Unless you’ve fallen out of a coconut tree, you’ve heard of Brat Green. While pop queen Charli XCX dropped her most recent album, Brat, on June 7, in the weeks since, the electric shade of green has filled feeds everywhere.
And as Refinery29 reports, in most recent events, the color transcended pop culture fodder and made political news headlines when, upon Joe Biden’s withdrawal as the Democratic nominee and endorsement of Kamala Harris, the British singer-songwriter took to X (formerly Twitter) to declare: “Kamala IS brat.” Harris’ campaign subsequently hopped on the train by adopting a banner featuring the same color and font as the Brat album cover for the KamalaHQ account.
Everything Old is New Again
Of course, if you dive in, you’ll find that chartreuse green isn’t really anything new to fashion. And like so many recent trends, you can find a precedent for its sudden summer explosion in the Lisa Says Gah archives, which is what grown-up Limited Too girlies are wearing for the summer (when they’re not in Ganni, that is).
If you hop over to the beauty bar, neon green hair had a moment in 2017 and 2018, with celebrities like Kelis and Chloe Norgaard temporarily donning the look, before Billie Eilish solidified it as her When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?-era signature.
In 2020, Etsy named chartreuse its color of the year. “I predict we’ll see this tone showing up everywhere from our home decor to our wardrobes,” said the prescient Etsy rep Dayna Isom Johnson at the time. A few years later, in 2023, Fendi showed a spring collection filled with yellowish-green pieces, which seemed to glow against a backdrop of restrained taupe. (In an unexpected color pairing move, Fendi also used a metallic mauve that looked unexpectedly good with their floaty chartreuse gowns.)
And of course, there are brands that never stopped playing with lime green, like preppy standby Lilly Pulitzer, who likes to pair its parakeet shade with flamingo pink in a nod to the tropics. On a different note, Marc Jacobs has been highlighting the punk side of the hue since the ‘93 collection that got him fired from Perry Ellis but, more recently, used it on a particularly good pair of ballet flats made in collaboration between Heaven By Marc Jacobs and Sandy Liang.
So, what is Brat Green, Exactly?
According to Refinery29’s evaluation, it’s very nearly lime green, though it has less blue and a little more yellow than a traditional lime, which leans closer to emerald (Brat skips up to apple). It’s a slightly updated chartreuse, almost the color of the famous liquor, but with a heavy saturation that marks it as far more modern than the version that blew up in the late 1800s (and again in the 1920s, 1960s, and 1990s). It’s not quite an absinthe green or a pickle green, but it is close. It lacks the depth of those vintage greens, which gain dimension from a touch of ochre, but that’s exactly why we like Brat Green.
It is not a complex color, nor is it intended to be. Like the slime green made famous by Nickelodeon, Brat Green is pushy and straightforward. It’s supposed to be brilliant, intense, and rich without being mistaken for tasteful. There’s a flatness to brat green that makes it well suited to black light dance parties, color field paintings, and online life (see the various social media memes the color spawned even before Harris’ “Brat-ification”). In particular, the digital nature of brat green shows when you open up a messaging app and text your friends — it’s right there, in Apple’s lime green chat icon with its little white bubble.
That’s not to say you can’t find brat green in nature. This grassiness is part of its brattiness; this crabgrass color speaks to summer lawns and popsicle stains and long days spent with nothing to do except flop on a picnic blanket or pick up a racket. Even though brat green is the precise color of both blue spruce tips and birch leaves in the spring, it’s got a definite tropical vibe. Perhaps that’s because sap green is so fleeting in the colder parts of the world. In New England, you only get a sliver of this green brilliance. In Florida, you don’t have to try and grow spurge or firesticks or wait for April showers. It’s why a paint color like Limeade makes sense in the south. Climate doesn’t just influence fashion — it shifts all the shades of our built environment.
Perhaps this is why we’re loving brat right now: We’re finally embracing the heat and chaos of the 21st century. Even though neon greens have been in for a while, this color does feel distinct. You can compare it to chartreuse, lime, and acid, but it’s none of those exactly. It’s not recycled from the past, though it does have a Y2K vibe, and it can feel a bit ‘60s at times. But brat green is fun and fresh partially because it’s so available. These days, you can buy lime green from retailers as mainstream as Dolls Kill and as niche as Doen. You can decorate with it (the perfect seating for a brat is on a chubby, childish Mario Bellini single-person sofa), eat it (cake or hot dog, your choice), and play with it (fancy a lime green ride or a bucket of slime?). So everyone can join in on the fun.
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