AUDREY NUNA on Using Fashion as a “Defense Mechanism”

Three things currently inspiring AUDREY NUNA are:

1. “Grandma” clothing

2. Milk carton fonts

3. And people in NYC who “don’t give a f*ck about fashion”

NUNA believes these blasé dressers significantly inform street style trends and play a key inspirational role to those passionate about fashion – herself included.

Just over two years after releasing her debut album a liquid breakfast, the 25-year-old is beginning to roll out singles and visuals from her next studio record. Her fashion choices are pivotal in building out the yet-untitled project’s otherworldly dreamscape, a world that looks nothing like the New Jersey suburbs she grew up in or her current Los Angeles stomping grounds.

Her new era can be summed up by the mantra “Soft skin. Hard feelings.” NUNA is a duality fanatic, and, currently, enamored with the juxtaposition of joy and pain, as well as the concept of maintaining a soft persona whilst enduring things in life that would normally harden you.

“I want to illustrate a yearning and desire to stay soft through the underbelly of adolescence while dealing with all of the dark things that happen that can harden you as a person,” NUNA explained.

One of the ways she aims to convey this is through the mixing and layering of textures in her visuals’ outfits. “It’s about using fashion as a defense mechanism, both literally and metaphorically,” said NUNA, who pointed to the visuals for “Jokes on Me” — which showcase NUNA’s usage of her wardrobe as a shield, traversing the galaxies in an astronaut suit and intricately braided hair — as an encapsulation of that sentiment.

The cover art is equally as striking, in which she dons a translucent spacesuit that forms a sparkly bubble around her entire body entitled “Glamour,” which she designed herself alongside digital fashion platform SYKY.

NUNA brought the ethereal “Glamour” outfit to life, pairing it with another silver, spiky spacesuit called “Symphony,” for a two-piece “Glamour as Armour” capsule with SYKY, which dropped in tandem with the track’s release.

Sony Music Entertainment

It’s only fitting that NUNA is taking more of a front seat in the fashion space: she grew up surrounded by the industry at work. Her father is a clothing manufacturer in the Garment District and her grandfather was a tailor. Coming from a family who “relied on the world of fashion for survival,” she was allured by fashion from a young age and grew adamant about picking all of her own outfits, though “most of [her] outfits never made sense.”

This is something that NUNA still does today, and hopes to do for as long as she has the bandwidth. The devil horns and vampire teeth she introduced in the “Cellulite” video and revived in “Starving”? All her idea, and, of course, another nod to the character she’s created for this project’s planet.

“There’s a time when growing up feels romantic and innocent, and a liquid breakfast was very much that. This next project is rooted in much darker undertones both sonically and conceptually.”

Sony Music Entertainment

“Starving,” a track she initially wrote for another artist, came to be her own father “serendipitously,” as she brought on Teezo Touchdown to contribute on vocals and a liquid breakfast visual collaborator Khufu Najee to lead the music video, which drew inspiration from Takashi Murakami and Pharrell’s 2008 The Simple Things, an exhibit that featured the duo’s favorite things encrusted in diamonds.

She reminisced on “doing a lot with very little” in 2019 and early 2020: shooting in random spots in Bushwick, Brooklyn with Najee, “drawing inspiration from the landscape of the city” and “trying to find the beauty in industrial settings.” She splits off into two characters in the captivating video, each of which is indicative of a different “era” of herself: “It’s about my old self and new self making peace with one another, and the clothing was key in how I expressed that sentiment.”

NUNA’s “old self” is wearing the same outfit she wore in the “damn Right” video, whereas her “new self” is wearing a more mutated version of that outfit, indicating that “she’s been through some sh*t” and is likely “in her villain era” – a term NUNA frequently used to describe this next project.

“In those sh*tty experiences – where you feel like you’re the bad person or where you question who you are – you come out feeling a lot more strong and empowered,” NUNA noted.

1 of 2

Courtesy Of The Artist

2 of 2

Courtesy Of The Artist

She doesn’t wear her devil horns in person but does dress dripped in duality – combining her love of grandma fashion (knit Y/Project shirt, rose-stamped MSCHF hat) with evidence of her emerging futuristic era (oversized white earmuffs, statement silver jewelry.)

Aside from recent singles “Jokes on Me” and “Starving,” most information on NUNA’s sophomore studio album still remains under wraps. Seeing as she joined forces with Loris Russier and even Valentin Petit (for his last video before he passed away, “Locket”), NUNA is apt to enlist some directorial heavyweights for the LP.

She’s just not ready to let us into this world quite yet. In the meantime, NUNA’s not going to stop carefully evolving her new lowkey-evil extraterrestrial character.

She’ll open the portal when she’s ready.