H&M become the latest brand to dip their fingers into the slime green of Charlie XCX's Brat with a London Fashion Week takeover
Thought Brat summer was over? No silly, that b*tch is still yolo-ing her way around the Med! Despite every marketing department’s best efforts to sabotage all that toxic shade of green stands for, the original Brat girl, Charli XCX, is firing up that famous Bic lighter on a sunbed in a fabulous yet undisclosed location. Luckily, Vogue has her number.
Yesterday, after H&M wiped its socials, save for the date “12 September” backed by that lurid slime colour, Charli slid into our inbox to tell us, in the plainest of terms, that Brat would be gatecrashing London Fashion Week. To celebrate her H&M autumn/winter 2024 campaign, the singer convinced the high-street brand to let her stage a party with Jamie XX and Sherelle on the opening night of the spring/summer 2025 shows. For a city that often fails to attract the international guests of its counterparts, Charli has gifted London the ultimate golden ticket: fun!
“H&M has been so down and really let me do exactly what I want,” says the pop star with the world in the palm of her chipped-manicured hand. “It’s always cool to work with people who just want you to truly express yourself creatively. So many people say that, but very few mean it.” Charli’s non-negotiable? Her fans had to be invited – she will tease out details on how to rub shoulders with the industry’s great and good soon. (Expect a major VIP guest list lip-glossed and Marlborough-ed to high heaven, too).
For newcomers into Charli’s fold, who are only familiar with the give-a-f*ck star in her Givenchy, Mugler and Saint Laurent era, the H&M co-sign might seem incongruous with the dishevelled luxury look she and her stylist Chris Horan have leaned into for her latest album. But true Charliphiles (Charlie’s Angels to use her fandom’s official name) will know she’s always been a high-street girl at heart. As an outspoken Essex youngster convincing her parents to let her DJ at warehouse raves, pieces from H&M, alongside items scored from thrift and charity shops, were the only means she had to express herself. “Those clothes gave me an ownership of who I was and what I wanted to project outwardly,” she shares. “In some cases, those clothes gave me confidence. That time was really formative for me.”
H&M cites the AW24 campaign as a landmark moment to reignite the brand’s fashion spirit and double down on design details using elevated materials. Photo: Courtesy of H&M
Nowadays, when Charli pops into her local H&M to pick up the kind of jewellery that might end up scattered on the dancefloor as a delicious relic of a good time, she indulges herself when hearing the likes of “365” and older bangers, like “Boys” and “Boom Clap”, soundtracking customers’ days. “Some of my songs I just love so much, I can’t help but be super into them haha,” she messages. Unlike brands that have been quick to jump on the Brat bandwagon, H&M has been playing Charli’s strobe-lit pop since 2011, and she’s been a regular at the Studio events over the years, while throwing her support behind the collabs (Kenzo in 2016, Mugler in 2023) that chime with her gritty style evolution.
London Fashion Week’s launchpad celebration will see the outspoken performer, who straddles music’s mainstream and underground spheres in her signature knee-high boots, model a custom look riffing off the new sultry campaign. “Sometimes at those kind of events, there’s a lot of pressure to morph into someone you’re not,” asserts the 32-year-old, who stole the “epic” boots from set, and will also wear them to ground her Sweat tour looks as she makes her way across America with Troye Sivan later in September. “I feel really lucky to be wearing the things I’m wearing.” That plush faux leopard-print coat? Yours for £74.99 come the 12th.
Charli’s London event, for which she will tease out more details soon, will kick off a series of H&M celebrations and activations around Europe during the AW24 season. Photo: Courtesy of H&M
If legions of fans look to this cult classic for polished club-kid style inspiration, Charli herself has two women in mind when mapping out her wardrobe for the months ahead: Chloë Sevigny (duh) and Phoebe Philo. “They never put a foot wrong,” notes the artist, touching on her own fashion mishaps: “I mean, I used to wear mismatched shoes thinking it was cool – there are so many…” But for a scrappy influencer in her own right – who says “high-street fashion was the only fashion I knew for a really long time” – this high-low campaign (“the perfect balance of my personal taste”) marks a full-circle moment bringing Charli back to her roots, where catalogues sat on her coffee table at home, not Vogues. Will her metamorphosis continue when new music causes the internet to melt into a pool of her now-signature slime? “Possibly… probably... but I’m not there yet!”
Shop the AW24 collection in H&M stores worldwide and online at Hm.com from 12 September, and follow @charli_xcx and @hm for updates on the London event
Originally published on British Vogue