Daniela Lalita

Daniela Lalita ; born 1992 as Daniela Czenstochowski; is a Peruvian musician, model, and artist. Around the age of 19, she moved to the United States to study apparel design at the Rhode Island School of Design and did several internships in the fashion industry. She debuted as a model at New York Fashion Week in 2015, then collaborated with Givenchy and Yves Saint Laurent while appearing in international runway shows, magazines, and advertising campaigns.
In 2015, Lalita began studying music technology at New York University, where she was mentored by electronic music composer Morton Subotnick. Between 2016 and 2019, she released electronic music tracks on SoundCloud, performed as a DJ, and worked as a performance artist on interdisciplinary projects combining fashion, theater, film, and music. Her work frequently incorporates symbolic and psychological themes.
In 2022, she released her debut EP, Trececerotres, which entered the UK Physical Singles Top 100. Music videos were produced for all tracks; Lalita designed the costumes and directed several of the videos. The song "Tenía Razón" was featured on the soundtrack of FIFA 23. Since 2023, she has collaborated with Mura Masa and Ashnikko and has performed at international music festivals.

WWW danielalalita.com

Early life

Daniela Czenstochowski was born in 1992 in Lima, Peru, to Peruvian architect and former actress Pilar Secada and Venezuelan singer-songwriter and producer Ilan Chester. She grew up with her grandmother and mother in Lima.
From the ages of five to ten, Czenstochowski worked as a voice-over artist for television commercials and appeared in stage productions. As a child, she learned to play the piano and took ballet lessons until she was thirteen. Her mother played in several reggae and fusion bands, including as a chorist in La Liga del Sueño, and often took Czenstochowski along on these occasions which had a formative influence on her from an early age. Her father, a devoted follower of the Hare Krishna movement, introduced her to meditative kirtan chanting, a spiritual practice rooted in the voice.

Career

2010–2015: Design studies

Around the age of 19, Lalita relocated from Lima to the United States to study apparel design at the Rhode Island School of Design. After graduating in 2014, she moved to Manhattan, New York. There, she interned with Sarah Gore-Reeves, the fashion director of Vogue México y Latinoamérica, and learned about the editorial side of the industry. She subsequently worked as a consultant for the fashion brand Eckhaus Latta, assisting in garment production and pattern development. In 2015, she collaborated with fashion designer Titi Guiulfo. Due to her growing interest in music, she applied her knowledge of fashion design to the creation of costumes for performances and music videos.

2014–2018: Interest in music

After completing her design studies, Lalita went to the NYU Steinhardt where she studied music technology. Her mentor was Morton Subotnick, a pioneer of electronic music who collaborated with engineer Don Buchla on one of the first analog synthesizers, which Buchla built to Subotnick's specifications. The modular synthesizer, which was named "Buchla" after him, is used by Lalita for her recordings.
She recorded her first track, "hmp", in 2014 and released it on SoundCloud in September 2016. The track was later used by director Lena Greene for the commercial work Beauty Papers Magazine X Comme Des Garçons X Ilan Rubin. In the following years, Lalita issued additional electronic music singles on the same platform and occasionally performed as a DJ.

2015–2018: Experiences with film and performance art

In June 2015, Lalita narrated the episode "Daniela & Francesco" in the TV series R.I.P., which was written and directed by Lena Greene and Lorraine Nicholson. For both directors, Lalita collaborated with Coco Campbell to design costumes for a stop-motion animated music video trilogy released in November 2015 for producer and DJ Tommy Trash. In August 2016, she participated in the Selkie Series with Ser Serpas and Gia Garison under the name "Swarovski Crystal Meth." This was a performance series curated by Alexandra Marzell at the National Sawdust in Brooklyn, presenting multidisciplinary works by emerging artists. Lalita composed music for the piece. In October 2016, she participated in a puppet show in Brooklyn alongside artists such as Rochelle Goldberg, Jacky Connolly, Ficus Interfaith, and Martine Fougeron and curated by Shelby Jackson and Paul Gondry. A puppet created by Lalita was later exhibited at the "Living Content Live" event, which was curated by Adriana Blidaru at Times Square, New York, in October 2018.
In October 2017, she presented Madre: A Disruptive Environment in New York, a multimedia performance piece developed in collaboration with choreographer Remy Maelen. She stated that she created this project to combine what she had learnt in apparel design with what she was currently learning in music technology. In Madre, she explores themes related to the archetypes of the "Great Mother", inspired by the work of Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung. Lalita invited artists, actors, and models such as Grace Hartzel, Carly Mark, Martine Gutierrez, Sasha Frolova, Lida Fox, along with her mother to take part in this work combining elements of fashion, film, theater, music, and visual art.
In December 2017, she starred in the horror short film "Know Nothing", directed by Carly Mark. The film and photographs of her art performance Madre were part of the exhibition Vanquished by the Fickle Goddess, curated by Antonia Marsh and shown in Venice from February to March 2018.

2019–2022: Guest appearances

Lalita appeared as a guest artist in several songs released between 2019 and 2021: The single "AS Acá" by deconstructed club artist duo Amnesia Scanner, the song "AS Tearless" on their album Tearless with composition and lyrics by Lalita, and the song "Premium Defects" by Fakethias, which opened a viral film for the fashion house Mugler. She opened for Caroline Polachek at the Warsaw club in Brooklyn in January 2020 and, in June 2022, appeared at the Sónar festival in Barcelona, supported by Amnesia Scanner.

