa could fill her days just by being a massively successful musician. Still, at 27, she’s beginning to build a media empire with Service95, the arts and culture newsletter she launched in February, accompanied by her podcast “Dua Lipa: At Your Service,” now on its third season.

Gracing the cover of T Magazine’s Women’s Fall Fashion Issue, the multifaceted celebrity opens up to Kurt Soller about owning her own narrative and building a community, the diversification of her artistic portfolio and her two-year standoff with The New York Times.

On Service95:
Service95 represents a space where discussions around trans liberation are as common as those about jewelry and yoga: “My intention is never to be political… but there’s a political bent to my existence,” Lipa says. “The easiest thing you can do is just hide away and not have an opinion about anything.”

On pop stars who bare all in their work:
“I think it’s a marketing tool: How confessional can you be?” she says. “I also don’t put so much of my life out there for people to dig into the music in this weird, analytical way.”

Producer Mark Ronson on Lipa’s work ethic:
“I’ve probably spent more time waiting for artists to show up in the studio than I have working with artists… If she’s two minutes late — literally, if it’s 12:02 — there’s a text: ‘Sorry, running five minutes late.’ That’s not superstar behavior, you know? She still works with the mind-set that she hasn’t [made it] yet.”

T Magazine’s 2023 Women’s Fall Fashion Issue will be on newsstands on August 20. You can read the full story here.

Credit: Photograph by Luis Alberto Rodriguez. Styled by Carlos Nazario.

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