Instead of a Fashion Show, H&M Hosted a Charli XCX Concert

“I didn’t know H&M had this in them,” said Ethan Brayfield, a Charli XCX super fan I met in the center of the Copper Box Arena minutes before Charlotte, as he exclusively called her, emerged onstage. We were watching a group of modern dancers flip and jump in H&M leather trench coats as the anticipation built for Charli. Brayfield predicted she would play two songs and bail, but she delivered a jam-packed 30-minute set that got the whole arena jumping, singing everything from “360” to “Guess” and older classics like “Vroom Vroom.” As her recent viral hit “Apple” started, she told the crowd, “Okay, if you want to do the dance, you should totally do it.” When the time came, I watched a sea of people crack an imaginary apple over their heads in unison. (Charli, however, did not.)

Brayfield said he’d been a Charli fan for ten years but had never managed to see her headline a show. (He is only 20 years old, after all.) He landed a ticket to this concert through a link Charli shared on Instagram a few weeks ago. Among the approximately 5,000 guests at the event, hosted for free by H&M, about half were regular people like Brayfield who’d signed up for tickets through Charli’s feeds or were avid H&M shoppers. The other half were press and influencer types flown in from most of H&M’s major markets around the world. Everyone dressed in their best brat style with a punkish British twist. I saw a lot of mesh shirts, parkas, baggy jeans, leather jackets, and sassy boots. The guests were delighted by the fashion-show-style perks: the open bar and waiters passing out fries and burgers. A long queue formed for a vending machine dispensing sunglasses and branded keychains.

Charli begins her Sweat tour in Detroit on Saturday, so seeing her in London now was a special treat and a coup for H&M. The Swedish retailer opened the performance by playing a conceptual commercial featuring its fall 2024 collection, which featured leather miniskirts, oversize tailoring, and embellished mule flats, almost all in black — a more polished, Phoebe Philo–esque collection than you may associate with H&M from recent years. Known for its low prices and fast reaction to trends, H&M is trying to regain the hearts of young shoppers in a Shein world by offering something more than bargains. This fall, the company is hosting a series of 12 music-focused parties in eight cities, and each event will have its own corresponding collection. The Charli concert, where Jamie xx and Sherelle also performed, is the first and largest of the series. (The next one is in New York City in October.)

“Music is much more relevant than a catwalk,” said H&M’s creative director, Jörgen Andersson, before the show, adding that after years when H&M collaborated with prominent fashion designers and labels — such as Karl Lagerfeld and Balmain — the retailer wants to “put the spotlight on our own design team and our own collection.”

And on its ability to tap a wide network of influencers, who on Thursday included Amelia Dimoldenberg, Anaïs Gallagher, Iris Law, Lila Moss, Naomi Campbell, and model Amelia Gray, who told me her skirt-suit outfit was H&M but had been tweaked by her tailor and stylist to be a little more fitted. “A little chic party moment,” she said. “You know, we have Charlie XCX, and we’re still at work — we have to mix the two.”