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The artist has been a guiding star in the fashion world

for years: stylists and brands go to any length to dress

her, and her posts are style mantras for her followers.

Once upon a time, there were lions, tigers, and pursue a music career, and to do it I had to return to
bears. This may be the beginning of Dua Lipa’s fairy London,” she says. “When I was 15, I convinced my
tale. As a young woman, she published a song on parents to let me go, accepting the condition of not
the Internet called Lions & Tigers & Bears, which still leaving school”. Like many in her age group, Dua be-
stands proudly on her SoundCloud page with the label gan uploading covers of famous artists on YouTube:
“My first demo”. 95 seconds of piano, synth, and that Alicia Keys, Christina Aguilera, Nelly Furtado. Like
voice − perhaps still immature, but already deep and very few, she attracted the attention of a major, Warn-
dark − that the world would soon learn to love. It was er, which offered her a contract in 2015. In August
February 2012, and 13 years later, the fable has turned of that year, her first single New Love came out. She
into an empire. This summer, the pop star is involved launched her first European tour a year later, and her
in her most ambitious tour ever, the Radical Optimism debut album Dua Lipa was released in 2017.
Tour, which set sail from Asia and Oceania to reach Her numbers soon grew impressive. In the first
Europe and will make the Americas dance all night in ten years of her career, the singer won three Grammy
the fall. All of this is happening while the streaming Awards and seven Brit Awards. She was the first wom-
record has reached 50 billion, and the Dua Lipa brand an to reach 1 billion streams with five songs on Spotify:
is also growing in fashion, lifestyle, cinema, and even Don’t Start Now, Cold Heart (PNAU Remix) with Elton
book recommendations. John, One Kiss by Calvin Harris, Levitating, and New
It all began in London, when Anesa Rexha and Rules. Yet, her most interesting records are not strictly
Dukagjin Lipa welcomed their firstborn on August 22, related to her musical talent but her knack for business
1995, and gave her the Albanian name for love: Dua. and the ability to anticipate and dominate new trends.
Anesa and Dugi had been forced to leave Kosovo, She sold the greatest amount of tickets for an online
crumbled under the bombs, three years before. They concert (284,000, for the Studio 2054 show, with Cov-
would return to Pristina at the beginning of the new id-19 in full swing) and was the first artist to ever stream
millennium and would witness their country’s decla- a live concert at the Glastonbury Festival in 2024 (to
ration of independence in 2008. Although, by then, the delight of her father Dugi, with a past as a rock-
they had realized that Dua was seeking another form star in Kosovo, who also became Dua’s manager three
of independence. “I soon realized that I wanted to years ago).

42 Diva Protagonist