For now, the leader of mood-board chic is a human being, and a quite likable one: the 33-year-old British dance-pop singer Charli XCX, though to call her a dance-pop singer is to focus on just part of her persona. For as many people who know her for songs such as “Boys” and “Von Dutch,” equally as many others recognize her aesthetic traits: fried black hair, chalky nocturnal complexion, cigarettes, auto-tune, and the piercing green hue of her 2024 album, Brat. She’s the kind of person who is praised with the term je ne sais quoi, even though fans can list exactly what makes Charli Charli. And over the years, she’s made the case that mood-boardism can, in fact, drive innovation—though her latest projects, the film The Moment and the soundtrack for Wuthering Heights, show why it usually doesn’t.