“We always play with contrasts,” Charli XCX’s stylist Chris Horan told me, back when she was on the cusp of brattish world domination. In the spring of 2024, he was breaking down Charli’s “smart, bitchy, hot, scary” style codes. That singular, two-fingers-up approach to fashion that involved ripping up a The Row tee to wear to a rave, or flinging a vintage YSL leather jacket in a club booth and not stopping to wonder if it would still be there later. Now, as Charli steps into a new era as an actor, Horan has shifted away from their “hotpants + hoodie” club kid origins. She’s no longer just pop’s hottest export, she’s the young Hollywoodite with Tinseltown in the palm of her hand. The grit is hidden behind the gowns.
For Charli’s first Golden Globes, there was only ever one brand in contention: Saint Laurent. (Having clocked that the party girl was doing wonderful things for their leathers by dragging them around town, the house signed her as an ambassador for spring 2026.) Now, the juxtapositions that are so key to Charli’s style DNA manifest in Anthony Vaccarello’s current athleisure-meets-lingerie looks. By all accounts, Charli lives in windbreakers and teddies. But for the Globes, the team went deeper into the archive to achieve that special tension.
Horan, who praises Vaccarello’s team (“they want ideas, so we gave them our dream wishlist”), blended two YSL references to create the ultimate red-carpet look for Charli XCX, the actor. The first: an exquisite little black feathered top from look 60 in spring 2019’s collection, inspired, in part, by Yves Saint Laurent’s 1972 costumes for pop idol and girl-about-town Sylvie Vartan (see the parallels?) The second: a fall 1982 black and white classic column gown The New York Times said at the time was “nothing revolutionary,” but nonetheless cheerful in the face of a drab economic outlook (again, parallels!) “The look is very classic actress, but has a little bit of a twist,” shares Horan, touching upon their desire to feel more “polished, streamlined” for Charli’s next step. “It feels like the same girl—it marries both her worlds.”
With Sundance Festival—which will host the world premiere of The Moment, Charli xcx’s mockumentary—on the horizon, Horan promises real divadom on the red carpet is in sight. But for now, they are leaning into their genuine fandom for YSL—the label that was once a moodboard fixation for a young Essex music fan who only recently, she admits, got to grips with Fashion with a capital F. It works for this chapter. Charli—who is also mapping out the press tour for Wuthering Heights, Emerald Fennell’s much-anticipated period piece for which she provided the soundtrack—is honing a different type of creativity (we’re yet to see a glimpse of her on screen in The Gallerist, Faces of Death, and I Want Your Sex). Her Golden Globes dress, as critic Bernadine Morris said back in The New York Times in the early ’80s, is not “revolutionary.” Nor is her path from singer to screen star, but none of that matters. It is still Charli XCX’s world, and Chris Horan is dressing her for it.