As Her Debut Album Gets Its Big Release, Revisit Tyla’s Ascent To Megawatt Style Here

In the chorus of Tyla’s “Water,” the musician challenges her speculative love interest to “Make me sweat / Make me lose my breath.” Being a graduate of literature, I immediately recognized the intertextuality taking place here, that refrain being a reference to Destiny’s Child’s 2004 comeback track “Lose My Breath”. But when I informed my colleague of this perhaps-too-erudite-for-him-to-grasp observation, he said, “Um, I think that’s quite a common thing for people to say in songs.” And so, I decided to compose an entire article to defend my position: Tyla has worn a metallic bikini (as Beyoncé once did) and Tyla has posed with her hands above her head (as Beyoncé famously did) and she also knows a couple of words from “Cuff It” (the song that Beyoncé wrote). There are other examples of interconnectedness between these two musicians–like this outfit–but I will stop here because Google says Tyla’s main inspiration is Rihanna and I can’t bear to be disproven.

The point is: Tyla looks as though she was born from an MTV music video in the mid-’00s: the cherubic face, the “I am going to emulate that move in my bedroom”-style choreography and the micro-miniskirts. At this year’s 2024 Grammy Awards–where she won the inaugural golden gramophone for Best African Music Performance–Tyla wore a one-sleeved Atelier Versace gown, constructed from body-baring draping in lime-green georgette. It wasn’t vintage, but it wouldn’t have looked out of place in Donatella Versace’s spring 2000 collection (or Tina Knowles’s workroom.) With the guidance of stylists Lee Trigg and Katie Qian, Tyla’s ascent to pop superstardom has been executed with major league style: the Rui bodycons and Bye Bambi bustle skirts and beachy Gimaguas dresses and wet-look Di Petsa gowns. This is a 22-year-old woman with the world, and the world’s wardrobe, at her feet. As she releases her self-titled debut album (something Beyoncé has also done), scroll down below to see some of Tyla’s best fashion moments to date.