ETHEL TAIN HAS SEEN YOUR REDDIT POSTS

The singer-songwriter knows she's all over message boards. She owns her mistakes, she says, but also has questions.

- ELLA SNYDER

Dress Colleen Allen, necklace Prounis.

“I am always honored when somebody looks at my little country bumpkin ass and thinks, Oh, that could translate to high fashion,” says 27-year-old Hayden Anhedönia from the center booth in a Manhattan diner. The musician known primarily by her stage persona Ethel Cain is talking about being invited to sit front row at a Dior Homme Paris Fashion Week show. “It was very cool and I was very grateful,” she says.

Her own much-discussed style—a Southern gothic fantasy full of neutral hues and vintage finds—is evident at our interview: blue jeans, baby-blue tee, cowboy boots. She loved riffing on it for her Cosmopolitan photo shoot and clearly excels—in both her music and aesthetic—at bringing Ethel Cain's haunting, beautiful yet flawed character to life.