Lorde's Growing Pains

She became famous at 16 with an album that changed pop. All she had to do was figure out what came next

- Alex Morris

It’s not exactly how I thought the day would go, but in the mid afternoon in a warehouse building somewhere off the 101 freeway, Lorde is stripping down to her skivvies. In all fairness, so am I. We’re at Shareen Downtown, a 6,600-square-foot Los Angeles paradise of secondhand sartorial wonders where there are no dressing rooms and, not coincidentally, there is also a strict rule that there are no boys allowed, as a sign on the front door attests. “Isn’t that great?” asked Lorde earlier. “I found out about it through my old tour manager’s wife, who did the costumes on Mad Men. She was like, ‘I always go to Shareen.’ And so I go to Shareen now as well.”

Today, amid the dust and glamour, Lorde is on a mission to find something fun to wear to Coachella, where in a couple of weeks the 20-year-old New Zealander will give her first concert in close to three years in advance of her second album, Melodrama (out June 16th). “Oh, my God, it’s like my dream,” she says, homing in on a delicate, frothy wedding gown from some bygone era. “Like, at Coachella with a flower crown of these little freakies?” she suggests, running her hand over the dress’s tiny fabric f lowers. “It’s so sick. But they don’t put the price tags on them, and they’re always super expensive.”