I was texting with a friend before meeting her at a bar on a Saturday night in early June. The night felt heady and special not because there was an occasion, like a birthday or goodbye party, but because it was the first truly hot night in New York City. Even before the official start of summer, the days are longer and the sun sets later. There’s a feeling that, after months of hibernation, people are more social. Work slows down and summer Fridays set in. Outfits are smaller and sexier.

There’s more of everything. More sweat. More trash. More color. More fun. More more. There’s an expectation that this finite heat is a pressure cooker of self-actualization, in which you can realize the best, boldest, or most brash version of yourself. Her last message to me before we met up: a hang-ten emoji and “SUMMER GALS.”

This sensation isn’t limited to New York City night owls, although trends tend to hit faster and harder in cities. Since Megan Thee Stallion first coined “hot girl summer” with her song by the same name in 2019, everyone—brands, influencers, ourselves—has bought into the idea of summer as its own kind of brand. As much as summer is a season, it’s also become an idea. And online, it’s a self-branding opportunity and engagement play. Right now, we’re in the dog days of both.

The broad aesthetic of this summer—across fashion, music, branding, design, and creative culture—has been nostalgic, personality-driven, expressive, and brashly colorful. New trendsetters with distinct points of view have emerged following the pandemic to set the summer social scene. Creatives are remixing old aesthetics for modern audiences by reaching back to styles of previous eras (which they may have been too young to participate in themselves) for inspiration.

The “vibe” of summer 2024, if you will, is the result of compounding circumstances that are themselves veritable vibe killers. There have been years of political anxiety, a volatile economy, rapid technological innovation, thanks to AI, and heated competition for eyeballs in a more-is-more online attention economy. Summer has always had an air of escapism, and this one is no exception. But that feeling is heightened right now as we’re seeing cultural stressors and a looming election collide with that perennial desire to be free and ignore the world and its trappings.

Taken together, all this is cooking creativity in a liminal world that feels both beautiful and dire. People want to have fun. Remember fun? As Kyle Cook iconically said on Bravo’s Summer House, “summer should be fun.”

WE’VE ALL BECOME A LITTLE BRATTY

This summer, we’ve seen fewer of the unrelenting TikTok microtrends of past years—i.e. #ratgirlsummer, #feralgirlsummer, #girldinner, #cottagecore, #coastalgrandma. It’s difficult to name even one consequential TikTok trend, aside from thee trend of the summer, though we are seeing some downstream effect from last year’s #tomatogirlsummer. People are catching on to the fact that many of these online hashtags are manufactured in the hopes of creating a coinage that will go viral. They are designed to garner faves rather than reflect real consumer behaviors.

Rather, only one online trend has broken through Summer 2024: it’s an amped up hot girl summer. I’m talking about #bratsummer, following the release of Charli XCX’s new album, Brat. The album’s art is incredibly simple. The title is set in Arial against a radioactive-green background, and nothing else. It’s not high design, but it is assertive and excellent. It brashly executed what the music conveys as a brand, which became shorthand for a way of living. Frankly, that move is so brat.

“This new Charli album, with the gays and the girls, has definitely set a whole tone for the beginning of summer. It set a whole aesthetic,” Brock Colyar told me back in June. Colyar is a features writer for New York magazine who pens its “are u coming?” newsletter, a chronicle of the social scene of New York’s movers, shakers, and trendsetters, and has been following the ascent of #brat and its varieties. “The music aside, people are glomming onto that as this big aesthetic beginning-of-summer trend, which tells me that people are looking for something to get excited about.”

Colyar’s prediction proved true—the hedonistic excitement has been inescapable. It’s also turned out to be incredible branding from a strategic sense because it’s so easy for fans to meme-ify and make their own. This has led to a trend with real legs. At the time of this writing, #bratsummer had a whopping 468.1M views on TikTok. The album achieved what marketers fantasize about: It became a cultural moment. Brat became an idea. You know it’s tapped into something culturally authentic when an online trend becomes a bonafide real life trend. It’s on T-shirts. Matcha. Walls. Lower backs. Campaign branding. In 2024, it’s macro-level personal identity.

THE CURRENT SUMMER CULTURE: AMPLIFYING OUR WORLD, OURSELVES

Brat has tapped into the current cultural mood and the perception of summer as a season in which you can live to the fullest, any way you want. This seems particularly true of this summer. “Last summer was a little calm. 2021, 2022 [were]so crazy. 2023 was a reset. And now, we’re all rested up, and 2024 is time to party again,” says Colyar. “Summer is kind of like exiting COVID every year. You’re coming out of your cocoon.”

There’s a high-low attitude at work during the summer too, which Charli XCX exemplifies. An interviewer asked Charli to describe “brat summer” and she explained: “It can go quite luxury, but also trashy. Just like a pack of cigs and a Bic lighter and like, a strappy white top with no bra. Like, that’s kind of all you need?” In a clip on TikTok, Charli says a brat “is just like that girl who is a little messy and likes to party, and maybe says some dumb things sometimes.” It’s someone who “feels herself, but then also maybe has a breakdown, but kind of like parties through it. Is very honest, is very blunt, a little bit volatile, yeah, like does dumb things. But like, it’s brat. You’re brat. That’s brat.”

I’ve seen a lot of brats this summer, especially in bars around 1 a.m.

“In music, summer welcomes the largest range in tone,” says Brent David Freaney, creative director at Special Offer, who designed the cover art and packaging for Brat. “You get sugary pop anthems, you get club hits, you get blockbuster ballads, and also the end-of-summer romantic songs that lead you into fall. As an artist, being able to own a piece of the summer cultural pie means you get to own a piece of the timeline or history at large.”

