Pictured: Alexander McQueen jacket, shirt and pants. FASHION EDITOR: Anna Trevelyan
When I reach Annie Clark, the 33-year-old musician who plays under the name St. Vincent, she's in a hotel room in Toronto, nestled in bed even though it's 4 P.M. "I'm…visiting Cara for her birthday," she explains in the halting manner of someone who isn't quite sure what she wants to reveal. "We went to a male strip club last night and got lots of lap dances," she offers. "And now I'm in …" Her voice trails as she searches for the right words. "A bed. Just answering e-mails. It's seriously sexy."
"Cara," of course, is Cara Delevingne, the mega-model turned actress with whom Clark has been romantically linked for months now. Since early spring, the pair have attended red-carpet events together, been paparazzi'd during bleary morning coffee runs, and appeared all over each other's social media. And while Clark is no novice when it comes to attention—a star in the indie-rock world, she has played with everyone from the Dallas Symphony Orchestra to Taylor Swift and was handpicked to perform with the surviving members of Nirvana at last year's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony—the fuss over her relationship with Delevingne is of a different breed. Clark has always preferred to let her raw, emotional songs speak for themselves, avoiding questions about her sexuality and personal life in favor of discussing, say, the writing of Hilton Als or the odd names of lingerie brands. On the wings she wore for her Bazaar photo shoot, she remarks that she was going for "more Tony Kushner's Angels in America than Victoria's Secret. I mean, what is Victoria's Secret anyway? What could it possibly be?"
Dating Delevingne has made it harder for Clark to preserve that level of mystique—to put it mildly. "There's been a little bit of enigma peeled back as of late," Clark admits. "But I have a rich life that has nothing to do with the flimflam. I know there's a through-the-looking-glass version of myself, and I don't feel particularly attached to that version, especially as it pertains to the public eye—it's kind of removed from my actual life. The long and the short of it is that what people think of me is none of my business." She then maneuvers the conversation back to her music with a polite dexterity that's clearly old hat. "Ultimately what I make is what I want to be—it's my offering to the world."
Clark began performing as St. Vincent in 2006, after several years of working with acts like the Polyphonic Spree and Sufjan Stevens, and quickly won critical acclaim and a cult following for her complex arrangements. With formal training from Boston's prestigious Berklee School of Music (she attended for three years before dropping out), the Texas native can play a wide variety of instruments, often layering them on top of one another to produce a vibrant blend of sounds. She also has a reputation for her guitar-throttling, full-body performances. "Part of what happens onstage is a physical exorcism," says Clark. "I find that I need to be—whether or not I'm onstage performing—really physically engaged with the world. I have a lot of energy, and I have to move." Being on the road agrees with her, in that sense. "Touring does not suit everybody, but it really suits me. I haven't been in one city for more than five days in … well, I guess I took one vacation," she says. "Basically, it's very rare that I'm in a city for more than three nights."
Though Clark built a respectable fan base over the course of her first three records, it was her fourth, 2014's St. Vincent, that vaulted her into the big leagues, earning her a Grammy for Best Alternative Album this past February. Leading up to its release, Clark dyed her curly brown hair a dusty gray, giving her pale, fairy-like features a slightly alien edge that complemented her music's otherworldly quality. With her long, angular, Tim Burton–esque silhouette and moon-size eyes, she's an ideal vehicle for fashion's more abstract creations. "I like fashion. I like structure and form and color, and all those things coalesce into wearable art," she says. "But I'm not, like, worshipful with the cult of wealth aspirations." Clark defines herself as more of an equal opportunist when it comes to inventive outfits. "I've worked with stylists and worn designer clothes and had custom pieces made, which is a lot of fun. But lately I've been wearing this catsuit that I found when I was walking down the street in Louisville, Kentucky. There was a store that had big, bold Tupac T-shirts in the window, and I was like, 'Oh, cool, I wonder what's going on in there.' I went in and found this catsuit for $34.99, and I bought it on a lark, and it's the best thing I ever got. It's perfect for stage." She laughs. "You know, my tastes are pretty catholic."
For last night's strip club outing, Clark wore an Issey Miyake outfit with Robert Clergerie shoes, "like somebody's weird art teacher," she says. "I was looking through pictures, and I look like a creepy serial killer lurking in the background. Everyone else is fun, young, and flirty, and I look like Yoko Ono, which I'm not mad about." She occasionally borrows from Delevingne's street-punk wardrobe, but only out of necessity. "We have wildly different styles. So if I'm going to get a coffee in the morning, I'll throw on drop-crotch sweatpants. But then I'll go back to my all-black Japanese designers."
Clothing may be the least of Clark's and Delevingne's differences. "Cara is an experientialist—more feet in the fire," says Clark. "I'm less so. If there's a dark room of the subconscious, I want to find it and walk around in it. Sometimes I feel very much in my head and slightly removed from the physical world," she continues. "For example, I dance onstage, but I don't dance for pleasure offstage. I'll be privy to a dance club or something and just be essentially sober and watch things happen. More as a social observer, like an anthropologist. I'm not in the middle of the dance floor, you know?" She pauses. "That probably doesn't sound like a lot of fun. But I'm having a great time."
Having recently finished a 20-month tour, Clark will soon head to Los Angeles to work on her next album, which is still in its earliest phases. It'll be her first long-term break from the road in about five years. "I'm looking forward to having time to build and rip it up and start again," she says. It will also provide a respite from the spotlight, "although I don't consider myself very famous," she adds, bemused. "If I'm by myself, I don't ever get paparazzi. Nobody takes pictures of me. Or if they do, it's only as an asterisk to an asterisk—like a tangent to a tangent of pop culture. I don't get too freaked out by it. But it's such a bizarre experience. I don't know where to put it yet." A topic for her next record, perhaps.
Spread your wings. Jacket, shirt, and pants. Alexander McQueen. Boots, Valentino Garavani. See Where to Buy for shopping details. Hair: David Von Cannon; makeup: Marla Belt for M.A.C. Cosmetics; manicure: Naomi Yasuda for Dior Vernis; prop styling: Nicholas Des Jardins for Mary Howard Studio.
This article originally appeared in the November 2015 issue of Harper's BAZAAR. See more of BAZAAR's Women Who Dare portfolio here.
