Watch list: the women reshaping DJ and sneaker culture in London

When talking about London after dark, there’s a lot to shout about. Take, for example, the sheer volume of female talent flooding the scene and reinvigorating venues large and small across the capital. Teaming up with eBay as part of their ​“In Session With” series, we want to spotlight those very stars, taking you on a day (or night?!) in their sneakers.

It’s refreshing to see myriad women playing maestro on sweaty dance floors and the airwaves, spinning homegrown sounds. In so doing, they’re redefining the vibe of functions, bringing with them their own sensibilities, which translate into musical and stylistic persuasions – not least killer footwear. These aural tastemakers are showing up to the party with USBs packed with tracks as esoteric and hard-to-catch as their kicks.

For proof of this subcultural crossover, look no further than Tiffany Calver. Acting like a conduit between the underground and mainstream, she’s used her career to break down barriers, becoming the first woman to host BBC Radio 1Xtra’s rap show when she took the baton from station stalwart, Charlie Sloth. Usually, she’s watching out for emerging stars she can spotlight and uplift – and where shoes are concerned, the latest iterations of Nike’s Air Force 1 silhouette. Did we mention, she loves an off-piste instrumental (more on that later).

As for the faces she’s into right now, there’s plenty. Take, for example, ELLADHC, the kooky kick connoisseur who cultivates community through intimate parties. Or Laelo Black, who is big on street-ready sneakers and sonic journeys, taking her audience across the diaspora with house, Afrobeats and other African electronic genres. And finally, Tailor Jae, whose rapturous mixes take the formula out of nightlife, creating a mood as singular and East London-coded as her taste in footwear.

Tiffany and these fiery figures have a lot to give. Here, we get an insight into the range they’re bringing to the table, micro-profiling each on their sound and style.

Tiffany Calver is changing. Just before she turned 30 this year, she set about making bold choices in every area of her life. This holds for her aesthetic, too. She recounts bleaching her hair blonde as, apparently, she hadn’t been wild enough in her 20s. ​“I’m usually cosy with fashion, for sure. I’m trying to get out of my comfort zone,” says Tiffany. As we speak, it becomes clear this is more than just a visual change of tack, but also an overarching aesthetic philosophy that’s impacting her music.

As one of the UK’s premier DJs, Tiffany has helmed hit radio shows on BBC and Kiss, and thrown legendary parties with her ​“Tiffany Calver + Friends” series . This past decade, she’s played a major part in shaping the country’s cultural palette. After starting out as a music writer on websites like MTV and SBTV, she gradually broke through into primetime entertainment. ​“2018 to 2019, I blinked and was just like, ​‘What the fuck?’” she laughs.

Since then, she’s cemented her name as one of the most plugged-in hip-hop and grime buffs, a trait the longstanding sneaker obsessive mirrors in her collection. We ask her what she’s currently hunting down. Designer Ben Drury’s ​“Tongue ​‘N’ Cheek” Nike Air Max 90, designed for Dizze Rascal’s infamous EP, and the Bapesta ​“College Dropout” pack, an ode to Ye’s legendary breakthrough album – two very fitting picks.

Tiffany’s accolades are just as starry as her collection. (We daren’t ask how many sneakers she owns.) As well as keeping one foot in the UK, playing the likes of Wireless and Parklife, she’s also opened for international shows with Beyoncé and Jay‑Z as part of their ​“On The Run II” tour, and rap giant Drake on his ​“Assassination Vacation” tour. With all this considered, you’d be forgiven for asking: has she really played it safe?

“I would set myself a challenge of how rammed it could get in there,” she says, describing her approach for sets. ​“One of my first Glastonburys, I started in a tent and there were maybe 50 people. By the end, people couldn’t even get in.” Still, at this point in her career, she’s not interested in cramming shows with crowd-pleaser tracks. ​“It gets a bit lethargic playing the official charts for teenagers in the festival run when maybe I’m quite into Kerri Chandler that day,” she says. ​“I think I’ve earned the right to play what I want.”

