Photo via @flowerovlove
At just 21 years old, flowerovlove (Joyce Cissé) has released her debut album, MINI SKIRT WARRIOR, and it feels like she has been preparing for this moment for years. She started writing songs with her brother at 15, went on to build a career in modelling and caught the attention of artists including Olivia Rodrigo and Halsey. Her rise has felt less like a sudden breakout than like watching someone slowly build the world she always knew she wanted to live in.
MINI SKIRT WARRIOR takes its name from the alter ego she created around one of her favourite wardrobe staples: the mini skirt. The name originally came from a comment on one of her Instagram Lives, but it stuck, eventually becoming the title of her debut album. The look has since become part of her armour: mini skirts, knee-high socks, platform shoes and her natural hair, all contributing to the instantly recognisable flowerovlove world.
But MINI SKIRT WARRIOR isn’t the whole story. There’s also the “thought daughter”, the part of flowerovlove who stares out of windows, overthinks everything, and finds beauty in the smallest moments. She describes herself as someone who romanticises everyday life, and it’s the contrast between these two sides that makes the album so compelling. She’s confident, but she’s also deeply introspective, sentimental and, at times, surprisingly vulnerable.
The album feels like a collision between those two identities. As she puts it, “This album is half Mini Skirt and half flowerovlove.” When she gets sad, and things get real, “that’s flowerovlove”; the “I’m your first bad bitch” energy belongs to Mini Skirt Warrior.
Photo via @flowerovlove
That duality runs throughout MINI SKIRT WARRIOR, which explores childhood, growing up, first loves, heartbreak and the process of figuring out who you actually are. Tracks like ‘KISS KISS KISS’ lean into those first-time experiences, while the softer moments allow her to look back at the person she was and the woman she’s becoming. The result is an album that captures that slightly strange stage of life where you can feel completely sure of yourself one minute and have absolutely no idea what you’re doing the next.
Perhaps the biggest change for flowerovlove on this album was allowing people to see beyond the confidence. She made a conscious decision to start writing about what was actually happening underneath the persona. “I gotta write about something real because it’s really been missing. I’ve been missing some substance in my music,” she shares.
She admits that she “never used to be a very vulnerable person whatsoever”, making the decision to write honestly about how she felt a “really, really big deal”. Much of her earlier music had been a form of “masking” her inner feelings, but MINI SKIRT WARRIOR became a space where those feelings could finally exist alongside the confidence. The armour could stay, but she no longer had to hide behind it.
That vulnerability doesn’t mean losing the character she’s created, though. If anything, it makes the world around flowerovlove feel more complete. She is intentional about how she presents herself, from the clothes she wears to the way her shows look. “I like a silhouette. People need to feel that familiarity,” she explains. “They need to be like, I know her. This, this is it. This is the world.” That world also has a pop-meets-disco feel, which comes through in both the music and the way she presents it.
It’s an interesting approach at a time when fans are increasingly dressing for concerts and becoming part of an artist’s aesthetic themselves. flowerovlove isn’t just giving people songs to listen to; she’s giving them a whole universe to step into.
That confidence in her own world has also created space for some pretty special collaborations. The track ‘girls will be girls’ features WILLOW, an artist flowerovlove has described as a dream collaboration. Even now, the feature still seems slightly surreal to her. “The WILLOW feature honestly still blows my mind, truly. Every time I see her, I’m just like, you’re not, like, real.”
The collaboration has brought her plenty of joy, but it has also opened her up to the idea that working with other people doesn’t mean compromising on honesty. If anything, it has given her another space to explore how she really feels, something that has become increasingly important to her throughout the making of this album.
Photo via @flowerovlove
Now that MINI SKIRT WARRIOR is out in the world, flowerovlove is also preparing to join Niall Horan on the UK and European leg of his Dinner Party Live On Tour. For someone who has openly admitted to being a major One Direction fan, it’s perhaps unsurprising that the reality still hasn’t completely sunk in. “I’m quite a nonchalant person,” she says, explaining that she doesn’t always let herself get excited until something is actually happening. But this tour has been in the works for a while. She and her manager had been “playing and manifesting it” for some time, telling each other, “we’re gonna make this happen. And it happened.”
It’s a fitting story for an artist who seems to have spent much of her career imagining things before making them real. flowerovlove knows exactly what she wants, but MINI SKIRT WARRIOR proves that she’s also becoming increasingly comfortable with showing what exists underneath that certainty.
She already knows who flowerovlove is. She knows who Mini Skirt Warrior is. But when I ask what comes next, there’s no small answer.
“To be as general as possible. World domination.”
Then, more softly: “Happiness for as many people as I can, even if it’s just for an hour.”