The Fashion Reign of Pop’s It Girls
To be, or not to be, a fashion pop girlie
As pop’s it girls blur the lines between music and fashion, it’s clear that reaching star status in 2024 means more than just dropping a hit — it’s about creating a moment, a movement, and a whole damn mood.
A TikTok video by @goosefraud, set to Charli XCX’s Club Classics, cheekily declared, “you can tell we’re spiralling into another recession because of how good pop music is getting again.” It racked up over 100,000 likes and 400,000 views in just a mere few days, and I can hazard a guess as to why.
We’re waving goodbye to sad girl pop, swapping out dulcet tones for something more frenetic. We want high-energy bangers, we want catchy hooks, and we want tunes that we can scream/laugh/cry along with at the top of our lungs. Mainstream pop has been trapped in a blandness bubble, and we’re finally escaping the beige and boring safe zone as we move toward new ground.
And who do we have to thank for this new sound, this new energy, this new poptastic mood? Well, that would be none other than pop music's new it girls.
From Charli XCX to Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter and Tinashe, these artists have the winning formula. It’s a mix of infectious party anthems and raw, emotional depth that’s ticking all the boxes. By being unapologetically themselves, these leading ladies are the 2024 mood.
After last year’s all-consuming Barbie pink mania, we’re craving something more textured, more layered — cultural moments with a bit more bite. These pop girlies are redefining femininity and girlhood in ways that don’t compete but complement. They are tapping into the pulse of what’s hot, what’s relevant, and what’s next. And to top it all off, the cherry on the cake is the fashion choices they’re making along the way.
The changing face of pop stardom
Katy Perry’s attempt at a comeback with Woman’s World did not sit right with me. And as it turns out, I’m not alone in this. There’s a reason Slate said the public is falling out of love with Perry, who they argue has led to the downfall of ‘poptimism’; but the biggest elephant in the room is the fact that the comeback single in question was produced by Dr Luke. The guy who Kesha filed a lawsuit against for sexual assault. The try-hardness of the comeback feels out of touch and irrelevant, and Perry has dropped off into obscurity since her 2008 I Kissed a Girl days.
This comes at a time when we, as a society, have moved past the era of perfectly packaged personas and expertly curated aesthetics in music. Today’s stars, particularly the pop girlies, are all about showing up as they are, mess and all. And we should be thanking them for it in leaps and spades.
It’s not that reigning icons such as Queen Bey and Swift have lost their sparkle. The figures speak for themselves: the Renaissance world tour reached 2,776,854 in ticket sales and the Eras Tour is expected to earn Swift more than $2 billion from ticket sales while overall revenue from the tour could surpass $4.1 billion… but who’s counting?
But as impactful as they are, and even though their combined follower count is astronomical, such female music icons have to keep up with a generation that is turning off filters and turning up to a new pop mood. When it comes to fashion, we’re going from play-it-safe outfits to the other end of the pop-meets-fashion girlie extreme.
Enter the aforementioned Charli XCX, Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter, and Tinashe. While the polished, untouchable pop star of yesteryear struggles to connect, pop’s new it girls are proving that anti-perfection personas are the new cultural currency.
Charli XCX
Charli XCX’s journey from Myspace teen discovery to pop powerhouse is something of a Cinderella story. Plucked from relative obscurity by a club promoter at just 16, the English songstress landed her first record deal in 2010. But her breakout moment didn’t come until 2012 when she featured on Icona Pop’s single I Love It, a track that launched her into the global spotlight. By 2014, she stepped into her own, co-writing and singing on Iggy Azalea’s hit Fancy and scoring her own top ten with Boom Clap.
Fast forward to 2022 and her fifth album Crash was pretty well received, followed by the high-octane single Speed Drive for Barbie the Album in 2023. But none of this has touched Brat summer and the meme-to-reality pipeline that followed. Charli’s sixth studio album, Brat, has turned into a full-blown global cultural movement, thanks in part to director Aidan Zamiri, who’s helmed videos like 360 and Guess, featuring Billie Eilish.
