marina

There was a time not so long ago that Marina Lambrini Diamandis–the singer formerly known as Marina and the Diamonds, who has now adopted the mononym MARINA–thought she would never do a glamorous photoshoot again. “I went through a phase where I didn’t want my face to be on anything,” she says. “I didn’t want to wear makeup. I felt like identifying with how I looked was gross.”

After the tour for her last album, the singer experienced what can only be described as a bout of ennui. Having released three albums over five years, starting with the theatrical The Family Jewels in 2010 and ending with Froot in 2015, she announced on Twitter that she was “taking a little break to do some different things”. Behind the scenes, though, Marina was in crisis.

This isn’t the person I’m confronted with when, late on a grey afternoon, I enter an office-turned-photo-studio in central London to find the 32-year-old head-to-toe in Moschino with hair the size of a small mountain. “I don’t think it’s ever been this big!” she beams when she catches me eyeballing it. All around her, makeup artists and stylists buzz with brushes and accessories while Janet Jackson’s All For You plays on a small stereo.

For an artist who 12 months ago wasn’t sure that she even wanted to be a popstar anymore, Marina is handling the chaos that goes