Dua Lipa, Soho, and the Body Parts She Signed

Dua Lipa has been doing something specific and unhelpful to my brain for months—the kind of persistent, low-frequency obsession that feels vaguely embarrassing to admit and completely reasonable the moment you look at a photo of her. So when she turned up on the cover of V Magazine’s music issue doing everything possible to make "sexy" feel like an understatement, I considered it personal vindication.

To celebrate, she threw a party in Soho. The guest list read like a roster of people whose primary occupation is existing in photographs: Gigi Hadid, Elsa Hosk, Jonathan Van Ness, Alex Pettyfer, Leigh Lezark, Riley Montana, and a rotating cast of models, editors, and industry figures who showed up looking exactly the way industry figures look when they suspect a camera is pointed at them. She signed records, CDs, and reportedly body parts—the kind of signing event I would have queued for without a second thought.

I wasn’t there. I watched it unfold through other people’s phone screens, the way you experience everything now. The drinks were presumably excellent, the lighting was presumably flattering, and somewhere in downtown Manhattan, Dua Lipa was having a significantly better Monday than I was. Getting my face anywhere near hers remains firmly on the agenda.