360 itself was a parade of it girls — takes one to know one — with appearances from Gabriette, Rachel Sennott, Hari Nef, Chloë Sevigny, Julia Fox and Alex Consani. Gags. Sure, Brat fatigue is now real, especially as brands raced to monetize its IDGAF spirit, but seeing the world catch up to Charli’s avant-pop street cred was worth it.
When we look back on summer 2024, I have no doubt we’ll recall it being lime green-tinged in memory as Charli’s comeback was splashed across everyone’s FYP, whether they liked it or not. From Kate Spade to Target, brands jumped on the trend, rolling out Brat Summer collections left and right. SKIMS was quick to tap the singer of the moment, with a campaign shot by Petra Collins had Charli posing in rain-soaked gardens and minimalist rooms, because this is what we all look like when lounging at home in our intimates.
But did Brat Summer walk so Brat Fall could run? As we shift into autumn, Charli’s reign continues. Kicking off London Fashion Week in true Brat fashion, XCX performed at H&M’s fall campaign launch in Stratford, draped in a charcoal dress and her signature fuck off wraparound sunglasses, a green banner waving behind her, obviously. The crowd, a mix of glittering VIPs like Naomi Campbell, Amelia Gray, Iris Law and Lila Moss, went wild for it.
Elsewhere in the fashion world, Marc Jacobs appointed Charli as President-elect of Hot Girls in an ad for ‘The Sack Bag’. Charli’s antics — climbing yellow chairs in a granny cardigan and lacy pants, with the Sack bag perched on top of her — were deliciously chaotic in their execution. With Alastair McKimm’s styling and Carin Backoff behind the lens, it was bound to be fashion gold.
Chappell Roan
Chappell Roan, aka your favourite artist’s favourite artist, started her career as a teenager uploading songs to YouTube before landing a deal with Atlantic Records at 17. But despite releasing an EP and singles co-written with Dan Nigro, Roan was dropped in 2020. Lost and label-less, she returned to Missouri and worked drive-thru jobs to make ends meet. But this was just a blip in the thing we call life for Roan. Nigro signed her to his Island Records imprint, Amusement, leading to the release of her 2023 album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, and we all know how well that’s doing. I bet Atlantic are kicking themselves in the gut right about now.
In 2024, Roan exploded onto the scene after a performance on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert. With a mane of untamed hair and smeared lipstick on her teeth, this was the antithesis of what we expect from a pop princess. And thank goodness for that. Roan is a visual feast whose style choices are as memorable as her talent. Her drag-inspired persona and over-the-top outlook are what keep people coming back for more. And Elton John is a fan, so, enough said?
Roan’s been stealing the spotlight this year, from opening for Olivia Rodrigo on the Guts tour to sets at Coachella and performances at the Governors Ball, where she dressed up as the Statue of Liberty. Iconic. Her raw talent and theatrical flair are exactly the anti-pop girl antidote we need in these trying times.
Roan is the queen of tackiness and larger-than-life-so-help-me-god aesthetic, with outfits ranging from ethereal fairies to couture villains and every possible maximalist ensemble you can think of. Its camp, it’s an ode to creative self-expression, and thanks to the references Roan and her stylist Genesis Webb pull from, Roan’s fashion universe challenges dominant notions of attractiveness.
Unable to escape the pop culture political discourse, when the Harris-Walz campaign released a camo hat eager beavers on the internet were quick to compare the design to Roan’s line of merch. This led to the internet doing what it does best, creating a meme of Walz’s photoshopped head on Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess album cover. Roan continues to exceed our fashionable expectations in unforeseen ways.
Let it be known that one thing Chappell Roan is not is a sellout. In a Rolling Stone interview, the starlet slammed H&M saying: “No, H&M does not fit in this world. Also, fuck H&M.” She’s not here to play by anyone else’s rules. If Roan is going to do a brand deal, it has to be right. And that’s something we can all learn a lesson from.
