Capsule #59 ft. Nicola Morgan

Hello hello,

Welcome to the new era AKA our new font. Unlike my beloved Courier, it’s actually super easy to read. Thank you for sharing your thoughts last week!

If I had a pound for every time someone had said to me “when will you write about Brat” I might have around four pounds. That’s enough to make me do a lot of things. And “is Brat summer over” has been a big debate this week — below I explain why people have splintered off into different camps. Love to hear your thoughts as ever.

Stylist Nicola Morgan is also here for the Hot & Not!

Have a great weekend,

Holly x

P.s. if your email gets clipped, especially in Gmail, click ‘read online’ in the top right corner. 👆

Charli xcx’s BRAT has been out in full for seven weeks, but the marketing campaign started six months earlier. In that time, we have seen:

• January 25th: Charli tweets: “everything i do is an extension of my art”

• January 29th: Charli returns by sharing some “marketing ideas” from her team

• January 30th: Charli papped while driving with the roof down listening to ‘Von dutch’

• February sometime: The Brat generator is made and shared to Reddit

• February 22nd: A record-breaking, sold out Boiler Room show in New York, with appearances from Addison Rae and Julia Fox

• April 3rd: Charli releases ‘Club classics / B2b’

• May 2nd: Charli tweets the address of the Brat wall

• May 10th: The release of the ‘360’ video, starring Julia Fox, Chloë Sevigny, Emma Chamberlain, Rachel Sennott, Hari Nef, and Gabbriette

• June 6th: On the Sidetracked podcast, Charli defines Brat summer as “a pack of cigs, a Bic lighter and a strappy white top with no bra”

• June 7th: BRAT is released. Charli goes to an album signing in a Brat mobile

• June 11th: Matty Healy and Gabbriette announce their engagement at a Brat show in Brooklyn

• June 14th: BRAT debuts at #2 on the UK albums charts. Fans are mad at Taylor Swift for taking the top spot with another iteration of TTPD. TikTok creator Kelley Heyer makes a dance to ‘Apple’

• June 21st: The Lorde remix of ‘Girl, so confusing’ drops

• June 22nd: Charli tweets a link to the Brat generator

• July 12th: A surprise Ibiza Boiler Room and beach party complete with Brat towels, t-shirts, and temporary tattoos

• July 17th: We find out the “truth” behind the Lorde remix via a Billboard profile

• July 22nd: Charli endorses Kamala Harris

• …Which prompts mainstream news outlets to discuss Brat and publish articles titled “what is brat summer?”

By anyone’s measure, that’s a massive amount of marketing. And in recent weeks, sentiment towards the Brat campaign has split off into different camps, a lot of which can be explained by the general trajectory of how trends work.

The early adopters - the day one Charli fans, the club kids, those who feel alternative in some way - embraced all things Brat very early on. They understood the ugliness of the green, they don’t fear looking ‘ugly’ in general, they have been living messily in some way for years. The Brat lyrics codified existing behaviours and tied them together under one umbrella heading. Smart.

The early majority streamed the album intensely, loved it, and added songs to their Instagram Stories and TikToks. They welcomed a new ‘-summer’ label, and thought, actually, yes, I do need to have more fun. This period was about 2-3 weeks, and peaked at Glastonbury — just about the time it would take even the quickest brands to sign off on some quick and dirty marketing efforts. Which leads us to…

The late majority: corporates using the Brat generator to create LinkedIn posts, fashion magazines and brands publishing roundups of green clothing, and the many SEO articles answering the Google search query: What is brat summer?. People think the Kamala stuff killed the vibe but we’d already started to slip before then, which is completely normal, and expected when something is growing so rapidly in popularity. The Adidas Samba lifecycle followed a similar pattern - Rishi Sunak didn’t kill them, but was a great figurehead of the late majority/laggard.

@katespade

Green, the official color of brat summer 💚 #katespadeny #bratsummer

It’s okay to read this and feel like it’s all a bit exhausting. It kind of is! Will life be a never ending cycle of watching trends peak and fall, ad infinitum? The answer to that is probably yes, especially when they make so much money - for record labels, for streaming companies, for the social apps, for media, for e-commerce everywhere. Just look at the Barbie movie last year…

But there is a silver lining, which lies in the fact that the Brat campaign feels pretty detached from BRAT the album. The songs are undeniable, explicitly for women who feel conflicted about ageing and continuing to have fun, wondering when to graduate from all-nighters to motherhood, not knowing if doing so will unlock life’s true purpose. The mass adoption comes nowhere near these themes, and as many people have noted, it’s unlikely that Harris HQ have cross-checked the lyrics to ‘365.’

