At the beginning of 2024, I approached Charli XCX as she was entering JW Anderson’s autumn/winter 2024 show to ask who she’d like to see on the next cover of this magazine. “Me,” she said, without even a moment’s hesitation. I had hoped that Charli would put herself forward. This is, after all, the same person who refers to herself as a “pop music genius” and themed an entire record around the word “brat” – a word that has within a fortnight become inseparable from the noxious green of its lo-fi album artwork.
In the tradition of Bottega Veneta’s Kelly green, Valentino’s PP pink and Gucci’s Ancora red, Charli XCX has taken complete ownership of a colour that is already an ambient presence in modern life. People online are beginning to see the musician in the most unexpected of places, including sticky notes, some avocado on the turn, traffic cones, Shrek and a cheap bathroom bin. And on second thoughts, was Zendaya’s press tour wardrobe for Challengers not a little bit Brat-coded? What about Chappell Roan performing as the Statue of Liberty at the Governors Ball? Or that green witch in Wicked and the Green Lady of Brooklyn? Brat green is now so firmly etched into the zeitgeist that I struggled to even watch Gucci, Prada’s and Martine Rose’s spring/summer 2025 men’s shows – which featured a handful of bright green coats and ink-splodged shirts – without my lips mouthing “bumping that…”
Prada SS25.
Martine Rose SS25.
Gucci SS25.
I suspect we will see a lot more of this emerge in September given how quickly fashion houses responded to Barbie pink in 2023. But what is it about this specific hue that sticks to the walls of the subconscious? Green is the most organic colour in the world – symbolic of happy things like growth and wellness and an abundant and peaceful life – but this one looks like mother nature’s graphic card had perhaps failed to load. Like the printers had run out of blue and left too yellow a tinge. It is a putrid inbetween. Not quite chartreuse, and not quite lime. It is the colour of toxic waste and infographic viruses and synthetic fruit flavourings and plastic astro-turf. “I wanted to go with an offensive, off-trend shade of green to trigger the idea of something being wrong,” Charli – who experimented with 65 colours before landing on the correct shade – explained in a recent profile with Vogue Singapore. “I’d like for us to question our expectations of pop culture. Why are some things considered good and acceptable, and some things deemed bad? I’m interested in the narratives behind that and I want to provoke people. I’m not doing things to be nice.”
Prada SS96.
Prada SS96.
Reading that reminded me of something Mrs Prada once said about her spring/summer 1996 collection – a perfect sludge of puke greens and browns – which is attributed to launching fashion’s fascination with anti-aesthetics. “Bad taste is part of our history, part of culture,” she explained. “But it’s scorned in the fashion industry. Sometimes fashion focuses on fixed, narrow and limited notions of beauty, luxury and glamour.” That there might be something beyond what is popular and palatable – and therefore most commercial – is something Charli has long toiled with. Her previous album Crash was her first to top the UK charts, probably because it lacked the mad logic of Pop 2 and Vroom Vroom. The songs on those records sound like hundreds of modems on the blink and yet you’ll want to listen on repeat. It’s a bit like how Brat green plants a lollipop of sick on the tongue and then melts to reveal a sweet apple chewing gum inside. And it’s a bit like Prada, which is not often attractive, but is always desirable. Charli said that she had been thinking about desire on this album, too.
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