FKA twigs

Singer, songwriter and dancer

“He said, ‘There you are,’ and snapped the picture. And that’s when I started to become FKA twigs”

Tahliah Debrett Barnett, better known to her millions of fans as the English singer, songwriter, producer, actor and dancer FKA twigs, can remember the exact moment one photographer saw something that transformed her from a gawky youngster to the all-round force of creativity and strength we know today. She was 19 when she was asked to attend a shoot with British photographer Alasdair McLellan for Beat magazine…

“I was self-conscious of my teeth; they’ve always been really big and I’d been teased at school. As he was shooting me, I was trying to keep my mouth closed. He said, ‘Go on get them teeth out.’ It was the opposite of anything anyone had ever told me. Before that, it had only been my idea I could just be myself, but then this side of me started to grow with self-acceptance. Everybody is so beautiful; we just have to embrace and highlight those things that make us individual. I’ll always be so grateful”

For this year’s Pirelli Calendar shoot with its “elements” theme, FKA twigs was originally asked to portray “water”, then “air”, but, proving she knows herself better than anybody, she persuaded photographer Sølve Sundsbø to switch her to “earth”. She explains why she needed the change…

“I feel very in tune with the ground and roots and what comes from below. I’m not a very fiery person, nor floaty nor airy, but I feel very grounded and calm, so I thought “earth” represented me better”

The decision paid off, with the shoot illuminating twigs in all her unique physicality – a combination of extreme strength with balletic delicacy – photographed during what she calls “rolling around, conjuring in the sand”. Working with Sundsbø, she says, was like “playing”, an aspect she continually references in her own work, whether in her music, which crosses many genres from electronic to R&B, or in her striking videos full of intricate choreography and bold concepts…

“I try to stay connected to my child self and sense of wonder. I had a very strange childhood – magical, weird and unorthodox. My mum taught me to be curious and to look at everything in great detail, like the inside of a flower. Now I try to keep that child inside me alive, feed her and allow her to play, even in an adult woman’s body. I still feel very childlike. I got to play today!”

FKA twigs knows that her particular brand can ruffle feathers. In 2024, an ad she appeared in for Calvin Klein was banned by the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) on the grounds that it framed her as “a stereotypical sexual object”. FKA twigs defended the ad, saying she was proud of her physicality and the ASA backed down, calling its own rationale “flawed”. It was a victory for everything the artist is about, even as she knows how divisive that can still be…

“As a woman of colour with a body that is very dynamic, I know that my strength can be inspiring to people but also uncomfortable. I am a dichotomy because my personality is soft, but my physical body is strong, so using my voice to defend my strength has been a very interesting journey I didn’t think I’d have to go on.”

“I’m not trying to be disruptive. I love bodies that look like they do the thing they do, whether it’s an athlete with muscles built in a certain way or a mother who has given birth, I think it’s so beautiful. Whatever a body has gone through, those are the scars, the marks and the physicality that come of doing something with your vessel. It’s the most beautiful thing, but it also challenges a lot of norms and the way many perceive things should be. I like to stand up for the shell that I’m in”

With that in mind, what is FKA twigs’ own definition of beauty? She smiles…

“Being kind to yourself and others around you”