Tyla Looks Like a TRL Princess in a Y2K Dress

When MTV’s Total Request Live ended its original run, Tyla was just six years old. Yet, the music phenom has a habit for dressing like she’s just about to face Carson Daly and a horde of screaming tweens at the Times Square Studios. It may be 2025, but she always looks like the hottest pop star of 2005, and that’s meant as a compliment.

For a beachfront photo shoot, Tyla slipped into an archival DSquared2 mini dress. As if it weren’t clear from its millennial silhouette, the micro-mini dress is dated to the 2000s. It features a dark purple stretch base decorated with strips of contrasting fabric throughout. Along the bust, there’s neon green, a pop of neon orange, and warm yellow, the latter which also made its way to the skirt’s hemline. Styled by Ron Hartleben, the South African star finished off her look with daring lavender makeup positioned on the bottom half of her face.

Tyla has proven herself as a major vintage head time and again. Her wardrobe, both off-duty and red carpet, is full of fashion-favorite picks from the likes of Tom Ford’s Gucci, John Gallino-era Dior, and Chanel by Karl Lagerfeld. It was the latter designer’s archival pieces that filled out Tyla’s recent visual for “Chanel.”

In it, the singer fluctuates between some of Lagerfeld’s greatest Chanel hits like the hip-hop collection and that infamous hula-hoop bag. “I wanted to find the craziest things for her to wear, and pay homage to those key moments and amalgamate them into one modern thing that made sense for Tyla,” Hartleben said.

Although her latest archive pull isn’t by Chanel, it still served as proof that no one can compete with Tyla’s vintage fashion game. Can we retroactively award her a #1 on the TRL countdown?