If I said that brat summer 2024 was well under way, your mind might well turn to all the riots roiling across the UK. Not our TikTok and Twitter addicts, however, our Gen Zs or millennials and so on, who will not associate the word “brat” for a second with spoilt children, or pot-bellied tattooed racists attempting to torch asylum hotels with flaming wheelie-bins. No.
Brat summer to anyone on social media means the singer Charli XCX, her lime green album — called Brat — smoking cigarettes rather than vapes, wearing the same dress every day, smudged mascara, unwashed hair, but over to the OG brat girl herself: “You’re that girl who is a bit messy and loves to party and maybe says dumb things sometimes,” Charli, pictured, told TikTok series Off the Record. She also told the BBC’s Nick Grimshaw that brat basics included “a pack of cigs, a Bic lighter and a strappy white top with no bra”.
