One hour on the phone with Miley Cyrus.
Miley Cyrus joins Perfect’s founder Katie Grand for a candid phone conversation on everything from Paula Yates’s archive and wild parties on her Bangerz tour to their latest collaboration for Perfect Magazine—Three Days With Miley, an 80-page special-edition zine photographed by Paolo Roversi and Lynette Garland in his legendary Paris studio, along with much, much more…
Miley Cyrus photographed by Paulo Roversi.
MC Hi Katie.
KG Hi Miley.
MC What’s going on?
KG Very happy to hear your voice. So, I wrote all these questions out last night, then I was trying to get to sleep and I started to watch this Liza Minelli documentary, and she was so inspiring and gentle and soft, and I just felt so much of you in her and I can’t really explain why.
MC Well, Liza is a major flickering flame keeping the heat under everything that we do, through the whole team. From a Halston estate sale we have some original Liza wardrobe. Even if I don’t wear it, we keep it. There’s a purple two-piece set and a little purple dress. I always have them on my rack because I feel like they’re just radiating this direction for us. Her pieces with Halston [are] not quite as costume as some of the Bob Mackie stuff. Some of those pieces we have from Bob, they are quintessential show business. Then the pieces from Halston… The word that you used to describe Liza? I feel like that’s a nice description for some of those Halston pieces he made for her. There is much more of a softness to them. It’s beautiful that you got to witness that softer side of what she does, a softness that show business can overshadow and eclipse.
‘Liza is a major flickering flame keeping the heat under everything that we do’
KG She wore this very simple little dress to Judy Garland’s funeral, stitched under the bust, and it was just the most gorgeous thing. She’s so beautiful in the footage they have from the funeral. There’s this one bit in the documentary where she’s talking with her make-up artist about the make-up for Sally Bowles. She talks about these really, really long eyelashes, how she needed to make Sally special and that was the little thing that did it. When you go out on a stage, do you feel like you’re playing a character?
MC I like for the persona or the aesthetic to do some of the talking, because I think that when I walk into a room – when anyone walks into a room – the way that they present is this unspoken conversation without words. What I love is that if you watch performances of Elvis or Dolly or anyone that uses costume as part of their tools of entertainment, you can watch them walk out and the audience goes bananas and they haven’t even said anything yet. Before Mick Jagger says, ‘Hello Cincinnati,’ there’s 10 minutes of applause. A lot of that comes from the way that you show up and present. In a moment like the Grammys, where it’s really high intensity, I’m nervous and there’s a lot at stake, I know that that Bob Mackie [dress] is speaking to the crowd before I even say a word. I definitely use it, almost like a co-star. You never want to wear anything that overpowers. I like to imagine that we are a two-man show, where we’re bouncing off each other. And I always think that jokes are funnier the better you look. A clown without a costume is not nearly as funny.
KG Courtney [Love] had that great quote, ‘Why shouldn’t I wear a nice dress when I’m at something fancy?’
MC Oh, I love that interview. I think someone was saying to her, you’re abandoning rock and roll because you’re wearing Versace. And she says, why would I not wear Versace if I can? For me, the fashion evolution, just using the outer layer to translate the internal stuff that I’m trying to say, it has all looked very different throughout my career. I feel like right now I’m in that kind of God pocket: everything is just flowing and there’s a real harmonious relationship between me and what I’m wearing. It still feels like skin. I don’t feel like it ever overpowers. I don’t feel like it’s wearing me. I do feel like everything has a sense of honesty to it, even when it’s really glamorous.
KG It doesn’t seem like armour with you, which is probably why people respond so well to it.
MC Even if I’m wearing nothing, there still feels like a level of power to it. But also, I could be wearing something large-scale or really weighty or completely covered and you can see me.
Miley Cyrus behind the scenes, photographed by Lynette Garland.
KG Did you always have an interest in fashion-fashion? The thing that people won’t know about you is that you are a collector and you have some exceptional pieces.
MC I need you to help me to figure out what to do with all this shit. I have the Karen Carpenter pants, the Donna Summer bedazzled jeans. I have the Halston. I have Courtney’s look, the Mugler that she wore for her Barbara Walters special after Kurt passed. It’s just my personal collection. I still try to showcase that as much as I can. The other day I wore a new Gaultier gown, but I left in my personal Gaultier that the new Gaultier was inspired by. It was a replica of the one that I already had. I’m definitely a collector, always have been. Even when I was younger, before I could afford fashion. I remember going to this street fair with my friend and there would be a bracelet stand and somebody might’ve made five of the same bracelets and there would be one that nobody wanted. That was the one that I wanted. A couple of my friends for Picture Day wanted us to wear the same shirt. I literally cried myself to sleep. I remember my mom came in and was like, ‘OK, you’re having a meltdown. Either wear the pink sweater or don’t. It’s not going to be a big deal.’ I was really torn! Like, I can’t be a part of this clique if I don’t wear this pink sweater, but I don’t want this pink sweater to represent me for the rest of my school year or for the rest of my life. I don’t really want to match. I don’t want to be in a row with my friends wearing the same fucking sweater. I had a full fit about it. My sister will sometimes say, ‘Oh, this is in.’ And I don’t even know what that means. Like, what do you mean, that’s in? I just never really cared about trend so much. It’s really been about, how does it speak to me, represent me, speak for me. So, yeah, I’ve kind of always collected things that were meaningful. It doesn’t have to be archival couture.
