Who was your best friend when you were growing up “in the country,” as you say?

I did have a best friend, but [growing up in the country] was hard. I went to an all-white school, and I still remember so many things that people said to me. You know when kids say things and they don’t realize that one sentence might stay with someone for years? I’m mixed race, and my hair is either two things: It’s either beautiful—curly and shiny and suited to humid weather and I feel like the girl from that Michael Jackson video “The Way You Make Me Feel”—or it’s a nightmare, frizzy and dry and all over the place no matter what I do. I spent most of my teen years in that [latter] stage, because I didn’t know how to do my hair. I would try to straighten it, and it just wouldn’t hold.

I remember when I was maybe 13, I went to London, and I saw a girl on the tube who had really nice hair. She looked mixed race, so I was like, “How did you do your hair?” She was like, “You just have to moisturize it and put loads of oil in it and only wear your hair out when it’s a special occasion.” I went out and got some coconut oil, and I put my hair in two braids, and I felt good about it. You know when you’re young and you start to take pride in your appearance? It’s not necessarily in a vain way, it’s just, like, I’m getting older, and my mum doesn’t do my hair anymore. You just start to become more independent.

So, then, I’m in history class, and the girl who was supposed to be my best friend turned around and was like, “Ew, your hair’s so greasy.” Like that. It hurt my feelings so bad. It was really hard, because I just didn’t fit in. I remember when I was 12, they made fun of me because I had a moustache.

Oh my god, I’m sorry. Kids can be so mean!

I’m over it! It’s just really funny. I guess as you get older you learn to embrace things. I always think to myself, like, Neneh Cherry has a moustache! Whenever I see her I think, That is so cute! That’s the way I see stuff like that now. But when you’re a teenager, it’s harder.

In my last year or so of secondary school, when I was about 16, Beyoncé came out with “Crazy in Love,” and Christina Milian came out with “AM to PM.” Before that, it was about Britney, Avril Lavigne, Christina Aguilera—all these really cute white girls who defined what the boys were fancying. Then that year, there was this boom of all these light-skinned black stars, and all of a sudden I was the shit. I was hanging out with the popular girls; I’d gone from people literally scribbling out my face in school photos and writing ugly next to it, to, two years later, having everything be fine—all of a sudden I was really cute. At the time I was super androgynous—I had short hair and I dressed like a boy—and suddenly it was cool to dress the way I did, and I was the most desirable thing on earth. I always called bullshit on that!

It was right after that that I left my hometown with my mum and moved to London and just completely started a new life. And then from like 17 to 22, I went back to having no friends.

It seems like London would be a place where you could thrive!

I was so shy. And the kids in London were so much more cultured. I was just Tahliah—a shy mixed-race girl with a farmer’s accent.

What does it mean to have a farmer’s accent?

Where I’m from, it’s really rural, and people talk in a country accent. When I moved to London, people would be like, “You’re a farmer!” I was like, “No, I’m not a farmer!” [Laughs] When I say I had no friends, literally I knew like four and a half people in college. It was just me and my mum hanging out every day.

Were you lonely?

I don’t really believe in being lonely. I believe in being alone, but if you’re lonely, that’s just bringing some extra emotions into it. Loneliness is self-indulgent. There’s always something to do when you’re alone.

But then, I met Carri Munden by chance—the girl who started Cassette Playa. And Carri completely and utterly changed my life. It was crazy. I met her at a concert somewhere. We spoke briefly, and I was like, Oh my god, that girl is SO COOL. I started stalking her on MySpace—I messaged her all the time and she’d write me back with messages that were like one-third the length of mine [laughs] and I’d get so excited! I didn’t have a computer, so I’d go to the internet café and check to see if she’d written me back. She was styling Billionaire Boys Club at the time, and she used me for something, and then she used me for her lookbook a couple times. Then she introduced me to basically everyone who helped start my career: Matthew Stone, who did the i-D cover; Grace LaDoja, with whom I did my first film work; Sharmadeen Reid, who does Wah Nails—she had me play her Wah Nails party in New York, and that was the first show in New York that I’d done as twigs.

When I met Carri, I was just a confused 19-year-old, not knowing how I wanted to be, but knowing I had so many ideas and so much inside me, and she was the first and only person who saw it. One time she said to me, “Who are you going as for Halloween?” I was like, “I think I’m gonna go as Edward Scissorhands.” And she was like, “You should go as Tank Girl.” I was like, “Who is Tank Girl?” And she said, “You’re Tank Girl. Just google it.” So I googled Tank Girl, and I was like, Oh my god, I am Tank Girl. From that point on, everything clicked into place: how I wanted to dress, what type of woman I was, and how I wanted to be.

The thing I really loved about Carri was that she was really productive and forward-thinking, and really prominent in the scene, but she was also very vulnerable, very kind, and very sensitive. She’s still one of my best friends.