Preparing her sets is ​“like planning outfits” in that it’s a task she has all the intentions of doing but still ends up never having the time to organise. Lucky then that she’s a natural aesthete, arriving today in a slick black bomber, airy black trews and a yellow intrecciato handbag. Chic! On foot? The Nike Air Force 1 x Off-White ​“Lemonade”. ​“I keep thinking I will prep, then it’s like, ​‘I’m on stage in five minutes. What’s on this USB?’” she says.

As a selector, she has an encyclopaedic knowledge of music – past and present – that she’s keen to highlight. ​“I’m like the king of B‑sides, for sure,” says Tiffany. ​“I will remind you of something you heard at a school disco in like 2003 that was a bop, then cringe, and now, a bop because of nostalgia.” The same goes for her shoe-drobe. Tiffany’s currently watching a pair of the love-hate Jeremy Scott Adidas ​“Teddy Bear” hi-tops you’ll remember from the 2010s. But that’s just it: she makes it work. ​“I made Unknown T freestyle over Vengaboys. I’m not scared of doing weird shit anymore,” she says.

Tiffany grew up between the UK’s midlands in sleepy Telford and Saint Lucia. She has Puerto Rican and Nigerian heritage, and due to her stepfather, she also spent a lot of time in the Grenadines. Naturally, these environments imbued her with a smorgasbord of musical references to educate her fans with. ​“Growing up, I used to pretend I was a teacher, and I guess that’s what I’m doing now with unexpected music,” she says.

Tapping acrylics on her phone, Laelo Black scrolls for tracks to pepper into our conversation. She drops hits from South Africa as we discuss her personal style, giving a full picture of who and what she stands for as a creative. Clad in a black and white leather jacket, and a lime green mini – complete with candy-floss pink piping – she’s teamed her peppy ensemble with a set of snakeskin-effect Nike NOCTA Hot Step sneakers in pink quartz.

For her, some elements are always the same: a short pixie cut, black nails, electronic underground sounds from Africa – gqom, especially – and pops of colour dotted into her outfits. Her cutesy look, offset with masculine touches, works for her, and she knows it. It’s no different for her track selection. ​“I play heavy, bassy beats with log drums, but then I will blend it with something soulful and light. That’s also how I dress. I love balance,” she says. A quick glance at her eBay watch list reveals a classy set of New Balance 530s with metallic accents and, almost the polar opposite, a crimson set of Nike Air Max Plus Tuned sneakers.

Finding balance is a fil rouge to much of her journey. She decided to start DJing while out on low-key nights in Soho or at friends’ house parties. ​“I grew tired of hearing the same sets,” she says. ​“I also just didn’t see many people who looked like me.”

Her Boiler Room set has amassed around 510,000 (at the time of writing) views and introduced her to a new audience. Now, she’s getting clout where clout’s due with her fusion of house, Congolese genres, Afrobeat, and gems from the diaspora. And yes, she’s a true raver herself, always on the lookout for skanking-appropriate kicks, like the New Balance 9060 in concrete grey. Smart choices, smart DJ.

Perhaps most striking is the storytelling in her sets. Retracing electronic music back to its Black roots, she marries vintage sounds with the present wave. At a time when African derivatives gain global popularity and artists like Beyoncé and Drake examine the history, she is getting her flowers and setting the record straight. ​“I want people to realise there are more layers to electronic music than EDM or oontz oontz,” she affirms.

In the quiet of lockdown, ELLADHC was hungry for music. Every day, she would practise on a Pioneer DDJ 200, harnessing her interest. Then, her friend asked her to play at a birthday party when restrictions were lifted, and the rest is, well, history. These days, she curates line-ups in small venues like Peckham Audio and Tola with her party, Shindig, co-run with Aychibs. ​“We want to create a space where people come and actually dance,” she affirms. ​“I feel like some London crowds can be so stush. People want to be at a party but aren’t bringing a vibe.”

