María Zardoya is keeping busy these days. A Grammy nomination for best new artist with her band The Marías notwithstanding, she is striking out on her own for the first time.
Earlier this week, the singer kicked off the inaugural tour for her solo project, Not for Radio, in Oakland, California. She already had a distinctive, gothic-tinged fashion sense, but for her solo performances she wanted a more flamboyant look. “This Not for Radio tour is more theatrical in its approach than a tour for The Marías. I wanted to transport the audience into an alternate reality—a dreamlike, psychedelic state that isn’t grounded in reality,” Zardoya tells Vogue.
Her onstage style fits the bill: Zardoya dreamt up a retelling of Swan Lake for her tour looks. “It traces the evolution of the white swan as she explores the natural world, moving through beds of moss, followed by her death and eventual resurrection as the black swan, descending into the underworld,” she explains. While Zardoya has always been drawn to the twisted tale, it felt especially prescient in this new chapter of her career. “All living things exist in a balance of light and dark and it felt like my transformation into Not for Radio,” she notes.
Zardoya turned to McQueen to bring her dark, balletic fantasy to life, hitting the stage in a voluminous feathered jacket over an organic, wispy dress with a dramatic ruffled train. “I was also drawn to looks that could be shed throughout the show, allowing them to evolve in real time and mirror the transformation taking place on stage,” she says. “McQueen was the perfect house to dress this tour. They understand the beauty of drawing from nature and the underworld and how to translate those worlds into texture, shape, and movement.” Zardoya was also touched by a thematic connection: “I’ve always loved that McQueen had a fascination with birds, so there truly was no one more fitting to transform me into a swan.”
Here, María Zardoya offers us a glimpse of her McQueen looks behind the scenes of her Not for Radio tour.
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