“Brat” is a noun, an adjective, and an identifier. Dirty martinis are brat. Going to sleep with your makeup on is brat. According to Charli XCX herself, Kamala Harris is brat. An understanding of what “brat” means has also become a youth culture litmus test. A recent clip of a Fox News host asking, “Do we really want brats to run this country?” became a tell for being out of touch.

“‘Hot girl summer’ has been rebranded this year to ‘brat summer,’” says Noemie Le Coz, cofounder and creative director of the design studio Little Troop. “We’re taking the same principles but amplifying them.” And Le Coz should know since Little Troop is behind two particularly buzzy, recently launched products: the tony smart fridge, Rocco, and the cooler-than-Tupperware storage system, Cliik. “If hot girl summer was all about being carefree and confident, brat summer is all about caring even less, and more unapologetically,” explains Le Coz. Aesthetically, “Brat is very Y2K,” she adds. “Perhaps a little less timeless in appeal to hot girl summer, but relevant and timely nonetheless.”

High-low living happens every summer, in a way, especially in New York City. “Summer in New York is also the subways starting to smell, and you’re sweaty all the time,” says Colyar. “You’re drinking Aperol spritzes, but you’re on a sidewalk and there are rats running by you. Or you’re at the beach, but, actually, it’s just the Rockaways and you’re drinking White Claws and smoking a cigarette. That kind of high-low is a classic New York summer thing.” Maybe New York City has always been a little brat.

A post-“core” moment

While some specific trend items still resonate, trend forecaster Agustina Panzoni, who has a TikTok following of nearly 300,000, tells me there will be fewer digital-first microtrends or “cores.”  It’s a sentiment fashion forecaster Mandy Lee agrees with. “Now that we’ve touched grass,” as Lee explains it, fashion will continue to  move away from the echo chamber of online trends and draw more energy from IRL communities.

We’ll also see less consumer participation tied to the purchase of specific items (think ballet flats) and more of a zoomed-out approach to trends, according to Panzoni. People can participate in the broad idea of a trend in their own way. And when it comes to aesthetic trends that emerge from social media, the analysis is now about “looking at the wider trend, like how coquette would tie to the hyper-femininity movement,” says Panzoni, who is also Depop’s trends spokesperson.

Yet, individual summer-style trends still do emerge from TikTok: I’ve seen loads of boxers, track shorts, and mesh ballet flats on Brooklyn sidewalks. But Lee, who has more than 500,000 TikTok followers, predominantly believes that tastemakers will lean into heightened contrast in macro-level styles—like combining indie sleaze and boho, rather than a focus on named micro cores.

“Gen Z is obsessed with fashion, but they don’t want to look fashion-forward,” says Lee. “People are desperately wanting to show that they’re different when it comes to tastemakers and those who have influence.” This is achieved through styling, cut, length of material, and juxtaposing different macro styles like feminine and sleazy or Y2K and millennial (think skinny jeans), Lee explains. Broadly, the biggest fashion trends this summer play into macro cultural trends: Y2K’s low-rise jeans and camis, Western wear’s cowboy boots and white peasant skirts (which were also big in the aughts).

The OOO aesthetic is mirrored in consumer branding, too. Consider Glossier’s color-on-color summer collection inspired by the French Riviera, or sunscreen brand Vacation’s ’90s-inspired “Jazz Palms” merch collection. “The collective cliché lament that ‘summer is over before it started’ means we’re always longing for it even when we’re in it,” says Michael Scanlon, creative director of Chandelier Creative, who has worked on branding for Equinox and Flamingo Estate as well as Rhode’s Pocket Blush launch in June. That makes visuals conjuring up summer nostalgia as ripe as ever.

Climb to the top of the heap of this summer’s microtrends across fashion, music, branding, type, and visual culture, and you’ll find a nostalgic, saturated, and strong visual point of view. ’90s and Y2K styling is still going strong: There’s a boho chic revival (I gasped when I saw Chloe’s cork wedges in its A/W 24 front row); Sabrina Carpenter’s “I’m just a girl”-inspired feminine pastels; indie sleaze and its variations; vivid use of color; vintage-inspired prep, like crew socks and tennis dresses (there’s the high in the high-low); and a shift in how brands approach the aesthetic of “authenticity.”

LIVING YOUR MOST GENUINE LIFE—WITH BRAND APPEAL

Authenticity can be a moving target when, like brands, we shape others’ perception of ourselves based on what we post online. Today, online friends include a mix of nearly everyone you’ve interacted with in the past: IRL friends, colleagues, your boss from two jobs ago, someone you made out with once.

In summertime, with more time off work, hotter weather, longer nights, and less responsibility, there’s pressure to make the most of it. Brat, and the more-is-more way of living it plugs into, does seem to play with the broad cultural mood. It’s also a signaler that you’re making the most of summer by having the best time of your life. But summer also really is a ball—a kind of mental, life vacation before fall sets in, even if you’re still going into the office until noon on Friday.

“There is absolutely nothing like summer,” says of-the-moment’s Brat cover-art designer Freaney. “It’s the loudest season––the most exciting, the most free. It’s so upbeat and so colorful. You’re allowed (encouraged) to be your most impulsive during the season. There is such a release in having been cooped up [the rest of the] year.”

When you think back on your life, Freaney adds, “summer memories seem to always float to the top.”