"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 cover shoot and clearly excels—in both her music and aesthetic—at bringing Ethel Cain's haunting, beautiful yet flawed character to life.
Still, it's important to understand that she is not actually Ethel, says Hayden. "Ethel Cain, the project, is a cautionary tale. She makes all the mistakes so that I can learn from her mistakes and do better."
Her two studio albums, 2022's Preacher's Daughter and 2025's Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You, deal in agonizing topics like religious trauma, abuse, and violence. And although Hayden has given Ethel a fictional love affair with Willoughby Tucker, it's the artist herself who's currently striving for a real-life storybook romance with her first-ever boyfriend—and who is being dogged by fallout from past mistakes. |
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