The ghost in the machine
It is the scent that hits you as you enter her bedroom, emanating from a wardrobe so crammed that dresses, scarves and bags dangle from its doors. Her bed, with a scarlet quilt, is a mattress on the floor. Every surface is crowded with candles, old shoes, postcards, gilt birdcages, strange objets dâart, a book about Frida Kahlo; it is as if an entire flea market has been purchased wholesale. The only clue that this is no longer the retreat of an arty, angsty teenage girl is hanging outside in the hall. Under dry-cleanerâs plastic is the full-length couture gown that Florence wore when emerging from a giant clam shell to sing at the Chanel show in Le Grand Palais, Paris.
This is not even a proper bedroom, but the front room of her mother and stepfatherâs house. Yet in between touring America as Florence + the Machine, promoting her second album, Ceremonials (which sold 1.5m copies in its first two months), shooting the cover of Vogue, singing at the Oscars, the New York Met Ball, on The X Factor and Saturday Night Live, it is to where she returns. In this corner of southeast London, where comfortable houses like hers are ringed by vast council estates, a pop star may stroll unrecognised. The paparazzi rarely stray south of the river. Only a bunch of Camberwell art-college students (where Florence once studied) have discovered her address: âThey wake me up singing Youâve Got the Love while drunk at 3am,â she says, and laughs.