‘I have the Karen Carpenter pants, the Donna Summer bedazzled jeans. I have the Halston. I have Courtney’s look, the Mugler that she wore for her Barbara Walters special after Kurt passed. It’s just my personal collection. I need you to help me to figure out what to do with all this shit!’
KG Other than Dolly, was there anyone in your upbringing who you were just like, oh, wow you’re so cool, I’m so inspired by your interest in style or culture?
MC Really, my mom. To find Versace in Nashville, Tennessee? I don’t know how she did it. My mom had some beautiful Versace gowns that she would wear to award shows with my dad. I have them now. Even my dad. He recently pulled them out. He’s been wearing them again. He had some silk shirts custom-made for Gianni for him.
KG Amazing.
MC Elizabeth [Hurley] found them in his closet and made him start wearing them again. They’re a little tight. She said to me the other day, these might be a little too vintage. Of course she went and raided dad’s closet and got all the Versace. My mom’s a stand-by-your-man, Tammy Wynette kind of lady. For her, being pretty, being sexy is a priority of what she’s choosing to wear and how to express. I think that’s where a big piece of me incorporating sexuality and sensuality into the way I express myself, but I also think that I’ve outgrown their way of thinking. I think sex and sexy can be different. I would rather see sex than see sexy, if that makes sense.
KG There’s a Liza quote which I really enjoyed: ‘Emphasise what you think is good. What you don’t like, change or improve.’
MC So good. I’ve already thought about the parts of my body that have changed and will continue to change. I love a beautiful older woman in a kimono; I know I’m going to have a kimono era. I’ve tried to keep this in my mind throughout my life, being young and knowing that I’m not getting any younger, looking forward to my style evolving and changing and my body shifting.
KG Best tits I’ve ever seen, Miley.
MC That is true, but maybe not forever. You know, the place that changes for me most is actually my arms. I was very happy when my Grammys performance went viral, because I worked very hard on my arms at that time. I don’t even think this is my insecurity. It’s my mom’s insecurity, because it’s the place that she’s always wanted to cover. It’s what Azzedine would say: ‘The first thing I think about when designing a dress is the woman that’s going to be wearing it.’
‘In a moment like the Grammys – where it’s really high intensity, I’m nervous and there’s a lot at stake – I know that that Bob Mackie dress is speaking to the crowd before I even say a word. I definitely use it, almost like a co-star’
KG Liza ended up in sequins because she sweated so much on stage.
MC Then you are just truly glistening, always. You’re gleaming. I love that. I mean, at 5’5” or 5’4” or something like that, Tina Turner? Not tall. But she’s known for those full legs, being built like a stallion. It was all this illusion of her going, ‘I want to feel like I’m six feet tall. I want to feel powerful. I want to feel like this thoroughbred.’ And they did it with a dress. Imagine her in a long hem. It would’ve affected the legacy. It would’ve changed everything.
KG Good bum as well. Jeans on her were always so good.
MC My dad, even still, [with jeans] he only wears boot-cut because he only wears boots. But you hear the word ‘boot-cut’ and you don’t really think about it being these cowboys. My dad only owns two pairs of shoes: a pair of brown cowboy boots and a pair of black cowboy boots. That’s all he has. So his jeans, they’re something functional. Bob Racine, who does my hair, he’s been in fashion longer than I’ve been alive and he says that you’re only as young as your silhouette. You know, you kind of start hiding, but if you can keep these parts of yourself that are reminiscent of just you, of what that shape is, it’s very recognisable.
KG You’ll be in bra-tops when you’re 60.
MC Bob’s point was Karl Lagerfeld. Karl had that same silhouette, so even when he got older you never really noticed. You were like, he’s always looked like that. Once you have a uniform you don’t even notice. You could look at him at 30, 40, 50, 60 and it’s all the same.
KG Anna Wintour with the floral dresses and the hair.
MC Right? You’re only as young as your silhouette. I love that.
KG Something Beautiful is this very 360 project: music, video, photography, fashion, clothes, hair, make-up, everything rolled into one. When you started writing the album was it conceived as a full project?
