Adele: The singer has moved into the fashion spotlight

When Adele takes the stage at the Hollywood Bowl next Sunday alongside Etta James, it will be a dreamgirl moment. More than her stint at the famed BRIT School, the performing-arts breeding ground that also spawned Amy Winehouse, Adele credits her prodigious talent to the high priestess of soul, whose albums she listened to religiously in her bedroom as a teen.

But style, not song, first hooked Adele (born Adele Laurie Blue Adkins). At 13, she spotted an Etta James CD in a bargain bin at the HMV store in her native London. She had never heard of James but was instantly smitten. "Her blond weave and her catty eyes and her curves and her tight gold shimmery dresses, and just that attitude in her face and figure -- I was like, 'Oh my God, to die!' "

Replace the blond weave with a brushed-out beehive and the shimmery dress with a baggy "jumper," as she calls her oversize sweater, and Adele could easily be describing herself: a soul diva for the MySpace generation. Her figure, hair and liquid-lined eyes confer a retro swing that her dressed-down cool simultaneously refutes. When she thrusts out her hand to show off the 16-diamond Tiffany ring she gave herself for her recent 21st birthday, it's clear she's patrolling the border between streetwise girl and glamorous woman.

Lounging in the courtyard of the Greenwich Hotel in Manhattan, a far cry from her South London roots, Adele sips an espresso and drags on a Marlboro Light, exhibiting a poise that belies her years -- more Beyonce than Britney. That outsized confidence is matched by outsized features: down-pillow lips, gem-green eyes, flame-red mane, rosebud complexion, heart-shaped dimpled chin. She exaggerates nature with plenty of nurture. "Oh, I love looking like a drag queen," she gushes. "Hair back-combed beyond belief, eyelashes galore, heavy contour. And I love my big, square, ghetto nails."

Her body is also big, if we're talking fashion-world metrics. Adele says she weighs 11 stone (154 pounds) and wears a British size 14 (size 12 in the U.S.) Does she feel pressure to slim down? "I've been the same since I was 15 and went on the contraceptive pill. I've got this far without looking like Britney Spears. I think I can go a bit further," she says with a satirical bite worthy of Jay McInerney.