To this point, she’s spent a lot of time watching DJ streams like Aprtment Life, studying how crowds respond to certain sounds – something that informs her practice today. On the scene, she’s recognised for her electric stage presence, attentive approach and seamless blend of dancehall, amapiano and anything else that sticks, an eclecticism mirrored in her look. She’s shown up for our interview wearing a hyper-cropped, cerulean overcoat, a wide oxblood belt and the lauded Isabel Marant wedge sneakers. You know, the ones that summoned a six month waiting list in the early teenies.

Like her sound, her sneaker tastes are bold and self-assured, spanning the Nike Air Max SNDR ​“Canyon Gold” through to the coquettish Cecilie Bahnsen Asics Gel-Quantum 360s – all of which she’s scoping out on eBay. Sure, it’s a little wacky, but this conviction and sense of self has expedited her career, making ELLADHC a star in the scene. Because of her unwavering approach, she gets invited to rouse crowds at major and glitter shindigs alike, whether it’s Ice Spice’s Wireless afterparty or, more recently, Little Simz’s Tate Late takeover. ​“People were spilling out of the hall,” she remembers.

You might be wondering where all this untapped talent came from. Well, it runs in the family. Growing up in a musical household, she played the oboe, her mum played the piano and her late father was in a band, playing an array of instruments such as drums, flute and trombone. ​“He would play an instrument, listen to the radio and watch TV at the same time. It was a loud house,” she laughs. ​“Very overstimulating.”

Like father, like daughter, ELLADHC has no issues with experimenting with sound and style. Recently, she’s been exploring genres outside her regular soundscape, like techno, while also taking her look up a notch. For her Tate appearance, she went all out. ​“I always wanted the Adidas Japan VH shoes. I thought I couldn’t pull them off, but you can do whatever you want,” she says.

Like all millennial musical love stories, Tailor Jae’s story starts with an iPod Nano she got for her birthday. ​“My brother showed me how to download music from Limewire. Later I would look for songs for house parties. And because I used to dance, I also needed a soundtrack for routines,” she says.

Around the house – even though her family are of African heritage – her father would fill rooms with the sound of reggae. He was also a major fan of pop music, Britney Spears and NSYNC included. Her brother, with whom she shared a room, was a grime MC who recorded all the sets he loved on the radio. As such, Tailor has a real breadth to her deejaying and look, both underscored with an authentic, Eastend grit gleaned from her Newham upbringing.

Cutting her teeth at university parties, nights in Shoreditch and on music platform, Keep Hush, she developed an innate inability to mould herself to any crowd. ​“I’m realising how all those sounds from my youth informed my taste. My tagline is that I’m ​‘genre-less at heart’. All I can promise is that it will be high energy and very bassy,” she says. Her predilection for non-nonsense outfits mirrors this, taking cues from varied subcultures across time and merging them together for ensembles like today’s: a black racer moto jacket and leather skirt (very noughties) paired with Adidas Sambas (mod meets blokette).

Tailor’s had plenty of fun being an unpredictable tastemaker in the metropolis, fascinated and driven by its nuanced style tribes. ​“Have you heard that if your Air Forces are dirty, it means you’re rich?” she laughs. ​“That’s part of the aesthetic.” As a lover of trainers, though, she always keeps hers clean, matching them with a wardrobe of dark shades that fit the ​“grimy” sounds of her sets. Unsurprisingly, she’s big on understated colourways. Think blacked-out Nike Air Terra Humara SPs and Cleens Aero Runners in onyx.

This clear vision has taken her on an international journey. Tailor is pinching herself: she just played to a crowd of 230,000 people in Switzerland, sharing a lineup with Burna Boy and Sean Paul at Paléo festival. ​“Everyone was screaming afterwards, and I was just thinking, ​‘Wow, did that just happen?’ I cried afterwards,” she says. ​“My social numbers aren’t huge, but someone had seen my work and chosen me, and the crowd was so receptive. It feels incredible how Black women are taking up space in the scene.”