MC I started working with Shawn Everett, my producer, because of his sensibility with fashion. He was the only one I could get to understand that I wanted my kick-drum to sound like a Mugler [shoe] tapping. I would bring the shoe to the studio and go, ‘I don’t care how, but it needs to sound like this.’ And he would go, ‘Oh, I know exactly what that sounds like.’ There was a piece that Galliano made me, in 2023 maybe, it was just so beautiful, had tonnes of colour but somehow felt really grim and muted but it was vibrant at the same time and gave you that bittersweet feeling when you looked at it. I just knew that I wanted a song to sound the way that this looked. It’s almost like synaesthesia or something. The fashionable part of it isn’t just influencing what I’m wearing or how I present, it’s actually changing and making the music.
KG I’m going to listen to it in a whole new way now.
MC And then when you watch the videos, ‘Every Girl You’ve Ever Loved’ sounds exactly like what me and Naomi are wearing. Lorne Michaels said, ‘Horns have been announcing royalty for centuries.’ She comes on. This beautiful brass starts playing. And you know, she’s wearing a Mugler archival piece, and you can hear the sheen in the song. It’s all totally wet. You can feel the rubber.
KG Was Glen Luchford on your mind from early on?
MC Yeah. Because he has a really interesting process of how developed the look of his photography [is]. He would do much better explaining it than me, but the way he actually used film strips to find his colour. In a world that has just become so digitised, something about the physicality of photography, there is that level of quality to his work that I really wanted. His palette was so sonic to me. I could hear the music in his photographs, especially those old Amber Valetta Prada campaigns. Those were exactly what I thought my album sounded like. He truly is one of the most iconic living photographers for a very good reason. Because everything you’re doing on set, you’re doing for a reason. When you’re looking through his lens, you’re seeing the final product. There’s nothing that happens afterwards, no magic tricks.
KG It’s so painterly, the colours are so rich.
MC Painterly is a perfect description. That’s really how we wanted it to feel.
KG I’ve got a completely sideways question, one I’ve always wanted to ask you. How come Tyrone Lebon ended up doing the cover for Bangerz? At the time he was completely unknown. I remember buying the album and saw Tyrone’s credit on there. It was when Adwoa was dating him, maybe even before then. He seemed such an unusual idea for you?
MC And it was even more unusual because the blazer that I was wearing was vintage YSL, which was very woman. And I was still – now, in hindsight, from far away – I was such a girl. What I thought Tyrone would do, and did do, is capture the youth of the project. At the time he felt like someone who could be a friend. It felt like all my friends when we would have house parties and we would bring cameras and film cameras. I was like, I am never going to be able to embody this on a set with a [record] label watching. There is something performative to photography. I just thought that he would be able to capture the life and the youth, which he really did. He took some great pictures, not just of me but things that really embodied the youth and the party of it all. Which represent a time in my life that was a constant party.
KG I wanted to touch on us using some of Paula Yates’s wardrobe for this shoot, which Pixie [Geldof] very kindly gave to us, and also ask if you had looked at Paula Yates ever. She’s a very different generation to you but she was someone that I aspired to be when I was growing up. I was so honoured to have those pieces on set.
MC I felt really emotionally connected to the clothes because of my relationship with Pixie. One of my craziest memories of being on the Bangerz tour was of me and Pixie out one night. We went to a party in London and we woke up on my tour bus in Ireland. I had to play a show after, and I had partied all night. I didn’t have many sleepovers as a young girl because I was working so hard. And then her and I had this moment of complete abnormal normalcy, this very sweet sleepover while I was in the middle of a world tour. Because of her upbringing she was someone that I felt totally safe with. I would tell her anything and she would actually understand. Which is super, super rare. You know, my parents, we’ve had our turbulence throughout my whole life. And, by the way, our upbringings were so wildly different but also so synchronised at the same time, so a lot of it had to do with this safe place. This really sweet, safe sleepover that I had with Pixie, during the most chaotic, Elvis Presley world tour that I was on, where I really didn’t get a moment to just be me. So one, there is this relationship that I had with her. And for Paula, in America I had less of an understanding fully of her legacy. But I definitely have studied her now, and to be able to sit in Paolo’s studio in these Paula Yates’s archival pieces, it felt like it brought a real emotion to our story. I love the picture sitting in the floral dress.
KG Oh, me too.
MC It’s a jewel. Again, it feels like a dress can do the talking for me. Again, I’m not really saying anything. That dress is saying everything for us.
