Charli xcx's SS26 video: Paris runway as pop set

May 22. Charli xcx dropped "SS26," the second single off her seventh album, with a music video that staged a full Paris fashion show. Director Torso framed it as a runway presentation. Models walked. The artist sat front row. The closer was Charli herself, wearing a piece by Madrid-based designer Javier Guijarro.

Guijarro's look: a tailored black jacket with exaggerated shoulders, worn over a structured white shirt and slim trousers. The silhouette reads as a sharper version of the workwear-adjacent cuts he's been running for three seasons. The jacket's lapel is wider than usual, the shoulder line more angular. A pop-video commission, but built with the same construction as his main-line pieces.

The video pulls the entire apparatus of a fashion week presentation into the pop format. No parody, no irony. Models walk in formation. The lighting is white and clinical. The seating is tiered. The only tell that this isn't an actual show: the designer credit goes to the artist, not the house. Charli xcx presents SS26, not Guijarro.

Guijarro's involvement is credited in the video's press notes and confirmed in Dazed's interview with him. He describes the brief as straightforward: a closing look for the artist, tailored to the video's aesthetic, built in a two-week window. The piece was constructed in his Madrid atelier, shipped to Paris for the shoot, and worn once.

The format is the detail worth holding. Pop videos borrow fashion imagery constantly. Runway walks, backstage chaos, model casting. This one doesn't borrow the imagery. It recreates the entire structure and then drops a single into it. The song is called "SS26." The video is a fashion show for a season that doesn't exist. The designer is real, the construction is real, the format is real. Only the collection is fiction.

The jacket is already circulating in screenshots. No retail date, no price, no indication Guijarro plans to produce it beyond the single piece for the video. A one-off commission that reads as a runway piece because it was built as one.