18-year-old, New Zealand musician Lorde wears Gucci on the cover of Vogue Australia’s July 2015 issue, lensed by Robbie Fimmano and styled by fashion director Christine Centenera. The singer appears as part of the magazine’s music issue which also includes features on the Preatures, to Vance Joy and the regions most successful exports in Iain Shedden’s essay ‘Great Southern Lands’.

Lorde details the childhood obsessions that eventually inspired her music. “I went to a lot of David Lynch films; I read a lot of strange books; I loved to go to the museum all day. I was that kid,” she explains. “I liked to hang out with people older than me; I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. Writing and singing were just a hobby.” Creating music may not have been her initial goal, but when she released her EPThe Love Club on SoundCloud in 2012, the reaction from fans was immediate. The choice to offer her music for free was a smart one, motivated by her financial status rather than strategy. “I just thought people my age would appreciate it,” says Lorde. “I wanted to put the EP up for free because being a teenager and not having a credit card—I mean, who has a credit card at 16?!” With more than a million copies of her debut, Pure Heroine, sold, it is an understatement to say her efforts were appreciated, but Lorde still finds herself impressed by how deeply people connect with her self-penned hits. “You also realize how seriously people are taking what you’re doing and how they’re savoring every word and living inside the songs.”

Check out the Lorde sound: