March 14, 2025 |
The cellist, singer and Gucci star Kelsey Lu is staying grounded in her creative process and showing how slowing down is an act of rebellion.
A dark sensuality pulses through Gucci’s 2025 We’ll Always Have London cruise campaign, which cuts a romantically moody image of the British capital across chic vignettes – a crimson-clad bar, the back seat of a black cab – via the legendary Nan Goldin’s fixed lens. That same sultry atmosphere colours the music of one of the campaign’s stars: the cellist and vocalist Kelsey Lu. The North Carolina native’s classically inspired avant-pop sound gained her a following amid a community of talents on the experimental scene of the late 2010s, which saw her opening for Brooklyn indie band Wet on tour, dropping her haunting 2016 EP, Church, and debuting her brooding, sonically lush studio album Blood three years later. “When you listen to my music, you’re diving into yourself,” Lu says. “It’s not surface music. It will take you on a journey – all kinds of flavours. It’s a million-layer cake.”
GUCCI
Her multilayered musical confections have led to collaborations with Solange, Kelela and Blood Orange, though Lu’s ascent to such a tier was not without its hardships; like plenty of the greats, she has lived many lives. Lu, who was raised in a family of devout Jehovah’s Witnesses, worked as a stripper and weed dealer and squatted in a Hoboken leather factory during more dire financial times. To be wrapped in Gucci on set for a glossy editorial due to all that hustle is not lost on the millennial.
“I find musicality in the rhythms of his collections,” Lu says of Gucci’s Sabato De Sarno, whom she credits with treating music not as an afterthought but as a proper component of his work’s presentation. Though her style oscillates wildly between laid-back and high drama based on the vibe of the day, on the afternoon of our interview she finds herself again in Gucci: a black tank top, the lounging-at-home-in-Brooklyn counterpart to her ultra-glam shoot persona.
GUCCI
Lu is a fan of costumes. Her favourite NYC thrift (the name of which she shamelessly gatekeeps) specialises in old ensembles from opera performances. She finds herself playing multiple characters for our shoot, among them “one free and euphoric, one that was like Monica Vitti in an Antonioni film, one very sexy and a little dark,” she says. “Finding the erotic and sensuality of self is something that I’ve been exploring and working on.”
Listeners might conjure a soulful, ethereal picture of Kelsey Lu the musician from the playful Donna Summer-meets-Lana Del Rey sound of her track Poor Fake and the dreamy aching of Morning Dew, which is an image that translates rather neatly to Kelsey Lu the person. She is radically vulnerable, openly discussing a foggy melancholy that has enveloped her since the new year; she waxes philosophical on shadow work, astrology and the need for a reflective pause amid the rush back from the pandemic; she pauses to gather her words, so dedicated to honesty that she asks for another chat the day after our first to ensure that she has represented herself genuinely.
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Lu considers being true to her vision an act of rebellion against an industry that demands she forges forward at all costs and produces at all times. In the past two years, she has scored two films, Earth Mama and Daughters, both festival darlings about heartbreaking issues affecting Black women and girls, including the foster care system, drug addiction and incarceration. But she is playing her cards close to her chest regarding new music on the horizon. Lu notes it’s a time of great clarity compared to her prior eras and, for now, is embracing experimentation in solitude, sowing the fertile ground that will yield beautiful sounds in her own time.
“Whether I take five years or five months to create the next thing, that’s on me,” she says. “This time between Blood and now is me tuning into my intuition, trusting myself and building a team to support that.”
Taken from 10 Magazine Issue 74 – MUSIC, TALENT, CREATIVE – on newsstands March 18. Pre-order your copy here.
GUCCI: THE COMPOSER
Photographer THIBAULT-THEODORE
Fashion Editor CLAIRE SULLIVAN
Talent KELSEY LU
Text CHARLOTTE COLLINS
Movement director and dancer ZERINA TYE
Dancers AARON WELLS, AMADIAH YEHUDAH and KEISHAN
Hair EVANIE FRAUSTO
Make-up RAISA FLOWERS
SFX make-up QETO CHANTADZE
Manicurist SONYA MEESH at Forward Artists
Prop stylist BRIAN LEE
Photographer’s assistants PHILLIP LEWIS, ELENA SANTOLAYA and ERIC BRYDBORD
Fashion assistants CLAIRE WISEMAN and FINN BELANGER
Hair assistant COURTNEY PEAK
Colourist AUSTIN WEBER
Prop assistant ELENA LORENZI
Production CHLOE MINA
Production assistants LUIS DE JESUS and SNAKE GARCIA
Clothing, shoes and accessories throughout by GUCCI
GUCCI
GUCCI
