I am in the coat check closet of the Hotel Chelsea at the after-party for Charli XCX’s Times Square performance with H&M when I hear her distinctive Essex accent come through my speaker phone. “Hellooo!”
She’s on her way over to the event too, in a car, but there’s so much happening we decide to speak on the phone before she arrives. I feel a little funny, kneeling in the corner of a red-carpeted room trying to hear her as the party bumps in the near distance. But then again, is there anything more brat than a bit of chaos?
For years it felt like “quiet luxury” might never go away. But then Charli released Brat and everyone wanted to wear smudged eyeliner, black boots, and ripped tights. Her album, with its distinct party-girl aesthetic, helped usher in a new vibe, one that feels fun in an era where fun is desperately needed.
“I feel like we’re in this world where there’s so much pressure to uphold the standard of perfection, and it’s just not realistic,” she says. “I think when you see someone kind of embracing their flaws and being messy, you recognize a bit of yourself in that. You feel like it’s okay to be messy yourself.”
She goes on to add, “I really like it when I see people who embrace their wildness and make mistakes. I think there’s a charming-ness to screwing up. It feels more real. I feel like people could use that a little bit more.” And she’s right. They could and they did.
As for how she came to define the look for this era of her career, she says, “I wanted to keep everything quite minimal. I think that was really important. I think there’s an element of really stripping things back and just wearing the clothes that I would wear to go out to a party…having a wardrobe full of basics, like your favorite pair of sunglasses, your favorite white tank top, your favorite good black jacket you can wear at 5AM and some really good black boots.”
When I point out how black boots became an unexpected uniform for concertgoers at the Sweat Tour, she laughs. Somehow she has managed to claim both a color (slimey brat green) and a boot (tall, black, and sexy, with a little bitchy heel). “There were so many people who were dressed like Troye [Sivan] and so many people who were dressed like me. There’s also always a sea of green clothes…It’s just really fun that people who are coming to the shows feel like they want to go all out. And the effort that went into some of these outfits is really amazing. We really love the fans for doing that. Honestly, it’s so cool and cute.”
As for what she wears on stage, it doesn’t really deviate from what she wears in her day to day, which makes sense. To be Charli is to perfect the day-to-night look because she is always going from day to night, and she always, always ends up at the party.
“It’s very important for it to feel like clothes that I would actually wear. The wardrobe on stage is just my wardrobe—my favorite t-shirts, my favorite mini skirts, and some things designers custom-made for me that I can’t wait to wear in my life, you know?”
And she’s practical too. She’s into plenty of bags, but only as long as they can fit all of the essentials: “My sunglasses, headphones, lighter—those are my staples, I would say.” The only no-go is when a bag is “so small I can’t put my phone in it, I don’t like that at all. I like a big bag that I can throw a bunch of stuff into.”
Of course, what she wore to perform for a sea of thousands in Times Square was typical of her: a black dress with a high leg slit and a pair of her signature black sunglasses. Earlier this week, she went viral on X for performing on SNL with a bag tossed over her shoulder. But what would have felt awkward on anyone else felt right on her, because it’s not hard to imagine her tossing on a bag to hit the stage and then the club immediately after.
When I ask her what makes her feel most like herself, she says, “Definitely a pair of black sunglasses, like the H&M ones I was wearing to perform. With any outfit, I put on black sunglasses and then I feel like me.”
Sure enough, when I get off the phone and head back into the party, I look around and see a handful of guests in oversized black sunglasses and tall black boots. Someone close to me gasps and shrieks “I love her” as Charli enters the room to take her spot next to the DJ booth. With Anderson.Paak performing, she begins to dance.
And then something unexpected happens. People don’t lift up their phones to start to capture her. Instead, the room lets loose. People start to really dance, in the kind of uninhibited way usually reserved for late nights at a rave rather than a brand party on a Monday night. Clearly, there’s something about Charli XCX—by being utterly herself, she has the power to make people feel like they can be themselves, too.
Tara Gonzalez is the Senior Fashion Editor at Harper’s Bazaar. Previously, she was the style writer at InStyle, founding commerce editor at Glamour, and fashion editor at Coveteur.
