Who are the 5 Indie brands featured in Charli xcx’s SS26 video? The coronation of the emerging designers’ ultimate muse
Charli xcx, after a teasing campaign that quickly captured fans’ attention, has finally released the official video for Spring Summer 2026. With SS26, directed by the duo Torso, the singer transforms the runway into a meta-fashion experience where catwalk, backstage, and celebrity culture merge into a single visual flow. Even the title itself references the codified grammar of the fashion system, Spring/Summer 2026, evoking the obsessive calendar of the global fashion weeks and, according to many fans, subtly nodding to Sex and the City and the episode “The Real Me” (2001).
The video does not merely borrow the aesthetics of fashion shows: it fully inhabits them, bringing together key figures from the industry such as Carine Roitfeld, Anthony Vaccarello, Michel Gaubert, Lucien Pagès, Loïc Prigent, and many others. Styled by Chris Horan and Angelina Arena, the videoclip intertwines designers already connected to Charli’s aesthetic with new emerging names, further confirming her role as a contemporary muse for the fashion system. After all, the words that open the video, spoken by Carine Roitfeld, immediately establish its manifesto: «Fashion won’t save us. But let’s go on the runway and walk».
Benjamin Barron & Bror August Vestbø of August Barron
Among the featured brands is the creative duo behind August Barron, Bror August Vestbø and Benjamin Barron. Finalists for the LVMH Prize, the two designers have built an imaginary world that reinterprets existing garments and feminine archetypes: suspended somewhere between pop culture and celebrity, their subjects become familiar yet impossible-to-place figures, true contemporary chimeras, of which Charli xcx herself is part. Originally launched as a magazine in 2015 before evolving into a label in 2019, August Barron continues to move fluidly between publishing and fashion, constantly placing garments and storytelling in dialogue.
The Archive X Yana
Although not a fashion label in the strict sense, The Archive X Yana also appears in the video. Specializing in archival fashion, the platform has become a major point of reference within the fashion system in recent years. Its archive includes an extensive selection of vintage runway pieces by names such as John Galliano for Dior, Tom Ford for Gucci, Vivienne Westwood, Martin Margiela, and Jean Paul Gaultier. In this context, The Archive X Yana’s presence is far from accidental, as the project operates as a curatorial machine capable of reactivating iconic moments in contemporary fashion through music videos, red carpets, and campaigns, aligning perfectly with both the vision and history of the British singer.
Javier Guijarro
Among the emerging names, Javier Guijarro stands out as one of the most interesting voices in contemporary Spanish fashion at only twenty-four years old. After dressing artists such as Bad Gyal and Karol G, Guijarro entered Charli’s visual universe during the SWEAT tour with Troye Sivan in 2025, also creating the artist’s dress for last year’s MET Gala after-party. His work reinterprets the codes of menswear tailoring through a more fluid and generational sensibility, while maintaining a spontaneous attitude that feels deeply coherent with the singer’s imagery and aesthetic, further consolidating their creative partnership.
Lou de Bètoly
Lou de Bètoly is the brand founded by French designer Odély Teboul, who creates couture-like pieces through upcycling practices and local craftsmanship by assembling buttons, lingerie, yarns, and reclaimed materials, deforming bourgeois codes into something deliberately eccentric and unsettling. An aesthetic already embraced by figures such as Dua Lipa, Rosalía, and Beyoncé. It is no coincidence that Chris Horan selected the brand’s pieces to dress Charli, including for the Berlin International Film Festival last February. For SS26, the brand’s distinctive blend of elegance and excess, fragility and chaos fits naturally within the artist’s new disillusioned poetics.
Daniil Antsiferov
The video also features Daniil Antsiferov, a designer known for his romantic and theatrical silhouettes built through corsetry, draping, ruching, and deconstructed dresses that seem suspended between couture and stage costume. Founded in 2009, the brand develops a deeply melodramatic imagery in which femininity is exaggerated to the point of becoming almost performative: fragile, artificial, sensual, and intentionally excessive. His collections draw equally from aristocratic and decadent aesthetics as well as the language of contemporary fetish and glamour, creating figures that seem to emerge from a post-romantic theatre. A sensibility that mirrors Charli xcx’s new aesthetic, increasingly oriented toward a dimension that is hyper-aware, theatrical, and glamorous.