What should we expect from Miley Cyrus' new film-album?

The days when Miley Cyrus—Smiley to her family, Hannah Montana to Disney Kids—wore campy outfits and licked hammers are long gone. The Nashville pop star returns with a visual album Something Beautiful, releasing Friday, May 30, which tells the story of her love relationship with music, but above all with fashion. Already with Flowers, the revenge song with millions of streams that ushered in a new golden era in her career and won her two Grammys, the importance Cyrus and her team place on fashion was evident. In the song’s video, the revenge dress is a metallic gold Saint Laurent piece from 1991. From that moment on, the pop star began showcasing valuable archive outfits, from Mugler to Alaïa, which are central to this new sophisticated, hypnotic, and dreamlike era. In contemporary pop culture, which seems to have forgotten about music videos and their value, Miley Cyrus chooses to express herself through an album born from her imaginative spirit and fantasies, described by the artist as a «sensory experience». Something Beautiful is also a film that will be released in select movie theaters in June. On this subject, in an Apple Music interview with Zane Lowe, Cyrus stated: «I want people to dance between the rows of seats. In all my timelines, in all my lives, I see the audience joining me—not just as spectators, but as protagonists of the film.»

Although the album has not yet been released, Cyrus has dropped a few tracks and a trailer featuring cinematic sequences from her pop work. From the sound to the visuals, Cyrus stages a kind of Hollywood musical, opening with a burst of light in which the artist appears, just awakened from a dream, wearing a green feather Mugler costume (as seen in the video for Something Beautiful, the album’s opener). In recent weeks, the album’s second track, End of the World, has also been released—a pop-disco anthem in which many recognized the sound of ABBA. In the music video, the artist wears a fringe dress, also by Mugler, reminiscent of the scenic and opulent costumes of Bob Mackie for Cher, and dances wildly among shadows, lights, and wind, singing about the end of the world in an ethereal atmosphere that recalls the 1980s and the music videos of Kate Bush.

As for archive outfits, the star didn’t hold back and revealed in the interview with Zane Lowe that she spent much of her budget wearing historic and iconic Mugler pieces. In the visual for her latest track More to Lose, Cyrus wears an hourglass suit with a kind of veiled hood, from the French house’s Fall 1998 collection. This dark, erotic outfit, described by Thierry Mugler as «a reinterpretation of lingerie», was featured in a well-known shoot from that era by legendary fashion photographer Helmut Newton. Intentionally contrasting with that look, in the same video the singer wears a pearlescent feather and sequin dress (the same one Miley wears on the album cover), from Mugler’s 1997 Les Insectes Couture. As documented on the Instagram channel Stylishcyrus, which faithfully reports all the artist’s looks, Miley Cyrus explained that these outfits ideally represent a metaphorical battle between good and evil. In this heartbreaking ballad, Cyrus appears to have forgiven herself and reconciled with her pain, and with tears in her eyes, she appears in black and white like a diva from another era. In the same video, Miley also wears a black sequin dress with a sweetheart neckline by Bob Mackie from the Fall Couture 2001 collection. The pop star confessed that she drew inspiration for her movements from the magnetic and dramatic spirit of Whitney Houston’s performances.

References to Mugler’s early '90s drama-couture haven’t ended: from the latest snippets shared by the artist on her channels, there’s a glimpse of a video clip where she wears a leather hooded jacket by Alaïa, a clear nod to the looks of Grace Jones, the Tunisian designer’s muse. Among these frames, there’s one in particular featuring Miley alongside Naomi Campbell on the track Every Girl You’ve Ever Loved. Cyrus also pays tribute to the Black Venus in the teaser for the album’s final track Give Me Love, in which she wears a leopard print jumpsuit and a feather boa—an outfit Campbell wore in Mugler’s 1995 Couture show.

The latest preview of Miley Cyrus’s upcoming era arrived a few days ago on Jimmy Kimmel Live Tonight: during the artist’s interview, a teaser was shown of the music video for her new single Easy Lover, in which she performs in a Mugler look consisting of a bra made of dangling turquoise stones and typical chaps (overpants traditionally used by cowboys) made of feathers. This archive piece is from the Cowboy Collection (SS 1992 RTW). This is no coincidence, as the song, the artist revealed to Apple Music, was originally intended for Beyoncé’s album Cowboy Carter, which, as we know, features Cyrus on the track II Most Wanted. In the video, the dance crew wears headpieces with antennae, another clear nod to the wasp-waisted models in Mugler’s Les Insectes runway show. All that’s left is to wait for the release of this film-album to see whether, in this new artistic transformation, Miley Cyrus will once again earn her place in the Olympus of contemporary pop artists.