October 31 is mere days away and ‘Charli xcx Halloween Costume’ is trending. ‘Wait, are you kidding?’ the singer says to ELLE. ‘I love that.’
Come the weekend, it’s easy to imagine the bars along east London’s Kingsland Road swarming with partygoers in leather mini-shorts, fishnet tights and Y2K-style sunglasses. But the look isn’t necessarily reserved for Gay Christmas. At once a pop star, cinephile, actor and it-girl, Charli xcx is also an undisputed style icon, with an approach to dressing that is equal parts gritty, sexy and nonchalant. That sensibility is a welcome antithesis to the ‘clean girl’ aesthetic that has defined pop culture in recent years, making room for a messier, darker kind of glamour: one that feels just as at home in custom Saint Laurent as it does in designs by an emerging fashion graduate or second-hand Donna Karan.
‘I’m going as Maggie Gyllenhaal in [the 2002 film] Secretary, where she’s in that arm clamp bondage situation,’ Charli says of her own Halloween costume. ‘Or, me and my friend Aidan [Zamiri, the photographer and filmmaker] might do a double costume where we’re just ‘French’: that comes with an accent, a beret and a baguette. That’s the low-lift option’.
Charli speaks to me via video call ahead of her final show of the North American leg of her Music, Fashion, Film tour: a 12-date solo arena run that saw her perform her thrilling eighth studio album with a live band and backup dancers, welcome guests like Chappell Roan, Tinashe and Underscores, and show off a string of rather spectacular outfits. After cancelling her Arizona date due to illness, she’ll return to the stage tonight [October 23] to perform in Las Vegas. This evening’s ensemble? A Roberto Cavalli minidress sourced on Vinted – one of several pre-loved items from tour that feature in a new collaboration with the second-hand shopping platform. From November 13, fans will be able to shop some of Charli’s favourite pieces through Vinted, with all proceeds going to Rainbow Railroad, a charity that helps at-risk LGBTQI+ people around the world reach safety through emergency travel support and other assistance.
Brand collaborations have become something of a self-conscious meme for the singer: from sipping Aperol Spritz on stage during her Lido festival headline slot to featuring a Brat-green credit card for the fictional Howard Stirling Bank in her A24 mockumentary, The Moment. And while some partnerships have prompted the odd eyebrow raise – alongside a healthy amount of ‘get that bag, girl’ – this venture feels genuinely on-brand, given her record of championing rewear and pre-loved fashion. Eagle-eyed fans will know that her sultry look for the LA premiere of The Moment was a reworking of the custom Jean Paul Gaultier corset she wore to the 2025 Grammys, for example. She even rewore that Vivienne Westwood dress (the one she wore to marry George Daniel at Hackney Town Hall in 2025) in the music video for her single ‘Rock Music’, meanwhile the cream ruffled Saint Laurent minidress worn for her wedding after-party was restyled after wearing it for a live performance in Paris with the electronic duo, Air, the month prior.
‘My approach to my wardrobe is the opposite of, “Oh my God, if I’ve worn that once and been seen in it, I’m not wearing it again”,’ Charli says. ‘I really don’t feel that way. I want my clothes to have a life and I want my clothes to change with me as I grow and wear them to different places. I like items that feel adaptable, and a lot of things in my wardrobe inherently are’.
It’s an approach championed by her stylist, Chris Horan, who has worked with Charli since her Crash era in 2022. ‘That was a little more… character-y,’ Horan says. ‘Versus now, where Charli has a really strong sense of style.’ For Music, Fashion, Film, Horan built on the sophisticated club rat aesthetic cemented in Brat, but elevated it with bolder silhouettes, sleek tailoring and a more monochromatic palette, all while making an effort to source pieces second-hand: from a ruffled blouse styled with a heavy stack of industrial-gothic necklaces, to a black Christian Audigier tunic embellished with rhinestone angel wings that Charli wore for the second weekend of Austin City Limits festival (‘I call my fans angels, so it makes sense,’ she says).
‘We see the same looks every season on the runway,’ Horan says. ‘When you find that good pre-loved piece, you know no one else is going to be wearing it’. Charli agrees: ‘I like that you get to inherit this item that has this whole other history to it,’ she says. ‘It always gets me thinking: where is it from? Who wore it before? Sometimes it can be creepy when you think about that stuff, but sometimes it’s really beautiful, especially when you shop these completely unknown brands. You’re like, who the hell is this baby Italian designer, or non-designer, from the 90s or early 2000s? What is this story?’ That, and the smugness you get when someone asks where it’s from. ‘Exactly,’ she says.
Charli’s favourite second-hand shops span Feathers in Texas, Aralda Vintage in LA, Lara Koleji in New York, the Instagram account Diesel Slave and the boutique MSSY on London’s Bethnal Green Road, which is where she found some of her most-prized leather jackets. ‘I think I probably have, like, 25 leather jackets,’ Charli says. ‘During the Music, Fashion, Film, album cycle, I got really into stand-collar jackets. Now I have one in mint green, white, yellow, baby pink: I love all of them. I also always steal Chris’s. One time I stole his from a party, thinking it was genuinely mine, put it in my wardrobe and didn’t wear it for six months. When I got it out again, his entire wallet was in the pocket: ID, credit cards, everything.’
Charli’s approach to her tour wardrobe is to wear clothes she’d wear ‘in real life’, rather than dressing like a ‘pop star’. ‘That groundedness is really important,’ she says. As a result, the pieces in her Vinted drop are similarly versatile: there’s ripped-up Ann Demeulemeester tees, low-waisted Revice jeans, a custom silver blazer from Zadig & Voltaire and itty-bitty hot pants from 7 For All Mankind. There’s a T-shirt that says ‘I heart A.P.C’, another that says ‘The Moment’; there are Balmain leather trousers, a haired frogging jacket by London designer Olly Dye, a top from Berlin label Sia Arkina and a particularly amazing pink Acne Studios dress.
The selection process, Charli admits, was painful. Were there any pieces that were too challenging to part with? ‘To be honest, every single one,’ she says, laughing. ‘When we were going through [the clothes], Chris would hold up an item, and I’d be like, “Noooo, not that one!”
‘Just the other day I was going through my wardrobe at home, which had a bunch of items I was wearing on the Brat tour and some custom Acne pieces. I’ve parted ways with them, which is really sad.’ After a pause, she adds: ‘But I also think it’s nice that it’s sad, because these pieces are really meaningful. And it will be meaningful for somebody else to get to wear them and for them to have this whole other life.’
Charli XCX’s collection is available to buy on Vinted from 13 November 2026.
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Chiara Wilkinson is the Deputy Multiplatform Editor of ELLE UK, looking after the Culture + Life section on the website. She was previously Deputy Editor at Time Out and Senior Digital Editor at ArtReview and has written for British Vogue, The Guardian and Vice, covering arts, culture, wellness and travel. Chiara was named one of PPA’s 30 Under 30 awards and was shortlisted for Best Features Writer at the BSME awards.
