In the kingdom of Troye Sivan

A Friday morning in London’s Soho, and shoppers are stealing furtive glances at a figure walking discreetly down Dean Street. With his easy gait and unbranded black sunglasses, he could be an off-duty actor, dancer or musician. In fact, the 30-year-old Australian pop star and queer icon Troye Sivan is all of these things.

Sivan is as elfin and amenable in person as he appears in his music videos: cherubic cheeks, trademark curls, a slight jitter. As Australia’s biggest pop export perhaps since Kylie, his music has enjoyed more than 26 billion streams worldwide. His 2023 single “Rush” won him song of the year at the Apra Music Awards; “Got Me Started”, his synthy take on a club track, from the same album, was proclaimed a summer anthem of that year. He has acting credits in Sam Levinson’s series The Idol and DreamWorks’ Trolls franchise. “I get to do what I love,” he says, chewing cheerfully on a piece of gum. 

Today, Sivan is in London to support his growing lifestyle empire, Tsu Lange Yor (a Yiddish phrase that translates as “to long years and to good years”). Its genesis came about in 2021 after Sivan gave an online tour of his Melbourne home — a former 19th-century handball court full of plants and midcentury furniture — to Architectural Digest. The video, which has more than 10 million views, took in Sivan’s most treasured possessions, including Isamu Noguchi lamps, a ’70s Percival Lafer sofa and a Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran sculpture with spiky hair and, in Sivan’s words, “a huge penis”. 

Back then, the Perth native — who came to fame in the vlogging heyday of the 2010s, first with cover songs, later with confessional clips about his life — was mostly known for his music. He’d released two albums to critical acclaim, was beloved by both Gen Z and the queer community, and had collaborated with Ariana Grande and Charli XCX. The house tour revealed something even more extraordinary: the then 25-year-old pop star actually had good taste. And his fans wanted a piece of it. “I was like, ‘Oh … people seem to be interested in this,’” says Sivan. “Maybe it can be something I pursue in a greater way than just for myself.” He set up meetings with a view to channelling his aesthetic into product, but all routes led to “white labelling” — pre-made merchandise onto which Sivan would just stamp his name. In 2023, he took a different route with Tsu Lange Yor.

The fragrance and lifestyle brand follows similar launches such as Frank Ocean’s Homer jewellery line and Harry Styles’s Pleasing. Each capture the essence of their creators without placing them front and centre. “Tsu Lange Yor gets to be everything I wanted,” he says. It currently encompasses homewares including textiles and decorative objects — anything that Sivan thinks “is cool”. Troye’s older brother Steele, a former intellectual property lawyer, handles the business side. “I touch every single creative point,” says Sivan. “It’s Australian-owned; we make everything in Australia. And we work with talent that deserves to be uplifted — Australian talent, queer talent, women or just people I’m inspired by. I have total control, at least creatively.”

His latest project is a fragrance, Sage’s Rose, now available at Tsu Lange Yor’s new beauty counter at Space NK in the UK — which Sivan is in London to launch — as well as smaller boutiques across the world including Aedes, Ssense and Milan’s 10 Corso Como. The scent, which launched in Australia late last year, is the result of a collaboration with his younger sister, Sage Mellet, a 28-year-old beauty marketing manager and fledgling content creator. (Sivan, the third month in the Hebrew calendar, is Troye’s middle name.) Sitting in an upstairs booth at Soho House 76 Dean Street, the siblings share the same doe eyes and breezy nature. But while Sivan is packaged head-to-toe in leather, Mellet is more casual in a black cardigan that shows off a tiny heart-shaped tattoo on her collarbone.

