How Tyla, Zara Larsson & Chappell Roan’s Stylists Are Shaping Gen Z’s Future Pop Legends

It’s inconceivable to think about Cher with out Bob Mackie, or Madonna sans Gaultier. Despite all of the discuss “Hollywood hair theory“generational talents are just as easily defined by their clothes. And these days, pop stars’ looks are directly tied to their entire act: both their “eras,” and the universes they create where their music (and fans) live. It isn’t a coincidence that Gen Z’s preeminent pop faves—Chappell Roan, Charli xcx, Sabrina Carpenter—reached new echelons of stardom following drastic shifts in image. It’s Law Roach’s principles of “the right girl in the right dress.”

“People like Prince, David Bowie, and Björk created an entire world and stayed so true to that world within everything that they did, not only sonically, but visually,” Roan’s stylist, Genesis Webb, tells W. “It’s how you let people know how to feel.” In 2026, that interprets to each IRL and on-line personas, which name for particular and crowd pleasing seems. Webb herself is a world-building whiz, having efficiently lent a extra refined eye to Roan’s wardrobe. Not lengthy after dressing the “Pink Pony Club” artist for a collection of headline-making pageant performances in the summertime of 2024, salts for her album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess—which had debuted almost a yr earlier—skyrocketed.

Webb and Roan have tapped into their mutual reverence for drag and Club Kid tradition to create viral vogue moments, such because the singer’s Statue of Liberty-inspired take a look at Governors Ball in 2024. The stylist collaborated with fetishwear designer Monique Fey to reimagine the sculpture’s signature toga in latex, resulting in raucous applause when Roan rotated to disclose her naked buttocks peeking by a cutout in her skirt. Such hijinks recall the period of Madonna’s Blonde Ambition Tourwhen she famously ripped off her pantsuit to showcase a satin leotard full with conical cups, devised by a then lesser-known designer by the title of Jean Paul Gaultier. But reinterpreting the acquainted is vital to making a sustainable picture, provides Tyla’s stylist Ron Hartleben. He often works with classic and archival vogue, seems made earlier than his shopper was even born. Case in level: Tyla’s Tom Ford for Gucci minidress on the CFDA Awards. Donning uncommon pulls on the crimson carpet is no newfangled thinghowever when creating a whole universe round a pop woman, nostalgia is usually a highly effective ingredient so as to add to the combination.

“Wearing historical pieces puts talent in new lights, and it invites them to be examined in a different way. It’s a more intellectual approach to clothes rather than just wearing the shiniest, newest thing,” Hartleben says. “Adding that level of knowledge with looks is always going to propel any talent’s star power, because there’s more depth to the outfit than we’re realizing on the surface.”

He additionally performed a serious function in Carpenter’s reinvention, having dressed her for the “Feather,” “Espresso,” and “Please Please Please” music movies. His styling work was instrumental in ushering Carpenter out of her teeny-bopper section. “She wanted to have a new visual language that was a little bit more fashion-forward, playful, and tongue-in-cheek,” Hartleben says.

Carpenter, a former Disney Channel idol, had a solo profession for a while earlier than the discharge of “Feather,” however the chart-topping monitor marked her first true style of mainstream success. When the video generated controversy after the singer danced scantily clad round a church—in frou-frou Carolina Herrera tulle, no much less—it primed Carpenter for her musical coming-of-age, which might culminate with the discharge of her breakthrough album, Short n’ Sweet.

Old Hollywood and pin-up silhouettes had been motifs Hartleben and Carpenter sought to repackage for a youthful viewers. Although she now works primarily with stylist Jared Ellner, this idea continues to information a lot of Carpenter’s wardrobe immediately. Take her rhinestoned bodysuits and négligées from the Short n’ Sweet Tour, for example: these fashionable riffs on classic lingerie had been designed by Victoria’s Secret, a more recent model that concurrently sparks nostalgia for Gen Z.

As youngsters of the 2000s, the last decade’s aesthetics are sources of inspiration for pop’s new guard. Cartoons and dolls of the interval, reminiscent of winxclub and Bratz, are cited by Zara Larsson’s stylist, Caterina Ospina, as sartorial influences, whereas Hartleben has dressed Tyla in Rock Revival, a noughties mall model akin to True Religion and Affliction.

“Y2K was a moment in time that was all about freedom and taking sexual liberties with clothes, feeling empowered in your body and taking risks without being scared of being labeled as slutty or tacky,” Hartleben explains.

Ospina echoes this sentiment when she describes her method to working with Larsson, whose star has solely risen for the reason that launch of her album Midnight Sun and her tour of the identical title.

“Zara’s style transmits this feeling of being sexy and free, that you can be anyone or anything, and people love her for that,” Ospina says. “She’s not dressing for any gaze specifically, she’s just dressing for herself.”

The similar could possibly be mentioned of any pop expertise du jour, from Rihanna to Beyoncé and Lady Gaga. These explicit artists impressed Tyla, Larsson, and Roan as they’ve cast musical careers of their very own. It’s why paying homage to at least one’s cultural predecessors is one other trick of the pop star stylist’s commerce.

Tyla nodded to Aaliyah on the MTV European Music Awards in 2024, rocking a fur-trimmed Roberto Cavalli robe printed with the label’s trademark tiger stripes. She additionally wore a teal model of the costume, which Aaliyah initially sported in yellow on the MTV Video Music Awards in 2000.

These memorable visible cues aren’t all the time reinterpreted so actually. Roan, for instance, captures Lady Gaga’s type ethos with out ever immediately referencing her: it is in her alternative of designers (like Alexander McQueen, who cited Gaga as a muse) and her potential to inform tales with clothes. Webb separated Roan’s seems on the 2024 VMAs into three acts, not in contrast to how Gaga traipsed up the steps on the 2019 Met Gala whereas shedding layers of Brandon Maxwell satin.

“It’s more about capturing the same essence of what was so captivating about those artists,” Hartelben explains of his technique, a viewpoint that Ospina and Webb additionally share.

Homing in on components that set one aside are essential. Larsson is hardly seen with no hibiscus blossom, whereas Tyla usually flips the waistline of her denims, carrying them unbuttoned.

This, mixed with a stylist’s data of rising traits—learn: Larsson’s keychain miniskirts and Tyla’s reimagining of a ’90s Chanel prime as a costume—is how artists can set up themselves as distinct personalities.

Uniqueness can be achieved by collaborating with impartial and rising designers, like Zana Bayne, in Webb’s case, who crafted a full set of leather-based armor for Roan’s VMAs efficiency. Ospina, in the meantime, has tapped the abilities of Sorcha O’Raghallaigh to create glowing attire and miniskirts that embody Larsson’s “never-ending summer” aesthetic.

“I can create new stuff from scratch with smaller designers, things that you’re just not seeing on the runway, and things that are going to be only for Zara,” Ospina says.

After all, placing another person on is a manner of paying it ahead.

“It’s a moment to be able to showcase someone’s talent on a larger scale,” Webb provides. “As celebrity stylists, we have an obligation to younger designers, to propel those voices into mainstream success, because that helps fashion evolve.”