19 Blazing Green Jewels for a Brat Summer

By Brittany Siminitz | July 24, 2024

It’s your friendly neighborhood millennial here, trying to decode the trends of today’s youth. If you’re living what the kids are calling a “brat summer,” either you have teenagers or young adults at home—or you are one.

Down with the lingo or not, we can appreciate this particular trending hype—at least in jewelry form. “Brat summer” as a cultural touchpoint was ignited by Charli XCX’s album Brat, released in June, and it’s associated with the shade of green the English pop star used on the album cover—a color somewhere between chartreuse and kiwi.

The Brat album draws inspiration from England’s 2000 rave scene: If you feel like dancing—I mean, aggressively dancing—this might be your jam. (And even if you don’t, but you’re a fan of music, the album is quite good.)

So it’s that very vibe of Brat the album that spurred a cultural movement. “Contrary to the image of a spoiled and bratty child throwing tantrums, Charli XCX fans interpret being a brat as indulging in pleasure and shunning societal expectations. It’s about living unapologetically and embracing self-expression,” explained Asian publication the Express Tribune.

Regarding her hue of choice, Charli XCX was quoted in a Vogue Singapore profile: “I wanted to go with an offensive, off-trend shade of green to trigger the idea of something being wrong. I’d like for us to question our expectations of pop culture. Why are some things considered good and acceptable, and some things deemed bad? I’m interested in the narratives behind that, and I want to provoke people. I’m not doing things to be nice.”

But if that green is wrong, I don’t want to be right. You might compare it to toxic waste or ’90s-era slime, but it’s glorious—the shade of iconic loverboys like Shrek (no, I’m not being ironic) and so very now. It is also reminiscent of peridot, and that is highly relevant round these parts.

So let’s have a brat summer, shall we? The ultragreen jewels pictured here fit the description smashingly, but even without chasing young-people trends, they’ll never go out of style.