Entering the closet-size kosher diner B&H Dairy off of Saint Marks Place on a sweltering August afternoon, Becca Kauffman—otherwise known by her stage name Jennifer Vanilla—is easy to spot. Wearing a white T-shirt that says, “I’d Rather Be Jennifering,” her hair is cropped into a short bowl cut and dyed bleach blonde. Kauffman is a performer at heart: She reels off jokes in the old-timey voice of a ’40s movie actress, but within minutes of chatting, we move onto her creative process—at which point she begins speaking with the utmost care. She’s here, after all, to help me understand the link between her onstage persona as Jennifer, and as the artist Becca Kauffman.
Originally from Cambridge, Massachusetts, but now based in Ridgewood, Queens, Kauffman has spent her life deeply entrenched in the performing arts. As a child, she took dance classes, already picturing herself as an experimental artist living in the East Village. When she first graduated from college and relocated to New York a decade ago, Kauffman sang jazz standards at bars and participated in what she refers to as a “radical marching band.” Shortly afterward, she took her talents as a vocalist to Ava Luna—the Brooklyn art-rock ensemble known for, among other things, covering Serge Gainsbourg’s Histoire de Melody Nelson in full—and began writing music with the kind of intricate melodies that drop off seemingly in midair. But while on hiatus from the band in 2015, Kauffman revisited her early childhood dreams of becoming a performance artist, and Jennifer Vanilla began to take shape.
For Kauffman, Jennifer Vanilla became a multifarious object that allowed her to explore questions of gender, fashion, and the complexities of her own self-confidence. Jennifer Vanilla is a surrogate, or “a fake,” as Kauffman calls her. “I have to put her ahead of me to sort of clear the way, and then internally I’m making all these decisions in the moment, but through this sheen or presentation of total fluency and trust in herself,” she adds. This self-assuredness often comes from what she wears. In the past, that’s taken the form of clip-on, Ariana Grande–inspired ponytails and all-pink outfits, but Jennifer’s aesthetic has also gone down a Laurie Anderson–inspired route too. Think: Cheeto-orange hair, neon blue windbreakers, and silver bodysuits in the vein of the late noughties. Lately, however, Kauffman’s byzantine performance project has shifted, and these days Jennifer Vanilla can more often be found living backstage—metaphorically, anyway.
The change came during her second U.S. tour this past February. Kauffman notes that things began as usual: She arrived in Athens, Georgia, to headline a music festival that highlights solo artists. Then, like any artist touring the country alone, she befriended a group of students—they all had mullets, so she got one herself, marking the beginning of what Kauffman refers to as a “transformative hair journey.” As she moved across the country, her hair changed continuously. She dyed it red, then orange; later, she chopped it even shorter. By the time she returned to New York, she felt like a completely different person—and, more significantly, a different artist. “Usually, my ideas will dictate how my hair is going to change, but this time the hair changed and then dictated who I would become. The whole process had to shift as a result. I feel like there was Jennifer Vanilla before the hair and Jennifer Vanilla after,” says Kauffman.
Several haircuts and six months later, Kauffman has thought a lot about how she wants to evolve her act and her aesthetic. For starters, she’s moving away from pure performance art, and lately has opted to DJ during her sets. “The risk that I’m taking right now is learning how to DJ, and working that into my live set. [Jennifer sets are] becoming a little less performative, [and I’m] changing up [my audience’s] impression of who Jennifer is. I’m curious to find out what happens when I’m slightly more subdued,” she explains of the pivot. The result of this transitional phase is an EP titled J.E.N.N.I.F.E.R., which is a blend of techno-oriented production and Kauffman’s highly stylized and performative vocals. The first song, “Space Time Motion,” is out now along with an accompanying video that perfectly captures Kauffman’s offbeat style.
One thing that has remained constant is Kauffman’s one-of-a-kind merch. She makes T-shirts where the only parameter is that they must include the word Jennifer; to make the shirts, she’ll iron on letters individually and construct a phrase spontaneously. For custom orders, sometimes she’ll ask a little bit about the person who ordered. She almost never repeats a phrase, although when we chat she mentions that she’s making five T-shirts that say “100% Jennifer,” (long story short, the musician Jerry Paper wore a shirt with that phrase on it, then someone in the audience saw it and formed a band of the same name).
As for Kauffman’s personal style? She tells me her sartorial inspiration lies in the concept of the handsome woman: Kauffman doesn’t feel super comfortable in dresses and skirts, and prefers to err on the side of androgyny. “I’ve been somewhat liberated from the need to come across as accessibly feminine, without feeling as if I’ve failed in some way,” she adds. And even if her understanding of this alter ego has developed radically across the course of this year, it eventually comes back to her work as Jennifer Vanilla. For Kauffman as a DJ and a performer, it’s all about feeling free. By coming to terms with her own vulnerabilities, she’s finally able to make art that feels like an authentic extension of the self.
