The Sweat Tour, Charli XCX and Troye Sivan’s twofer pop extravaganza currently taking over our For You Pages—and arenas across the United States—has already had its fair share of breakout fashion moments. Troye has been delivering aughts pop-girl dance breaks in Collina Strada tank tops, Mugler corsets, and Willy Chavarria underwear, all styled with delicious gay brilliance by Marc Forné. Charli’s been twirling, jumping, and spitting on stage in Luar and Acne Studios, courtesy of Brat fashion architect Chris Horan. And Lorde turned up at Madison Square Garden, twinning with Charli in Saint Laurent.
But amidst the custom looks and the big or buzzy—and sometimes big and buzzy—labels, there’s also been an array of playful t-shirts: “Bloom for Troye,” read one worn by Charli; “twink death,” spelled another worn by Sivan. “They have so many inside jokes between them and the tour and fans themselves also do,” explained Lisa Sahakian, the founder of Ian Charms and the maker of these tees. “The whole idea is to just find things they’ve Tweeted at each other or said about each other or themselves and have fun.”
Charli’s brat era and the Sweat Tour have synthesized a high-low approach to style shared by a pocket of subversive, often chronically online, Gen Zers and younger Millennials. Sahakian has somehow found herself in the middle of this with her custom tees, memorializing the inside jokes stemming from this internet-fueled pop culture explosion.
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It was Horan who reached out to Sahakian to work together for the tour. “He’s been working with me since the beginning,” said the designer, who started her label in 2021, first as a custom jewelry project she did on the side while working full-time in reality TV. “I basically took that very pop culture humor element and applied it to the context of jewelry and now these projects,” Sahakian explained. Horan originally reached out about merch for the tour, but the project expanded into custom tees for the artists to wear onstage. This brand of sardonic self-deprecation is something Troy and Charli, together with their shared fandom, very much share, and it’s what Sahakian has materialized here. She turned Sivan’s hit “Bloom” into a tee advertising floral arrangements, and turned the “gay son or thot daughter” meme into a matching set. Some of these are also available as merch on Sahakian’s website for the very pointed price of $69.
Sahakian has made around 15 tees, some of which are yet to be worn onstage and will likely be seen this week as the Sweat Tour comes to a close. She found inspiration for the style in the playful tees worn by aughts It-girls, including Paris Hilton and Britney Spears (they remain our favorite references, baby). “This album is about having fun and not doing it the ‘normal’ way,” said Sahakian. “Charli and Troye are just on brand, confident but not too serious,” she continued, “brat and this tour are the biggest pop music moment I think we’ve seen in some time, and being a part of it is just really, really cool.”