As a kid growing up and watching X-Factor, learning about Beatlemania and about the history of music via MTV, there was always such a huge focus for UK artists on “breaking America”. Charli set her ambition from the start, hosting her Boiler Room in New York rather than London, choosing Brooklyn for the Brat wall, and casting (largely) American stars for the 360 video. The Kamala campaign is obviously the icing on the cake, but so is the top trending Charli xcx question via Google search a couple of weeks ago: “Is Charli XCX from Essex?”. She’s really made it.

I’ll leave us with a quote from Kyle Raymond Fitzpatrick, who writes the Trend Report newsletter:

Maybe this whole process has solidified a new normal. The mainstream is no longer squeaky clean, baby pink, girl bossy and brimming with affirmations. These days mainstream looks more like spiky silver jewellery, brazenness, blurry pictures taken with a flash. And it’s everywhere.

Further reading:

• How lore became pop’s hottest summer accessory, The Face 

• Brat Summer: The art of topping from the bottom, Gabrielle newsletter

• Brat Summer: Is the long era of clean living finally over?, The Guardian

• Charli XCX: The Anatomy Of A (3-D) Female Pop Star, Rolling Stone

Next up…

Maybe because summer (in the UK at least) has been a little subpar so far this year, I’ve been picking up on style inspiration that’s usually saved for September a bit early. One core thing I keep seeing: a blue Oxford shirt. First spotted on Zendaya and Reneé Rapp, a day apart:

And then this week on Rihanna, in a video for Savage X Fenty and Puma.

These kind of mid summer temperatures are perfect for shirt wearing, especially with skirts and no tights, and worn open. Let this be your invitation to see the next disappointing forecast as a pre-Fall preppy moment. Here’s how that might come to life:

Links: Shirt (Massimo Dutti), bandeau top (M&S), bermuda shorts (& Other Stories), belt (Nohow), bag (Free People), necklace (Free People), sandals (Dr Martens).

And finally…

News from the Capsule universe this week:

• Hailey Bieber spoke to W magazine about preparing for motherhood, building rhode, and her marriage. The photos are divine

• Peak ballet sneaker: the Sandy Liang x Salomon collab has arrived 

• Here’s a first look at Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan in the trailer for A Complete Unknown

• There was a very questionable red carpet for Deadpool and Wolverine 😬 

• Lyst’s Hottest Brands of Q2 is here - see who came top

• Always be marketing: this video of Kylie Jenner and Stassie eating cookies wasn’t just for fun - the Kylie Cosmetics x Crumbl cookies collab just dropped

• And last night was the “Prelude” to the Olympics Opening Ceremony in Paris (aka a fancy event at the Fondation Louis Vuitton. See the red carpet here

This week, Nicola Morgan popped into Capsule to share what’s 🔥hot🔥 and what’s not 🙅‍♀️ …

Nicola is a freelance stylist based in south east London. She also works in fashion as a new business executive for a key retailer. She’s always looking out for new independent brands and vintage sellers and loves being able to give creatives a platform. In her words: fashion is really about expressing yourself and just having fun along the way!

📺 Watching: The video to ‘Angel Of My Dreams’ by JADE (as in Jade Thirwall of Little Mix). This is the best LM solo song so far imo. Watch it once, then cross-check this thread of all the hidden pop culture references.

Also look out the the Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony which is later today! Rumoured appearances: Ariana Grande, Lady Gaga, Dua Lipa, Sabrina Carpenter, and loads more.

📖 Reading: This piece by Rachel Connolly about her silent retreat.

And if you enjoyed Tavi Gevinson’s satirical zine, Fan Fiction, you will enjoy reading her blog of all the bits that got cut out (less writing, more visual references that bring us into her years-long creative process). And if haven’t read the zine yet, you definitely should!

🎧 Listening to: ‘Aftertaste,’ Katie Gavin’s debut solo single, ‘Angel Of My Dreams (FOR THE CLUB),’ the club remix of that JADE song, ‘Mess’ by Marley Chaney, and Big Ideas, the new Remi Wolf album.

Bug is enjoying summer just like the rest of us. And she’s here to deliver news that won’t surprise you but may inspire you: red nail polish is falling in popularity while white is on the up. This is a classic summer shift, and if you needed a push to get white nails at your next mani before the autumn leaves are upon us, this is your sign.

If you’d like to adopt Bug or one of her friends, click here to learn more.

Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear how you’re finding Capsule - let me know here. And if you have a friend who might like it, please forward on 🥺

See you next week 💋