Charli XCX, Number 1 Angel, Also Loves Tinted Lenses
The songwriter swept the SESAC Pop Awards in a Jacquemus ensemble paired with Stella McCartney platforms and a pair of orange sunglasses.
Charli XCX is pop music’s resident iconoclast. After building a solid career on palatable pop hits — she was the engine behind the Icona Pop hit “I Love It” — she made a left-turn last year with the PC Music-produced Vroom Vroom EP. She’s been working steadily ever since, telling WWD that she prefers to release music quickly and frequently; among the collaborators she’s brought into her fold are Lil Yachty, with whom she recorded the harmless and playful “After the Afterparty” late last year, as well as many among the PC Music crew: Sophie, Hannah Diamond, A.G. Cook. Then, earlier this year, amid buzz of a new studio record, she dropped Number 1 Angel, an impromptu mixtape with assists from cult artists like Abra, MØ, the rapper Cupcakke, and Uffie.
But, being Charli XCX, perhaps the hardest-working pop star out there, a guerrilla mixtape isn’t sufficient: She then embarked on a world tour in support of the record, which brought her to New York earlier this week to play an intimate show at Le Poisson Rouge and then to accept not one, but two awards at the annual SESAC Pop Awards — Songwriter of the Year and Song of the Year for the Selena Gomez hit “Same Old Love.” (Incidentally, she won the same two awards back in 2014 for “I Love It.”) And just as her sound is constantly evolving, so too her style can never be pinned down. For her show on Wednesday night, she embraced her inner club kid in a slinky pair of silver shorts and a mesh crop top. And then, for the SESAC Awards on Thursday evening, it was head-to-toe Jacquemus.
Charli XCX in Jacquemus at the SESAC Pop Awards in New York, New York, April 2017.
Who: Charli XCX.
When: Thursday, April 13.
Where: The SESAC Pop Awards at Cipriani in New York, New York.
What: A top and pants by Jacquemus from the Spring 2017 collection with Stella McCartney silver platforms and orange-tinted sunglasses.
Why: Charli foregoes the straw hat with which the Jacquemus look originally showed, and pairs it instead with the silver platforms that Stella McCartney made so ubiquitous — a decidedly contemporary shift from the rustic look of Simon Porte Jacquemus’s runway show. Plus, no look this spring is complete without tinted lenses, so Charli’s got those, too.
W’s May cover star Gal Gadot was a very reluctant pageant queen when she won Miss Israel:
