In a quiet corner of the English countryside, summertime humidity cloying the air, Tigerlily Taylor is bundled up in plush layers of cashmere. Framed by traditional cleft oak fencing and washing lines strung with vintage tea towels, the setting of H! Fashion’s latest cover shoot perfectly reflects the 30-year-old’s earthy nature. She barely breaks a sweat.
Tigerlily is blissfully at home - her countryside surroundings echoing her childhood spent in Surrey. A self-professed ‘horse-girl,’ the multi-hyphenate spent the first nine years of her life away from the hustle and bustle of the city. As a child, she was surrounded by dogs, ducks, guinea pigs, horses and everything in between - apt considering we enlisted the help of three pygmy goats to bring the pastoral photographs to life.
© @_saskialawson
© @_saskialawsonThe scene is a far cry from the high-octane romp that colours her family’s lore. The daughter of Deborah Leng and Queen drummer Roger Taylor, Tigerlily shows none of the theatricality so often associated with the legendary British band. Level-headed and entirely at ease, she totally eschews the classic stereotype of rock royalty offspring.
“My dad's just done a really, really good job of making sure that we're not assholes,” she says with a nonchalant, low laugh. “I've got four siblings and I really feel like we're very grounded - all of us. Obviously, we're very privileged and very lucky, but I think we've all got our heads screwed on.”
“My dad's just done a really, really good job of making sure that we're not assholes"
It comes across as we speak: “When some people meet me they sometimes say ‘oh, you're very normal.’ I don't really understand why I wouldn't be normal?” I asked if such instances of preconceived opinion bother her: “No, I don't think about it at all or ever have.”
© @_saskialawsonThere’s a grit to our second-time cover star - who first appeared on the pages of the magazine back in March 2016. Since, her blonde hair has transformed from a golden shoulder-length blowout to a side-slicked pixie cut - now dyed platinum in true It-Brit style. With thick brows, an open face and a peppering of tattoos, Tigerlily joins the likes of Iris Law, Wallis Day and Florence Pugh in their cool-girl-coded penchant for Evangelista-inspired androgyny.
It comes as little surprise that Tigerlily is a fellow boarding school survivor. There’s an unfussed impishness about her that radiates St Trinian’s charm - a characteristic shared by many ex-private school girls. “I was definitely a naughty teenager,” she notes, semi-proudly. “We used to run away from the teachers and escape into the fields to throw parties. It was a Thursday night thing where all the kids meet up in a field and listen to music and smoke cigarettes. Then all the teachers would come and chase us. That was a lot of fun. I think our teachers actually really enjoyed it…”
© @_saskialawson
© @_saskialawsonYet, it wasn’t always sunshine and rainbows at school for the creative. “I went to a lot of different schools. It was the thing of getting to a new school and it being calm for the first few days and then there was always a moment where everyone would find out,” she says of her famous father. “It would always be a big thing. You’d have kids coming up to you in the playground and asking you questions.”
Luckily, as she grew older, Tigerlily found refuge in escaping to London for the weekend. She also began modelling at sixteen, encouraged by her good friend Pixie Geldof, daughter of The Boomtown Rats’ Bob Geldof.
“I've always been a very shy, introverted person, which I probably don’t come across as to other people,” she says, reflecting upon her signing with British model agency Select. “It was definitely tricky. I was really nervous and it took me a really long time to come out of my shell. But it was amazing.”
© @_saskialawson“I've always been a very shy, introverted person, which I probably don’t come across as to other people"
This early on-set experience was a baptism by fire, signalling the starlet’s entry into the chaotic world of fashion and beauty. She’s always been into clothes, admittedly pinching pieces from her parents’ wardrobes (“I take all my dad's suits! He loves clothes and he loves shopping. He’s got a vast wardrobe”), yet beauty was her true calling.
In lockdown, she founded her own brand, Claws by Tiger Taylor (oh, how we love a pun) - born from her widely-felt frustration at the salons being shut during the pandemic. “I got stuck with these big acrylic talons during lockdowns and had no way of getting them off because all the salons were closed. My friend used press-ons and she suggested that I try them out for convenience. I ordered a couple of sets and realised that you wear them for a bit and then you throw them away. I found the disposability of them and the amount of packaging I found very wasteful. Everything was made up of toxic chemicals and plastic.”
Parking her then-project, designing sustainable shoes which she later admits is an oversaturated market anyway, she pursued the idea of biodegradable press-ons.
© @_saskialawson“I just decided to go with the nails as a more convenient, more necessary product. There are so many sustainable footwear brands, and there weren't any sustainable nail brands at the time. The crux of the brand is that it is 100 per cent sustainable and biodegradable, from the nails to the cases.”
The mere uttering of ‘sustainability’ can instantly flick the snooze switch for fashion insiders - jaded by the paradoxical nature of the term. But Tigerlily is tapping into one of fashion’s most compelling stories: the innovation emerging from South America’s bio-textile market.
The brand uses a bioplastic factory in Brazil to create the product, enabling playful, salon‑quality nails without costing the planet: “I personally don't believe that there's any point in starting a business, especially a retail business, unless it is going to be sustainable,” she says with a steely matter-of-factness.