Growing up in Perth as two of four siblings, Mellet and Sivan enjoyed a remote but happy childhood. Their mother, Laurelle (“an icon”, says Mellet) was a model with a background in musical theatre who became a modelling agent. Their father, Shaun, worked in real estate. “It’s the most isolated city in the world — like, actually,” says Sivan. “There’s amazing stuff that comes out of Perth, of course, but we are really isolated. I think that is in our psyche maybe — you’ve got to just do it yourself and give it a go.” Laurelle encouraged her children to express themselves creatively. “At the time, there was this little sense of embarrassment,” says Mellet. “She really encouraged me to wear crazy stockings and stuff [at] birthday parties; I just wanted to dress normally. But as I’ve got older, I’m like, ‘Oh my god, she inspired me so much.’”

“The ultimate cool girl,” says Sivan of his sister. “Think of a cool girl and you might think of somebody a little bit icy. That’s the complete opposite of Sage. She is kind — people really gravitate towards her — which is something that I find really alluring. The coolest and most confident thing you can be is warm.” 

A velvety floral fragrance, Sage’s Rose started life as a 10ml sample on Sivan’s kitchen table in Melbourne, where the two siblings were co-habiting until recently. It was part of a wider selection of sample scents developed in collaboration with Frank Voelkl, the nose behind Le Labo’s cult Santal 33. Mellet started wearing it while it was still in development. “I received so many compliments — like, every time I left the house,” she says. She begged her brother to launch it officially, a request that was ignored until Sivan came home from a business trip and complimented her fragrance. “Brother,” she told him. “It’s the scent.” 

The siblings continued tweaking it with Voelkl, making it “a bit musky, a bit sweet” with poppy and vetiver. “There’s that musk-candy kind of note as well,” says Sivan; it also contains patchouli and green notes of geranium. The final product has repeatedly sold out across Australia, where it’s stocked at Mecca, the country’s leading beauty store, with some stores running out within a few hours of restocking. Abigail Gwyther, fragrance buyer for Space NK, says of its first few weeks in the UK: “Sage’s Rose has been the fan favourite since launch.”

The celebrity beauty brand is a corner of the market now worth $8.7bn, predicted to potentially triple by 2033. “The days of ‘slap a name on it’ celebrity beauty are over,” says Rebecca Rom-Frank, a senior marketing strategist at trend-forecasting agency WGSN. “Younger consumers want products that align with their high standards for effectiveness and aesthetic sensibility.” Last year, Hailey Bieber’s brand Rhode sold for up to $1bn to Elf Beauty after turning over more than $200mn in a year — less than three years after its launch. Selena Gomez’s Rare Beauty is estimated to be worth $2.7bn. 

Asked where he will go next, Sivan pauses to straighten a wonky knife. He feels that the possibilities are without limit: “Because it’s the same feeling in my body. Acting in a TV show, making an album, creating a new fragrance… For me, the creative muscle gets worked the same way. It doesn’t feel like there is a ceiling on it because that’s part of the fun of it.” Ambition is a genetic marker in the family. “I’ll have conversations with other people in entertainment and I’m always fascinated [to hear] if they’re first-generation creatives,” says Sivan. “We aren’t, and the mentality of ‘this is possible’ was implanted in us from the beginning. [My mum] didn’t finish high school, which for some people might not be the best [example of a] role model. But, for us, it shattered all limitations.”

Having now attracted more than 167,000 followers on Instagram (Sivan has 15.5mn), Mellet is looking to her older brother for advice. “I’m getting so many brands approaching me, which is exciting but I’m nervous. You have to really make sure that you love the brand [you’re working with].” Sivan has told her that “what you say no to” can have a lot more value than what you say yes to. On a more practical level, he’s also helping her to do up her new home. When she moved out of their house without “even a fork” earlier this year, he took her fridge shopping and put up a shelf in the bathroom. “That’s the kind of stuff that’s getting us lit now,” he jokes. 

Meanwhile, Sivan’s third and latest album, Something to Give Each Other, has marked a new direction, encompassing more energetic riffs, ambitious dance routines — and lots of bottoms. He’s already in the process of recording a fourth, and hopes to make more music specifically for film and TV. Says Sivan: “If I wasn’t a musician I’d be working at a creative agency or something. My job is just to keep people interested.”