Getting Ready to Party with Camila Cabello

costume designs and images featuring camila cabello in a glamorous outfit surrounded by other costumes
Getting Ready to Party with Camila CabelloWorld Red Eye/Greg Swales

Camila Cabello is sipping on an “Eye Luv It,” a Bacardi-infused coconut water cocktail, and getting her makeup done by none other than Patrick Ta as I walk into her art-filled apartment in Miami Beach. She’s getting ready to throw a starry Halloween bash at Joia beach, a hot venue nestled between palm trees in Miami’s Jungle Island.

In honor of her latest album C, XOXO, and in a tribute to her Cuban roots, the singer is going as a Havana Tropicana dancer. “I like giving nods to my heritage, like being a Latina woman,” she tells me. “One year I was La Catrina from Día de Muertos, so this time I was like, what can I do that feels like it would be believable as a costume for me?” For her bash, she was inspired by the gorgeous women who performed at the iconic Tropicana Nightclub in Havana, Cuba, in the late 1930s, wearing extravagant feathered, bejeweled Cabaret-style looks.

costume fitting involving intricate beaded attire and feathered accessories
Greg Swales

After looking through old reference photos, Cabello’s team worked with designer Eileen O'Brien of L.O.C.A., to create a modern take on the over-the-top costumes. This one came with a blue and white rhinestone bra top featuring Mamma Mia-esque tiered sleeves, plus matching rhinestone hot shorts and a jeweled headpiece embellished with waves of steel blue, icy blue, and white ostrich feathers.

camila cabello
World Red Eye

“I honestly never really go that big for Halloween. But I was like, what the hell!” Cabello says. “It just felt very Bacardi, very Miami. There’s a huge Latin and predominantly Cuban community here, so I felt like this was the place where it would be appreciated.” She jokes, “But next year I’m gonna be spooky and ironic.”

Over 10,000 rhinestones were hand-placed to create the dancer look, which took 236 hours and also involved 20 yards of rhinestone chain and 300 teardrop crystal beads and paillettes. The color scheme is more muted, metallic, and futuristic that the original ’30s costumes, but that’s because it’s meant to mimic the cover art for Cabello’s album, which is all about Miami’s electric nightlife.

camila cabello
World Red Eye

C, XOXO, which includes Miami-inspired hits like “Dade County Dreaming” and “Dream-Girls,” feels less culturally heavy in terms of its depth and the topics it explores, and more a move toward the fun, young, flirty, independent energy Cabello is currently embodying. The general vibes? “Probably… Miami, forward-thinking pop, and girlhood,” Cabello says.

When comparing the album to her 2022 Familia, 2019 Romance, and 2018 Camila, some have accused the pop star of altering her sound to copy other mainstream artists; but on the contrary, Cabello feels that she has never been more authentic.

“I kind of just follow whatever my instincts are,” she says of C, XOXO, for which she was involved in writing every hit. “I was trying to zoom into the cultural landscape of Miami and I kind of was inspired culturally by my broader Latin culture—Cuban and Mexican—but zooming into Miami, it’s like you kind of get all of those things in a more specific color.”

camila cabello's halloween costume
Greg Swales

She does drop a few Spanish words and cultural references in there, and during our talk, she points to “Dream-Girls,” which she describes as a 2000s R&B sample with a reggaeton beat, in which she shouts out a Miami restaurant Uchi—“which is like 20 minutes away from here,” she says. That niche, very local culture is what she wanted to pay tribute to with her latest work, and she nailed it. At Cabello’s Halloween bash, strings of local personalities rolled in wearing their best galactic princess-meets-carnaval queen ensembles, to dance to her music. Feathers and all, the belle of the ball stepped up to the DJ booth—with her mom, sister, and crew by her side—and gave a rainy Miami the hottest party of the night.

camila cabello's halloween party
World Red Eye

“I don’t think I’m in my party girl era, but I definitely feel like I’m in my living-the-questions, 20s era, you know?” Cabello says. “I love a good party, for sure, but I feel like I’m much more interested in like, finding out what it means to be dating, and friendships, and how all of that changes, and how you change, and all of that in your 20s, and moving to a new place and living by yourself. It's all of that.”

As we contemplate adulthood, Cabello’s stylist, Katie Qian, is seen brushing a pink wig to test out under the bejeweled, feathered headdress the singer is meant to wear in just a few hours. “Do you usually dress so vibrant and feathery?” I ask her. “No, actually the opposite,” Cabello admits.

“I feel like I kinda always come back to the same things like, ever since I was young,” she says of her style. “I’ve always liked a preppy academia vibe, a go-to-school vibe. I don’t know if this is a trend, but I really liked when we saw the Miu Miu show and they had the socks with the heels. I also like balletcore a lot.”

camila cabello
Greg Swales

She adds that her current C, XOXO era is a mix of girly and feminine plus “grungy and like having some kind of power and bravado.” And even when her clothes are preppy and girlish, Cabello can always own a dark smoky eye and messy bed-head hair.

“My express beauty routine is just like some concealer, and some blush, and some mascara… and maybe some lip liner and some contour,” she says with a laugh. “And my long routine is Patrick (Ta).”

camila cabello in her halloween costume
Greg Swales

She keeps her skincare more basic and consistent, she says, but one thing about Cabello? Nothing will make her go to sleep with her makeup on. “I don’t even think I’ve ever done that, ever,” she says.

“She’s the type of girl who will spend two hours on makeup for me and she’ll wipe it off right when the job is done,” Ta says as he brushes glittery silver shadow onto Cabello’s eyelids. At this point, she has hours of glam to go before her party, but all she feels is excitement—for what she has produced, for the energy surrounding her, and for what she may come upon next.

patrick ta doing makeup on camila cabello
Greg Swales

“Can we expect any surprises tonight?” I ask. “I’m the surprise!” she jokes. “No, I’m excited to just, like, hang with my friends. I’m excited to see Patrick’s costume—he’s going to be a pirate. I’m excited to dance. I’m going to text the DJ and be like, hey, can you please play some 2000 hip hop?”

Cabello notes that getting to collaborate with different genres of musicians on her latest album opened her up to so many new possibilities with her music. “I didn’t grow up listening to a lot of American music. So, I really try to force myself to listen to things that are new, or even the classics, so I can grow,” she says. “Especially for this last album, I feel like I listened to a lot of big, mainstream rappers and got exposed to more underground artists.”

As for what sound she hopes to explore for her next album, or what direction she expects to take? “I don’t know, I don’t know,” the “June Gloom” singer says, earnestly, “which I feel is the best place to be.” She adds, “I didn’t know last time. I didn’t know the time before that. So, it always reveals itself to me.”

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