2022–2023: Debut EP ''Trececerotres''

Lalita worked for five years on her debut EP Trececerotres, and released it on the label Young on September 16, 2022. The Spanish title is a reference to the apartment 1303 in Lima, where she lived with her mother and grandmother before moving to New York. The EP entered the UK Physical Singles Top 100 and received positive reviews, appearing on several year-end best-of lists for 2022. In critical reception, the work has frequently been associated with spirituality. Numéro described it as magical and melancholic, calling it "as bewitching as it is frightening." Lalita herself added:
The album was mastered by Joe LaPorta at Sterling Sound. The single "Tenía Razón", co-produced by Sega Bodega, was part of the influential FIFA 23 soundtrack. Lalita directed the music video for the song herself, released in July 2022. She also directed the music videos for two other songs on the EP: "Pisoteo", choreographed by Lourdes Leon and released in September 2022, and the title track "Trececerotres", which was released in February 2023.

2023–present: Further collaborations and album preparation

Lalita was featured on the deep house singles "Drugs" and "Love" by Mura Masa. The first song also appeared on Mura Masa's album Curve 1, released in August 2024. Clash described it as "the perfect platform for Daniela Lalita's vocal, with the rising Peruvian figure – and Young label affiliate – supplying some finesse." The video in which she plays the leading role was named one of the six best creative music videos of 2023 by 1.4, an international annual award platform for creative short films. In July 2023, she performed her first live set at the Labirinto della Masone during the LOST Music Festival in Italy.
In August 2023, the song "Sacrifices for the Greater Good" by Bobby Krlic, featuring Lalita, was part of the soundtrack of the movie "Blue Beetle". In the same month, she co-wrote two songs on Ashnikko's album Weedkiller, appearing as a featured vocalist on "Super Soaker" and producing "Possession of a Weapon".
In February 2024, she was featured on Meth Math's experimental reggaetón album Chupetones with the song "Trenzas". Two months later, Tristán!'s Music EP was released, which features her on the art pop song "Pinky Ring". He is part of the Spanish label and collective Rusia-IDK, which Lalita contacted to work primarily as producers on her next album. In an interview with Mixmag in November 2024, Mura Masa said that he was also working on it as a producer. In September 2025, Lalita performed a song during the DJ set of Mietze Conte at the Market Hotel in Brooklyn.

Artistry

Musical style

Daniela Lalita's musical style has been described by critics as a fusion of several genres, including folktronica, art pop, experimental electronic, avant-pop, electroacoustic, industrial, and experimental folk. It blends energetic club beats and pop elements, avoiding traditional verse-chorus structures, and is influenced by labels like PC Music and NUXXE, whose co-founder Sega Bodega co-produced Lalita's single "Tenía Razón".

Influences

In an interview with fashion magazine i-D, Lalita explained that she was influenced by "Carl Jung, allegories of all kind, Hildegard von Bingen, Morton Subotnick, Clive Barker, Amnesia Scanner, Aphex Twin, and most Warp records from the 90's." She also mentioned in an interview with Dazed that Carl Jung had a major influence on her, especially his concept of the archetype of the "Great Mother". In composing her own songs, she was inspired by Smithsonian Folkways recordings of ritual chants from the UNESCO album Ritual Chant and Music. She also states that she feels deeply rooted in Peru through the songs of her mother and grandmother from her childhood.

Modeling

Parallel to her artistic and musical development, Lalita has been modeling since 2015. During her design studies at Rhode Island School of Design, Lalita completed an internship at the fashion label VFiles. Two years later, in September 2015, she began her modeling career for the company at the Spring/Summer 2016 show during New York Fashion Week. She was photographed for the Peruvian brand MARÍA and had shoots for American Apparel, CANDY magazine, and The Cut. In August 2016, she was one of three models, along with Richie Shazam and Eloisa Santos, in the FW16 debut campaign film, which was filmed inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the New York label Músed.
In September 2017, Lalita was part of the Eckhaus Latta SS18 show. A year later, she was cast by designer Raul Solis alongside Carly Mark for the SS19 show of his label LRS at NYFW. For this show, Lalita created a psychedelic DJ mix to accompany the collection musically. In addition to using her own music during a fashion show, she also incorporated elements of performance art into her runway fashion presentation at SS20 London Fashion Week in September 2019. Since then, she has increasingly focused on music as her primary form of artistic expression, while continuing to draw on her background in fashion design, film, and performance art, particularly in the creation of her music videos.
She has appeared at events such as the MTV Video Music Awards in September 2021, Paris Fashion Week in March and June 2022, London Fashion Week in September 2023, and Berlin Fashion Week in July 2025, where she appeared as an entertainer for the Berlin-based label Ottolinger. She worked with fashion house Givenchy in 2022 and appeared in a campaign film for Yves Saint Laurent in February 2023. In September 2023, she appeared on the cover of 10 Magazine's Fall/Winter issue in a portrait by Peruvian photographer Mariano Vivanco. Cosmopolitan features her in an article about the fashion colors of 2024.