Let “Lorde Summer” style liberate you from the algorithm

Lorde made a statement when she came out during Charli xcx’s Coachella performance for “Girl, so confusing.” Her dark gray T-shirt, reflective workwear trousers, and duct-taped Balenciaga boots contrasted starkly against the Brit’s black bikini set and a crowd full of brat-inspired club wear and Y2K minis at a festival that nowadays feels like a fashion show. Online, it was likened to everything from a refrigerator to hospital scrubs — but the weird thing was that it also kinda made sense.

In the four years since Lorde released Solar Power, her beachy 12-track mantra which she promoted in flowy gowns, pastels, and sun yellows, the pop star’s style has taken a marked turn: she’s now dressing purely on instinct — and to me, she’s never looked so authentically her.

Perhaps how she’s getting her clothes is part of it: According to Lorde, her festival pants were bought on eBay. The duct-taped shoes that she’s been sporting regularly and has already spurred recreations online was birthed out of functionality: “The boots that I had with me were leaking, and it was snowy, so I bought this tape and I taped the toe of my boots,” she told Rolling Stone later, adding that it “connected” her to a “part of myself that is not totally sealed up.” Everything from her new laidback wardrobe, consisting primarily of plain tees, button-ups, baggy denim, and sneakers, screams carefree — and even she knows it’s the most Lorde she has ever looked. “I just felt so like myself,” she later said of her Coachella outfit in an interview with Document Journal.

Recently, stars like Addison Rae and HAIM have also pared back their wardrobes to showcase a new “low-key pop star” — but Lorde stands apart with how transparent she’s been in sharing the personal stakes that have driven her style evolution. In that interview with Rolling Stone, she reported feeling “in the middle gender-wise,” and her new style reflects her warm embrace of gender fluidity. (Her 2025 Met Gala look, a Thom Browne three-piece, made her “feel like a man and a woman.”) Overcoming struggles with disordered eating and body image issues also played a massive role — themes that will also be reflected on her new album, Virgin, out June 27.

To hear Lorde put the reasons behind her dressing so plainly gives her pursuit of “personal style” an extra ring of authenticity — something that I feel has gotten lost in the modern era of more mindless, trend-centered curating. (And try to divorce the concept from the actual price tag of her clothes which fans have sourced to be at eye-watering amounts.)

To me, Lorde’s championing of instinctual dressing feels like an alternative and logical endpoint to the core trends that have dominated fashion over the first half of the 2020s. After years of TikTok-fueled fashion cycles, 2025 is bringing personal style into question: Who are you really without an algorithm guiding your purchase? Perhaps, a “Lorde Summer,” as prompted by Charli xcx, could also be calling us to contemplate what makes our style ours at its very root. Lorde’s wardrobe is a reminder that self-discovery, even fashion-wise, is a lifelong journey. Next time you find yourself opening TikTok for inspiration, maybe just take a look in your closet instead.