According to the Oxford dictionary, a brat is “a child, especially one that is badly behaved.” A glance at the eye-searing bright green of Charli XCX’s cover art for Brat , her Instagram feed or the raucous music video for ‘Von Dutch’ show the troublemaker aspect of the word. However, the brat as her album defines it is more than just a troublemaker.
She refers to someone who is unapologetically messy, yet honest and vulnerable about the tribulations of her inner psyche. In the beauty department, the brat girl doesn’t concern herself with maintaining a conventionally feminine appearance that appeals to men, nor is she content to mindlessly jump on bandwagons. Instead, she prefers to make bold statements with her beauty looks and create new trends in the process.
In other words, she’s a rejection of traditional glamour and a celebration of self-expression and imperfection in a world driven by fast-flowing internet trends and filters. No better encapsulation of this persona are the looks she’s sporting throughout the album rollout. With her strikingly minimalist make-up and hairstyles, her punk-rock approach hearkens back to 2000s indie sleaze in both aesthetic and mentality.
And with people coming back to the dance floor after a period of pandemic dormancy, Brat summer is no better time to get club-ready with Charli XCX’s Brat-tiest looks from this era. 1 / 5 Statement black eyeliner No indie sleaze adjacent eye look is complete without dramatic eyeliner. How.