‘One of my craziest memories of being on the Bangerz tour was of me and Pixie out one night. We went to a party in London and we woke up on my tour bus in Ireland…’
KG I’ve always wanted to ask Pixie if I could borrow something and never felt like it was the right moment. We were on this train in Scotland. In my head I was prepping this shoot with you. It’s when I was sending you the Marie Antoinette stills. I was just like, this is the time; if I am going to ask, this is the shoot to ask on. And she was just, like, ‘Yeah, of course!’ With the Marie Antoinette, I was just sitting in bed watching Marie Antoinette and texting you: this could be a fun curveball?
MC That was just completely perfect, you know? Not to be punny. Because I’ve had on my list to work with Paolo Roversi. I’ve been trying to work with him for over three years. Kind of like you with the Paula Yates dresses, it never felt like exactly the right time. For this, it felt right because we were going to get to have these moments of stillness and realness, which is what he captures the best. It’s the opposite of performance in that studio. And there’s no performance with you and me. They’re not, as much as we experimented – and boy, did we ever, it’s all over the fucking place – nothing screams. I feel like our shoot still has a subtlety and a quietness. My personality, my persona, it did use to scream; I did use to be the loudest. But there is something more special for me now where I am in my life. There’s something quiet about what I do. I think you all captured that really magically.
KG That was what was so special about having the fitting pictures in there too. It was such a luxury to have two and a half days with you. And just to have those images of you trying clothes on, the whole project, I’m just very proud of it.
Miley Cyrus wears Paula Yates–archive courtesy of Pixie Geldof, photographed by Paolo Roversi.
MC You and I talked about the disgrace of the BTS world that we’re living in today. You still get to see behind the curtain. But it’s through a lens.
KG I wanted to ask a little about the confidence in the nudes you’ve always done.
MC I’m a Sagittarius. Sagittarius is childlike forever. I think a big place where my Sagittarian quality, that innocence, really shines is with nudity. I feel like this bridge between a little girl and a woman when I stand like that. It’s never felt any different to me than when… I mean, my mom literally stopped taking me to church because I was always getting naked because I hated pantyhose. She would put tights on me to go to church.
KG Ugh, the worst.
MC The worst. Halfway through the sermon I was fully naked, and we would go to lunch after church and if she did happen to get them back on me, they were off again. I still feel, when I stand there, even in all my power as a woman, I guess the world’s judgement hasn’t totally settled for me. I still feel this same feeling as I did when my mom went, ugh, she’s naked again, at church. I just feel the same. Watching a kid getting dressed is one of the coolest things. They’ll just be like, oh, I want to look like a frog today. Oh, OK. There is nothing to them that says, I am going to impress today.
‘To be able to sit in Paolo’s studio in Paula Yates’s archival pieces, it felt like it brought a real emotion to our story... That dress is saying everything for us.’
KG Did you ever meet Azzedine?
MC I didn’t. But Carlyne Cerf always says we should have.
KG What was the first piece of Azzedine you ever bought?
MC Actually, I know exactly what it was. I’d just gotten a car. I was 16 and I drove myself to Maxfield and there was a perforated, high-waisted Azzedine belt. I didn’t even know really know what I was getting my hands on. Then the queen at the cash register gave me a lowdown. There’s not an Alaïa in LA. They need to put an Alaïa on Melrose – it’s not like you’d go driving down Rodeo and walk into an Alaïa. So, I learned very quickly from when I bought this belt. I learned two things. I got a car and I wanted to go shopping in my new car. I also got a Chanel bowler hat.
KG Sally Bowles! She’s back again!
MC Very Sally Bowles. It had a diamanté ‘Chanel’ on the side. And I bought it to wear with my Alaïa perforated high-waisted belt.
KG Quick questions. Snog, marry, kill – and we can replace kill with something else, if you’d rather. Liza Minelli, Bette Midler, Barbra Streisand.
MC Oh my god! OK, well, marry Liza. Wait, I’m doing snog, marry? Maybe I’d have to snog Liza but I feel like I want to live with her forever. Bette would be co-star. And Barbra Streisand, I would say… that would probably be a good kiss? I’d kiss Babs.
KG Same question: Steven Meisel, David Sims, Glen Luchford?
MC Oh my God. OK – well, I’m definitely snogging Meisel. Living with Glen Luchford. David Sims? I would say reconnect with David.
KG OK, then this is the last one: Charli, Chappell, and obviously we don’t want to kill any of the new pop girls.
MC I would definitely snog Charli. I guess I could marry Chappell? We could have a nice life together.
KG The new girls?
MC I think that sometimes people don’t know what to do with something that’s new. People’s safe place is nostalgia. My manager always says this – people only know what they’ve had before. Without a comparison, they don’t know what they’re looking at. That always bores me, that people don’t know what to do with the new so they always lean into the safety of nostalgia.
KG Good answer. I hope that felt like a different interview.
MC I always love it with you. See you soon.
KG Loads of love.
MC Bye.