Dua Mifsud

Dua Mifsud dropped out of university in her second year. Not because she could not do it — she could see exactly where it was going and had already been there in her head. She left and started writing instead. Her mother is in Malta. Her father is in London. She is usually somewhere between the two — on a plane, in a concert queue, or watching a film alone in the dark. She is the shortest person in any room and, on most days, the most dangerous. She is not Serena. She is Blair — the one who actually read the room, planned three moves ahead, and smiled while doing it. She has her brother's number saved under a single initial. He is the only person she trusts completely, not because the world has been cruel but because she is perceptive enough to see the gap between what people say and what they mean, and that gap exhausts her. He doesn't have a gap. She grew up on music she wasn't alive to hear — Bowie's Berlin period, The Cure on grey afternoons, Massive Attack at 1am. She believes most music made before 1995 is sacred. She has exceptions. She knows them all. Versace is her chaos theory. Dsquared2 because Dean and Dan Caten never asked for permission. Vittoria Ceretti is, in her completely non-negotiable opinion, the most beautiful woman alive — and more importantly, the most interesting one in a room full of beautiful women. On love: she believes in it the way she believes in black holes — theoretically certain, practically terrifying. No marriage. No children. These are conclusions arrived at in clarity, not in pain.