This proclivity for mindful consumerism extends to preloved fashion. Describing her style as "unique" and “quite masculine" (microtrends are a big no-no), Tigerlily relishes a one-off vintage find. “I mean, obviously there are things that influence me. I'm very into the little ballet pumps and capri pants vibe at the moment. But, I feel like we're going back to a 90s minimalist kind of fashion which I love. It's very me.”
© @_saskialawsonVestiaire Collective is her go to for buying and selling vintage clothing, as is New York’s Procell and Shoreditch's Nordic Poetry, a mecca for all East London girls in search of their dream Tom Ford for Gucci dress, Jean Paul Gaultier mesh top or threaded relic of Mugler corsetry. Charli XCX and Gabriette are among the store’s VIP clientele. “I can't afford anything in there, but it's very good,” she laughs - relatable.
Citing Missy Elliott and 1990s female graffiti artists as her style muses, the talent channels a resilient yet playful punk spirit that threads through everything - from her beauty choices to her business ethos.
“I have done pretty much everything from start to finish on my own,” she continues, circling back to her brand. “I have team members here and there, but I didn't go into it with a business partner. I went into it self-funded, having had no business experience. It’s been the hardest thing I think I've ever done. The biggest lesson I’ve learned is to try and keep your head up. You really have to stay positive because with business it's always up and down - it's all over the place. You never know where it's going to go. I think if I were to do it again, I would go in as a partner with investment and have the infrastructure and team already built in.”
© @_saskialawsonKickboxing and martial arts help her to stay grounded amidst the babel - sports she’s been practising for thirteen years now. As does meditation and the company of her dogs - two dinky black chihuahuas called Buffy and Lyra (who completely stole the show on the set of our cover shoot.)
“My dogs mean absolutely everything to me,” Tigerlily notes, echoing a rhetoric familiar to canine lovers everywhere. “They really make you feel very human and are such a positive thing in the world, always, no matter what's going on.”
She’s “big” on routine, crediting her self-employed lifestyle for giving her the freedom to build daily structure. Her spare time involves painting, journaling, writing poetry and just about every other form of creative expression one can achieve with a pen in hand.
"[Freddie's] humour is the thing he talks about all the time. I think they were constantly like little naughty schoolboys together"
© @_saskialawsonAs for her nail designs? Not for the ‘quiet luxury’ enthusiasts, that’s for sure. Neon hues of highlighter yellow, aqua and rich apple green are cut in sharp, square silhouettes - exuding the kind of flamboyance, someone like, say Freddie Mercury, would enjoy.
One approaches the bench with caution, unsure how willing the cover star will be to discuss her heritage. Does her father still talk about his incomparable bandmate Freddie? “He was his best friend in the world - he talks about him a lot. They were a little twosome, very much best friends. His humour is the thing he talks about all the time. I think they were constantly like little naughty schoolboys together. He died before I was born, but he did give my parents the idea for my name…” The musician passed away in 1991, just a day after revealing his AIDS diagnosis. His death cast a harsh light on the epidemic and sealed his legacy as a once-in-a-generation performer - immortalised by Queen’s legendary Live Aid set, which marks its 40th anniversary this year.
“My family always had a lot of musicians around,” Tigerlily continues. “My brother's godfather was the drummer for the Foo Fighters who very sadly passed away recently.” Describing Queen guitarist Brian May as a “super-genius astrophysicist,” and her father as an “extremely hilarious person,” it’s refreshing to see that Tigerlily doesn’t seem to mind indulging me in stories from her dad’s glory days.
“I take all my dad's suits! He loves clothes and he loves shopping. He’s got a vast wardrobe”
“He’s a really good storyteller,” she adds. “He loves talking about his life and the people that he would hang out with. A lot of the stories are not PG, but one of my favourite bands is Thin Lizzy and the lead singer Phil Lynott was a good friend of my dad's at the time. Dad always tells the story of when they would see each other on the Thin Lizzy tour, when Phil Lynott was basically just a bit of a…what's the word? He was loved by the ladies! He would have a queue of women going down the hallway outside his dressing room - just waiting to go in and meet him, which I thought was really funny.”
With his mop of blonde hair and arresting blue eyes, Roger Taylor himself had this effect on girls, a narrative documented in Brian Singer’s 2018 Oscar-winning biographical drama Bohemian Rhapsody. “It was quite weird watching it,” Tigerlily says. “I think my whole family found it a bit strange, but I loved it. The one note I would make; I think my dad's character was really two dimensional. They made him the ladies' man, but then didn't really give him much depth. I think he was a much more integral part of the process and the band than was made out in the film.”
© @_saskialawsonWhat’s next for the star? She’s looking forward to her thirties, noting that her twenties were tumultuous, especially as a woman working in an industry that places so much gravitas on looks. Moving out to the seaside is also on the agenda, but not while her business is blossoming. She’s keen to champion the brand-as-platform model, using her label as a vehicle to educate and advocate for sustainability. Plus, a potential podcast and brand partnership are on the horizon.
“I'm not sure if I can say who they are at the moment,” she teases,” but we have a collaboration with a big swimwear brand coming up that we're really excited about…”
Businesswoman, sustainability advocate, model, and walking rock ’n’ roll legacy - Tigerlily Taylor has plenty to say. And the world is ready to hear her roar.
