Perhaps of all the industries that have blood on their hands for being a bane to the environment, fashion remains at the top of the list (neck and neck with tech, pharmaceuticals and weapons manufacturing). Yet unlike other industries that get more flak for the damage they cause, the so-called glamor of the fashion world continues to beguile millions of people every year. The millions who can’t resist buying something they know is going to probably end up in Chile’s Atacama Desert. One way or another. The hypnotic—nay, blinding-to-reality—effect of fashion made itself further known earlier this month when the Met Gala was still dissected with the kind of reverence that surely ought not be given to something backed by a fast fashion-promoting empire like Amazon. And then there was the fact that The Devil Wears Prada 2 came out, indicating an enduring fascination with the “cunty” nature of old guard “institutions” like Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) a.k.a. Anna Wintour.
Charli XCX is aware of all of this, herself increasingly enmeshed in le monde du haute couture, favoring designers like Yves Saint Laurent, Vivienne Westwood, Balenciaga and Givenchy for her own wardrobe. And so, the more she herself has become a “style icon” (particularly post-Brat), the more she’s become aware of being “part of the problem.” Such is the nature of her well-known zest for analyzing her relationship to pop stardom. With fashion and its shameless promotion being a key aspect of that job title. XCX, being hyper-aware (in addition to making hyperpop) of where she fits into “the culture,” confronts her relationship with that industry head-on via “SS26,” her latest single to follow “Rock Music” and “I Keep Thinking Bout You Every Day and Every Night.” Like the sound of the former track, there is a noticeable rock tinge to this one, co-produced yet again by Finn Keane and A. G. Cook. But it also has the “stripped-back,” “slow jam” feel of the latter. Both elements combining to provide an overall tone that is yet another marked departure from Brat.
Directed by Torso (who also brought Angels the angsty airport visuals for “von dutch”), the accompanying video opens with some fast, “high-energy” moments designed to immediately put the viewer in the mindset of being at a fashion show. More to the point, an haute couture show. And since all the best, most exclusive ones take place in Paris, it’s only right that Charli XCX should decide to commence the video with former Vogue Paris editor-in-chief Carine Roitfeld telling the audience, “La mode ne pas nous sauver. But let’s go on the runway and walk.” In its way, that phrase is tantamount to, “Let us eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.” Thus, Roitfeld is setting the tone for the “bleakness” (a.k.a. unabashed straightforwardness) of what “SS26” is about to address. And that is: some hard truths. Starting with the first verse, “Spring, summer ‘26/When the world is gonna end, no hope for any of it/Yeah, we’re walking on a runway that goes straight to Hell/Nothing’s gonna save us, not music, fashion or film.” Yes, talk about blunt.
And yet, one has to admire XCX for being that direct, since, evidently, the message still isn’t getting through to people. That message being: “We’re fucked.” Something that MARINA also tried to convey in 2022 via “Pink Convertible,” a track that appears on the deluxe edition of Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land. As nihilistic and self-aware as “SS26,” MARINA also uses her position as a pop star (therefore, a position that puts her in the same echelon as the proverbial rich) to acknowledge that Earth (and all who dwell on it) is going to hell in a handbag precisely because of these capitalistic predilections. But hopefully, Capitalism offers, it will go to hell in a designer handbag.
Speaking of handbags, MARINA mentions one in her own little take on the post-apocalypse (brought on as a direct result of the rich) when she lullingly sings, “Don’t fear the apocalypse ‘cause we’ll survive/Handbag shopping on Rodeo Drive/Believing Armani will keep us alive [and he himself was still alive at the time of this song’s release]/I just wanna forget/How fucked up is our planet.” Which is exactly why people numb out on things as frivolous and environmentally-damaging as fashion. With XCX herself acknowledging something similar to MARINA with the “SS26” lyric, “Yeah, I think I’ll be alright if I look good in the clothes.” This blasé form of admitting to being an asshole is, in both songs’ cases, part of their “self-awareness.” Itself being a commentary on how people who think that just because they’re “self-aware,” they deserve a pass for their hypocrisy. Not to mention their contributions to decimating the Earth, one purchase at a time.
