WWDLD: What Would Dua Lipa Do?
Image Courtesy: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images
No need to lace up your running shoes. Instead, find your sexiest heel and dance your nights away. Albanian-born, London-raised pop star Dua Lipa has carried young women everywhere into a new realm of Euro-girl living. From endless holidays with girlfriends to finding love on her own terms, Dua Lipa seems to truly have it all.
But Lipa has also shared a perspective on love that starts with working through your “training season.” Oh, but what is training season, you ask? Well, let me give you the crash course to Lipa Level Living.
In February 2024, Lipa released her single “Training Season” in anticipation of her album Radical Optimism. The song is about leaving the season of your life where you have to train someone to treat you right. You want someone who already knows how to communicate, show up, make an effort and be a good partner. And sometimes, instead of spending your energy trying to make someone relationship-ready, you can use that season to become more ready for yourself.
The idea is simple: stop teaching someone how to love you and start learning how to love your own life.
During the summer of 2026, TikTok reimagined the song with the idea of praying and manifesting your own Dua lifestyle of love and fashion. Sitting on their knees and belting out the song, users turned “Training Season” into an allegiance to the mindset of loving yourself first and the rest will follow. As Lipa shared with ELLE in 2024, “When you know your worth, you know what you want and what you don’t want.”
So what can you do now to start living in this lavish world?
You must curate the world you want to see your best self living within. Use the time you have away from someone else to do the fun things alone. Times will come when you have to endure the hardest moments alone, and simply experiencing the most invigorating things by yourself can set you up for success. Sometimes, as humans, we confuse being alone and loneliness– two very different things. Differentiating them through your experiences of heartbreak and rebirth is important.
Another hack to Lipa-fying your life is to fall in love with your own voice. You are your biggest critic, first opinion and last opinion, and your most trusted friend. Learning to be in a season of singleness and maintaining a love for yourself that goes deeper than appearances will bring out the cool girl that you always wanted to be. Dua has spoken about the freeing parts of being single, so what is stopping you from experiencing this?
Now, one of the most important tools to launch your training season is becoming the smartest person in the room — slowly. Learn to love every lesson that comes with living life loudly. Morph into vibrancy, whether that is shown through your personality, food or choice of wear. Reading new books or discovering new music can fulfill the goal of becoming the best version of yourself in every room you step into.
Post the photos that make you happiest,share jokes that make you truly laugh, and spend your day tanning at the beach.These are all indicators that you are in a season of doing you. Every day, people scroll through their socials and see saturated markets for certain aesthetics. So let’s change the narrative: the best aesthetic out there is yourself.
Lipa did not get the attention of billions by following the leader. Rather, she carved herself into pop culture history by being iconically Dua. Since her La Vacanza Versace collaboration in 2023, she has let the world know that her vibrancy and uniqueness are not to be mistaken. Dua Lipa might be in Copenhagen enjoying her favorite wine bar, Pompette, or doing yoga on a paddleboard at sea. Each of these moments are what make her the most desired and loved off-duty model icon.
In the end, when you ask yourself, “What would Dua Lipa do?” just remember that the answer is simply:
WHATEVER THE HELL YOU FEEL LIKE DOING!
Strike Out,
Sofia Ortiz
Boca Raton
Sofia Ortiz is a South Florida writer and media student with a love for fashion, pop culture, travel and all things that make life a little more fun. Her writing explores modern womanhood, self-discovery and the culture shaping young women today. To contact Ms. Ortiz you may reach out to her email sofialortiz04@gmail.com or Instagram @Sofiaa_Laurenn .
