Miley Cyrus keeps dress from first date with ex Liam Hemsworth, citing sentiment and privacy
In a Vogue interview, Cyrus says she won’t part with the dress she wore on her first date with Liam Hemsworth and is building a ‘legacy rack’ of looks from each era as she evolves.
Miley Cyrus has no plans to part with the dress she wore on her first date with Liam Hemsworth, she told Vogue in a new interview. The singer said she keeps the item — along with letters and other mementos from their relationship — as part of a broader effort to savor meaningful moments from her life, even as some moments became public.
"I literally have a dress that I had on when I met my ex-husband, and then I have my dress that I wore on our first date," Cyrus told Vogue in the interview published Wednesday. "Along with letters and things that I really, I want to savor these kind of beautiful moments of my life, but because these intimate moments have also been public moments, it’s a little bit tough to decide what piece I want to share and what I would ever allow to be seen." She described finding the items while "deep in the inventory and organization" of her life and said she is building a legacy rack — a collection of looks from every era she would want to be remembered for.
"Everything I do in my life is a little bit intense, but it has to be holistic," she said. "And that’s why my eras, they’re not a costume, they’re actually like a metamorphosis or a true evolution for me personally."
The interview arrives as Cyrus and Hemsworth’s long history — including an on-again, off-again romance, a 2012 engagement, a postponed 2013 wedding, a 2019 split, and a 2018-2020 marriage that ended in divorce — continues to be revisited in public discourse and in Cyrus’s work. The couple first met in 2009 on the set of The Last Song, and their relationship spanned years of shared projects, two engagement cycles, and a public arc that included both reconciliation and separation.
After reconciling in 2016, Cyrus and Hemsworth married in December 2018. A year later, Cyrus announced their split and Hemsworth filed for divorce. A representative said at the time that, despite the separation, the exes remained dedicated parents to their animals and were pursuing their own paths: "Ever-evolving, changing as partners and individuals, they have decided this is what’s best while they both focus on themselves and careers. They still remain dedicated parents to all of their animals they share while lovingly taking this time apart. Please respect their process and privacy."
The public chapter of the split continued to unfold in Cyrus’s own words. On the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, she described the divorce as something that "f—king sucked," emphasizing that the pain stemmed from the realization that the romance had changed, not from a lack of care for who they had been together. She added that accepting the end is different from accepting the villainization that sometimes followed.
Cyrus has since moved on with drummer Maxx Morando, whom she began dating in 2021. Photographs of the pair in New York City appeared in 2025 coverage and underscored her progression into a new phase of life, one centered on music, creativity, and personal growth rather than public drama.
Liam Hemsworth has also moved forward. He recently announced his engagement to model Gabriella Brooks, sharing pictures of the moment on Instagram. The newly engaged couple’s post emphasized a private celebration now made public in a different light, as Hemsworth steps into a fresh chapter with a partner he has chosen after the decade-plus arc with Cyrus.
Cyrus has reflected on the era that ended with her marriage, pointing to pivotal life moments that coincided with major performances. In a 2019 clip from her Used to Be Young series on TikTok, she recalled the Glastonbury Festival performance in 2019 as a turning point — a moment when the love she and Hemsworth shared began to shift toward separate futures. She described Glastonbury as a place where the decision about their marriage crystallized, explaining that the musical peak coincided with an emotional reckoning rooted in long history and shared trauma, including the loss of their Malibu home in the Woolsey Fire in November 2018. The couple had been trying to rebuild in the wake of the disaster, a context Cyrus says complicated their relationship and contributed to the decision that their marriage no longer worked.
That sense of evolution also shapes how Cyrus frames her current life and artistry. She has spoken about how her eras are not costumes but stages of growth — a narrative she is actively curating through projects, performances, and personal artifacts. The idea of a legacy rack is a tangible extension of that philosophy: a curated, accessible archive of looks, moments, and memories that reflect who she has become and who she hopes to become.
The public life that surrounds her personal history has clearly shaped her approach to sharing. In Vogue, Cyrus suggested that some parts of life are worth preserving for only her, a stance that acknowledges both the value of memory and the realities of living under scrutiny. As she moves through a period of continued musical output and public touring, she remains focused on balancing creative transformation with privacy and personal well-being.
Her reflections come as Cyrus continues to navigate a life in which intimate moments have repeatedly intersected with the public gaze. The dress from her first date with Hemsworth stands as a symbol of that tension: a reminder that meaningful artifacts can be private, even as the life they are tied to remains a subject of broader cultural conversation. The singer’s broader project — a life and career built around authenticity, reinvention, and a careful curation of memory — suggests that her personal legacy may be less about what is shared publicly and more about what she preserves for herself.
As Cyrus advances in her ongoing relationship with Morando and Hemsworth advances toward a new partnership with Brooks, the idea of personal artifacts as living history appears to be a central theme: a way to honor past chapters while continuing to evolve. In the end, Cyrus’s philosophy appears to be less about clinging to a moment than about honoring the process of growth and the human moments that shape it.
In the broader arc of Culture & Entertainment, Cyrus’s remarks underscore a familiar truth about celebrity life: artifacts — whether a dress, a letter, or a note from a beloved partner — can hold both intimate meaning and public resonance, prompting questions about what deserves a permanent place in a person’s evolving narrative. Cyrus’s emphasis on holistic self-definition and the idea of eras as metamorphosis rather than costumes offer a lens through which fans and observers alike can understand her evolving career and personal story.
The fashion-and-memory dynamic also raises questions about how stars manage memorabilia as royalties of fame. Cyrus’s approach — preserving the private alongside the public, building a curated archive, and allowing life’s most personal moments to inform but not overwhelm her artistic trajectory — suggests a model for navigating culture’s appetite for personal history while preserving the autonomy to shape that history on one’s own terms.
As Cyrus continues to balance a demanding performance schedule with private life and public scrutiny, her remarks offer a snapshot of an artist who views memory less as nostalgia and more as a living guide to future creative decisions. The dress from that first date may remain out of sight for now, but it stands as a symbol of a larger principle she has embraced: to honor the past without letting it dictate the present or the future.