As for Charli doubling down on doing, well, whatever the fuck she wants artistically, in the aftermath—that’s right, aftermath—of “Rock Music,” she started to go on the defensive based on the reactions she was getting to that particular song. Not only likening it to the same kind of backlash she got after releasing the Vroom Vroom EP (now considered “visionary”), but also tweeting, “I’m not trying to repel people away or convince people into liking me. I’m doing what I feel is truthful to me. I think existing as a human being in 2026 is really hard for a multitude of different reasons. My solace is art but sometimes that doesn’t even really feel safe in this day and age.” Hence, part of the theme of “SS26” lending itself to putting a spotlight on cancel culture as Charli reflects, “Can’t believe the things I’ve done, I don’t do them now/But I didn’t do it/Even if I did/No it’s not my fault, I wasn’t there.” Here, too, she’s poking fun at the “celebrities should be held to a different standard” perspective (which celebrities themselves have more than anyone else). Not to mention the celebrity tendency, at present, to think only in terms of what’s “trending,” what’s “chic”—not what is actually calling to them from an artistic standpoint. Therefore, totally violating the David Bowie adage, “Never play to the gallery.”
Mocking the way that all the art forms have pivoted entirely away from that philosophy, Charli sings, “Think my politics could work as a press strategy/And my heritage could give me quite the USP [that’s “unique selling point,” for those who don’t think in such terms]/Can’t hide the fact I’d rather take the easy road.” Of course, anyone who has observed XCX’s career trajectory knows that isn’t the case at all. And this latest “era” is just another example of that. For she could have easily done a Brat II type of album and had plenty of unrefuted success with it. But by being as raw and “gloomy” as she is on “SS26,” Charli reminds that she’s stayed in this game because, as she also put it via a tweet, “I can only ever make what feels true to me. I’m not thinking about anything else while I’m making it. Not reception or audience or anything else. Just my connection with it and whether it feels honest to me.”
That surely must be a genuine statement since it didn’t seem to occur to her that “SS26” could easily have MARINA pulling another “That FROOT looks familiar” stunt. For it was she who first so bitingly (yet chirpily) pointed out on “Pink Convertible,” “We’re so fucking blind, praying we’ll be fine/We keep laughing all the time, driving in the sunshine/Sorry to the flowers and the trees/And the fish poisoned in the seven seas/The private jet looks cool on the ‘Gram/Forty pairs of Nikes, you’re the man/Leave me alone with my luck and money/And I don’t wanna know that it’s a time bomb, honey.”
MARINA doesn’t hold back in the same way that Charli doesn’t (this perhaps one of the few blessings of being British), further expounding on human selfishness and unavoidable doom with the verse, “Let them eat cake and keep our engines running/Not even Marie Antoinette could see the end was coming/We party harder when there’s no tomorrow/The time has come to hell, but now we’re all falling like dominoes.”
That’s the visual that Charli evokes with her fashion show-set video. And yes, there are moments when its satirical style echoes some of what Madonna was trying to do with the original version of her “American Life” video (incidentally, M recently appeared to shade Charli’s dance floor “takedown” lyric on “Rock Music”—which came right as Madonna is about to release her dance-heavy Confessions II—by captioning one of her photos with, “If your dance floor feels dead, maybe you’re playing the wrong music”). Charli’s love of all things meta intensifies as the video goes on, for she presents herself as both fashion show observer and model (playing many of them at once as the various “Model Charlis” walk the runway at the same time in different looks), indicating that she feels somehow complicit on all sides of the culpability equation.
At the one-minute-thirty-nine-second mark, Charli seems to unwittingly allude to Carrie Bradshaw’s runway fate in the season four episode of Sex and the City, “The Real Me.” For, she, too, succumbs to tripping over her heels, prompting Stanford Blatch (Willie Garson) to famously note, “Oh my God, she’s fashion roadkill!” The same goes for XCX, who lies there on the runway with far more resignation and far less mortification than Carrie did (for why should anything be embarrassing when nothing matters?). She then goes back to referencing cancel culture with the “who me?” lyrics, “I was hacked/It got taken out of context, obviously/But I didn’t do it/Even if I did it/Wrote a really good Notes app apology.” It’s around the utterance of the last line that Torso cuts to a scene of Charli backstage sipping from a can of Poppi (after all, she’s not done shilling for the brand just because the Super Bowl ended). After which, the backstage/dressing room area starts to burst into flames. Because, in case anyone forgot, “Spring, summer ‘26/When the world is gonna end, no hope for any of it.”
Not only that, but “we’re walking on a runway that goes straight to Hell.” Something that Charli and Torso highlight when models start walking to the end of the runway only to fall into a black pit that likely leads straight there. And as the last Model Charli is about to make her way to the edge, a blinding white light appears, blotting her out so that the viewer doesn’t get to see if she “takes the plunge.” Was it a nuclear blast? An angel descending from the heavens to “spare” her? Probably the former. In any event, it certainly has more substance to it than Lady Gaga and Doechii’s “Runway” video.
Buy The Brat of Pop (Volume 1) here.
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