Trying on a Steven Alan romper and Stella McCartney belt at Bird.
Dico in a Zero + Maria Cornejo onesie and belt.
First stop: Bird, a Williamsburg boutique stocked with pieces by up-and-coming designers, where Dico immediately homes in on a rack of Zero + Maria Cornejo, draping onesies and dresses over her arm. “I love jumpsuits,” she says, then asks just what the difference is between them and rompers. “I have a few from Diesel Black Gold that I really like, some from Danish designers and some vintage ones.” She tries on a navy striped Steven Alan romper that she deems “a little too everyday”; a geometric-print version by Mociun, a Brooklyn designer (it’s sold out in her size); as well as much of the Zero + Maria Cornejo lot. In the end, she takes Cornejo’s “just lovely” electric blue silk romper but says she will definitely pair it with dark tights onstage. “I have bad knees,” she laments. “And I don’t want people looking at my knees and not at my singing.” She also buys a wide black belt with a tortoiseshell buckle by Stella McCartney, and a Mociun cloth tote. Pleased with her new goods, Dico smiles and at one point even does a little dance in front of the mirror. “My only problem when I shop is I just don’t know where to start,” she explains. “But for inspiration, I love to try most of it.”
Our next jaunt is to designer Wendy Mullin’s store, Built by Wendy, where Dico goes for a black halter top (“It’s not for me,” she decides), as well as a floral minidress. “It’s a little too sweet, but I could roughen it up a bit with my new belt,” she notes, though in the end passes on the frock. We move on to Jumelle, another tiny Williamsburg shop, where she snags a pair of peep-toe booties (on sale!) by French designer Gaspard Yurkievich. They’re black suede trimmed in cream snakeskin, and Dico hopes they will replace “the most amazing shoes I’ve ever had”: white suede peep-toes by Marc Jacobs. “I wore them until they just could not last another concert,” she recalls. “The heels were starting to cave in.”
Hopefully, those Yurkievichs are really tough, because, whether she likes it or not, Dico has a busy road ahead of her, one that involves much more than concerts. She’s gearing up to record her sixth album (under her own label, Finest Gramophone, which she founded in 2000) next spring. But before that she may have a few red carpets to walk. She recently wrote the score for a Danish film, Vagn, directed by Nikolaj Steen, set for release in Scandinavia this December. “Tina owns a rare will, strength and courage to communicate her music without any compromise,” says Steen, who first heard Dico sing more than a decade ago at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, where she was a student and Steen a guest teacher. “I had a very specific idea that I wanted an acoustic score, no big symphony orchestra—only guitars, bass and maybe an old pedal organ. We both clicked on the idea of keeping the music melodic and simple, with a few vocals here and there.”
