Tyla was conferred with sophistication and glamour at birth and has, therefore, never sought out the British delicacy that is sausage, cheese, and bean melt. “There’s a lot of sausages here,” the pop star said at last night's 2024 MTV EMAs. “I love sausage rolls, but I don’t know about the ones here…” Tyla was among a number of celebrated musicians flown into the awards, among them Shawn Mendes, Busta Rhymes, and, erm, Jedward.
That Tyla has taste is obvious. Last night, she arrived on the red carpet in a glamazonian Roberto Cavalli dress plucked from the late designer’s fall-winter 2000 collection with knee-high sandals from Paris Texas.
The design – rendered in blue and black chiffon with a fuzzy trim running up its asymmetric, thigh-high hemline – was famously worn by Aaliyah at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2000 before re-entering the wardrobes of Bretman Rock, Kim Kardashian, and Paloma Elsesser.
“The dress speaks to an era of cool regality that made the ’90s so iconic,” said Elsesser of wearing the original to a wedding in 2021. “Aaliyah is the image of this moment that will always be sacred to me.”
Tyla agrees. “Aaliyah is one of my idols,” the musician said after scoring three MTV EMA awards, including best Afrobeats, best R&B, and best African act. “The fact that I’m even winning this in her dress is like, ‘Oh my god.’” Fashion observers will have recognized that design also from Fausto Puglisi’s spring-summer 2025 collection for Roberto Cavalli, which he closed with a trio of his predecessor’s tiger-striped gowns.
“If the gods of fashion excess had been sitting around on a cloud, plotting the ideal qualities for a new designer to bestow on a suddenly glam-hungry woman-kind,” Sarah Mower wrote of the designer’s work in British Vogue's August 2000 issue. “They couldn’t have dreamed up anyone better than Cavalli.” Nor could they have thought of a better muse than Tyla.
This story first appeared in British Vogue.
