Charli xcx’s “SS26” Music Video Is a Who’s Who of the Fashion Industry

Reported by Vogue.

Fashion has its own version of the Oscars invite list — you don't announce it, you just know who got the call. For Charli xcx's new visual for "SS26", directed by the duo TORSO (Miodrag Manojlović and Lukas von Haller), that list reads less like a cast sheet and more like a seating chart for the most important dinner party in Paris. According to Vogue, the video is staged as a runway show, and if you can clock every face in it, congratulations — you've earned your industry card.

This isn't the first time Charli has weaponized casting as cultural currency. Her 2024 "360" video, the defining visual artifact of the Brat era, was a downtown roll call of internet royalty: Gabbriette, Alex Consani, Julia Fox, Rachel Sennott, Richie Shazam. It was maximalist and loud and completely intentional. "SS26" operates differently. The flex here is subtler — less "look who showed up to the party" and more "you'd have to already know the room."

The Insiders' Runway

The recognizable names are there as anchors: iconic editor Carine Roitfeld, supermodel Debra Shaw, Saint Laurent creative director Anthony Vaccarello — a natural fit given Charli was recently appointed YSL Beauty ambassador. But the real texture of the video lives in the industry infrastructure surrounding them. PR titan Lucien Pagès. Legendary runway sound architect Michel Gaubert (the man responsible for the sonic identity of Karl Lagerfeld's Chanel) alongside his partner Ryan Aguilar. Indie designers Benjamin Barron and Bror August Vestbø of August Barron, their own PR David Siwicki in tow.

Round out the "audience" and backstage crew and you've got a rolling index of fashion's operating class: Abra founder Abraham Ortuño Perez, Zadig & Voltaire creative director Dan Sablon, model-director Farida Khelfa, Supreme's Zac Ching, stylist-model Victoria Sekrier, producer Patrik Sandberg, filmmaker Loïc Prigent, creative consultant Nhu Duong (plus her baby, Deva, possibly fashion's youngest debut), and more. It's a video that rewards the obsessive — the kind of person who can identify a PR director by posture alone.

Charli xcx has figured out that in fashion, the most powerful flex isn't red carpet access — it's knowing exactly which behind-the-scenes people make the whole machine run, and putting them center frame.

Read the original at Vogue.