Neoclassical dark (Brontë) wave

Collider thinks that Charli XCX's track House 'Marks a Dark, Avant-Garde Shift No One Expected'.

However, while pop music has seemingly been thriving under the dance pop umbrella, it seems the genre is take a new stylistic pivot. Charli XCX’s new single “House” for the 2026 film Wuthering Heights has elicited cultural chaos. While her record-shattering project Brat demanded sex and sweat while exploding on the club scene, “House” is a very drastic shift. It’s a haunting, baroque pop track that is heavy and sinister, setting the tone for Wuthering Heights’ entire soundtrack (which promises to feature several original Charli XCX songs) to be neoclassical dark wave. (Jazmin Kylene)

Byrdie focuses on the hairstyles.

You can spot instances of hair as literary device in almost any novel, but the Brontë sisters' works serve as especially great examples. In Wuthering Heights, the characters' hair colors tell you a lot about the worlds they come from and a hair-filled locket is a scene-stealer.

In real life, various pieces of jewelry containing locks of Anne, Charlotte, and Emily's hair—sometimes together, sometimes separate—have been discovered and authenticated over the years. The vision here was that keeping a loved one's hair close allowed you to be with them at all times, in life and in death.

It wasn't all mourning jewelry, though. Hair doesn't die or wither and a strand from a deceased loved one might help tell their story, but it could (and can!) tell a story when they're alive, too. Enter the hairstyling world's new main character: "Brontë Waves."

In Wuthering Heights, women's hair is described at various points as "streaming" down shoulders, "uncurled [with] some locks hanging lankly down and some carelessly twisted round," and obviously "long." A modern writer might say "extra-long, natural-looking waves." Slight messiness is welcome, as this isn't a look a Victorian diva would wear in public. It's bedtime, she's in her nightgown, and she's lamenting a doomed romance.

Or it's the middle of the night and she just woke up from a nightmare. Her sweaty forehead and time spent pressed against the pillow have provided the necessary lack of volume at the crown necessary to perfect the look.

We could potentially call Brontë Waves "beachy," but not in a cool surfer girl way. If a Brontë Waves wearer is going to the beach, it's because she needs the salt air to cure her heartache.

A middle part is mandatory, as is having tons of length.

Both the lit girls and the It girls are leading the Brontë Waves charge, obviously. We saw the style on Charli XCX in her new music video for "House" (she wrote it for the upcoming Wuthering Heights movie, which tracks even more). [...]

There's also the simple fact that the Wuthering Heights movie is coming out this winter. To a less analytical and more physically satisfying point, you've seen Margot Robbie's tumbling blonde waves and Jacob Elordi's dark lob in the trailer for the upcoming movie version, right? Both are so dramatic and so good. Recently, a billboard popped up in LA showing just the back of Robbie's head; it's sexy, sure, but the look also sells. (Sophie Vilensky)

Apart from Brontë waves, another thing that seems to be a thing is 'bookfishing' according to Popsugar.

Most people would agree that reading is a hot-person hobby. Spot someone out in the wild with a book in hand, and they will probably appear more attractive, more intelligent, and more aware of the female gaze. (There's a reason why the Instagram account Hot Dudes Reading has a casual 1.3 million followers.)

Even people on dating apps agree: according to data sourced by Bumble, 66 percent of Gen Z and millennial singles say they would be more likely to swipe right on someone who mentions reading in their profile. The only problem? Not everyone's love for books is as genuine as it seems.

As I like to call it, "bookfishing" is what happens when someone pretends to love books or reading in an attempt to appear more dateable. Similarly to how someone may be labeled a catfish if they look nothing like their photos, your dating apps might be polluted with people pretending to be literary bookworms, too.

This was the case for Lizzy*, 30, when she matched with a man who included a photo of himself reading "Jane Eyre" in his profile. When Lizzy messaged him saying she needed to check out his attic before agreeing to go on a date, he responded with a series of question marks, clearly missing the Mr. Rochester reference. "I unmatched him. Did he even make it past the first chapter before deciding to snap a photo of himself reading?" she says. (Taylor Andrews)

A contributor to The Oxford Blue discusses reading Jane Eyre while ill.

Sitting in bed, under a duvet, three blankets, and a mountain of tissues, I feel the only difference between myself and Helen Burns is that I’m an atheist. [...]

The other downside of being sick is that screens start to hurt. My tolerance for Instagram Reels has been so diminished that I, for perhaps the first time in an Oxford term, decided to read for pleasure. Jane Eyre is my conquest. Battered and bruised, I stole it from my mother’s shelves years ago and burrowed into it. I was home from school in all the glory of a stomach bug which works itself out long before the teachers acquiesce to let you back in. And what else does one do in such a situation, but read? [...]

There’s something haunting about Brontë’s description of Helen’s death which is also oddly comforting. The scene reminds me of lying alongside my sister in the morning spells of primary school flus or the afternoon hangovers of our adolescence, though armed with central heating and painkillers. The sickbed in that room which for Jane is filled with horror, for me was rarely so. (Briony Arnott)