Sabrina Carpenter
Little miss pixie dust Sabrina Carpenter’s path to pop stardom has been anything but a Disney fairytale. She kicked things off by placing third in Miley Cyrus’s 2009 singing contest, The Next Miley Cyrus Project, but didn’t dive into music until 2014. Over the next few years, she dropped four studio albums - Eyes Wide Open (2015), EVOLution (2016), Singular: Act I (2018), and Singular: Act II (2019). But they didn't bring Carpenter to the fore in the way she would have hoped.
No biggie though, as all eyes are on Carpenter’s album Short n’ Sweet, which landed in August 2024, of which we have theatre-esque singles Espresso (which exceeded a billion streams on Spotify) and Please Please Please. The latter even scored her first number-one on the Hot 100, showing that Sabrina’s teen sitcom days are a thing of the past. Homegirl even had six VMA nominations and launched her own Erewhon smoothie, because duh?
These days, Carpenter serves and plates up a hyper-femme, IRL Polly Pocket doll-type vibe, and fans are eating it up. Whether she’s rocking her signature pastel looks or blending a little bit of sweetness with sass, Carpenter has found her place in pop’s upper echelons.
Her fashion impact in 2024 alone cannot be understated. And thanks to Vogue Business, we have an insight into the facts and figures. Sabrina’s SKIMS campaign landed in April 2024, generating $5.5 million in media impact value (MIV) in the first 48 hours. In May, Carpenter was one of many faces in Marc Jacobs’s ‘The Sack Bag’ campaign, starring alongside Gabbriette and Irina Shayk - but Carpenter received 13% more likes on average than anyone else. In June, the Gen Zer made her Men’s Fashion Week debut at the Louis Vuitton show, generating £1 million in MIV for the brand with a single Instagram post, and she also stopped by Loewe SS25, garnering $2 million in MIV and accounting for 11% of total brand coverage.
You thought Carpenter was done? Think again.
In July 2024 the pocket rocket made her runway debut for Vogue World in custom Jacquemus (drools), a moment that drove $9.6 million in MIV all without Carpenter posting it on her socials. And at the VMAs, Sabrina paid homage to Madonna in a glittering Bob Mackie gown that the Queen of Pop originally wore to the Oscars in 1991. The tiny-but-mighty singer is hyping up ultra-feminine fashion and taking girlhood-coded style into its next era.
Tinashe
Tinashe has been in the game for over a decade now, and she's one of those artists who won’t be pigeonholed or boxed into doing things one singular way.
Her 2014 debut album, Aquarius, featured the hit 2 On (I know you know this one), and it put her on the map as a rising pop meets R’n’B star. But it was her follow-up albums, Nightride and Joyride, that gave us range and creativity, even as she battled label drama and release delays that left fans frustrated.
By 2019, Tinashe decided to do things her way and went independent, dropping an album that not only won critical praise but also proved what her fans had been saying all along: Tinashe thrives when she’s calling the shots. Now, she’s back in a big way with Nasty, a hit that found TikTok fame and is set to lead her upcoming seventh album, Quantum Baby. Released just as she hit the stage at Coachella, Nasty cemented the fact that pop girl summer was back with a bang.
Urban Outfitters quickly capitalised on Tinashe’s viral moment, collaborating with the singer on a back-to-school shopping campaign with the help of Pinterest. The campaign in question, ‘Shift Happens’ invited Gen Zers to up their game when it comes to dorm room style, and lean into self-expression through decor. The singer also performed in a room she designed, ‘Freak Fort’, before making her way onto the main stage to celebrate the partnership. Love this for her.
Tinashe has been making waves, too, in other star-studded fashion arenas from a Christian Louboutin party to New York Fashion Week, where she wowed onlookers at Tommy Hilfiger’s nautical-themed show. Something tells me this isn’t the fashionable last we’ll see of her.
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