“Charli XCX was actually mentioned in the first brand strategy presentation I did at Nothing as this embodiment of rebellious creativity,” admits Nothing’s chief brand officer, Charlie Smith, over Zoom a couple of weeks ago. Negotiating a story about two people called Charli(e) and a company called Nothing takes a lot of back and forth, but today, Vogue can reveal that Charli XCX has joined the tech hardware brand as its first global ambassador and shareholder.
“When I’m creating, I’m always thinking about how my work will be experienced out in the world, and I love how Nothing headphones sound and are designed. Its ethos of prioritizing creatives is really something I look for when working with a partner,” says Charli XCX of the partnership.
Her song “Rock Music”, which dropped just last Friday, is the first single from the anticipated follow-up album to 2024’s Brat. Brat, which generated over $22.5 million in media impact value (MIV) within the first month of its release, became synonymous with a less-than-perfect aesthetic at odds with the scourge of quiet luxury. It also named an entire season. As expected, the expectations surrounding her subsequent piece of work are high, the reviewers are already confused about the meaning of the lyrics, and the hype machine is in full motion.
All this makes the Nothing news a well-timed coup for the company; the global campaign starring Charli XCX also launches today. In the images and accompanying video, which were shot by her longtime collaborator, photographer Aidan Zamiri, the singer wears Nothing Headphone (a), which boast 135 hours of playtime without a need to recharge.
“We wanted it to feel intimate, like the world is moving around me while I just stay locked into my music, listening for ages and ages. It’s a very “in my own world” kind of vibe, which is exactly how I feel when I make things,” says Charli XCX of the concept behind the shoot. “It was fun doing this shoot because I was doing it with all my friends. Aidan Zamiri shot everything, Chris Horan styled, Imogene [Strauss, creative director] was there… those are all my creative besties.”
This isn’t the first time a celebrity ambassador has signed up as a shareholder in a brand. Just last month, Timothée Chalamet joined watchmaker Urban Jürgensen as a partner with a minority equity stake, after first approaching the company as a collector. But the choice to do more than spend a day on a photo shoot signals a need for deeper engagement on all fronts.
“Charli has a real stake in what we’re building, and we wanted a partner with genuine commitment as well,” explains Smith. “Nothing wanted to be super collaborative with me and let me present how I engage with music in my own way,” adds Charli XCX.
Increasingly, brands understand that the audience is also a shareholder. “Younger generations intuitively understand when brands are being authentic and when they aren’t. They expect the brands they care about to be true to themselves, and bringing Charli in as our first global brand ambassador with skin in the game is us doing just that. Our community is so important to us. It has shaped Nothing from day one. We’ve created this brand together, and it’s important we continue to build on that with every step that we take,” continues Smith.
Nothing has surpassed two billion in lifetime revenue, closing almost $1 billion in 2025 alone, which is bold for a company founded only six years ago. It was launched out of London in 2020, when founder and CEO Carl Pei decided to create a brand that would challenge Apple in the eyes of Gen Z. “Today, perhaps for the youth, Apple feels more like Microsoft when I was younger, like this big corporation,” Pei told my colleague Amy O’Brien earlier this year.
CEO Carl Pei wants Nothing to become the go-to tech brand for Gen Z. To aid this, he hired Charlie Smith, who built Loewe’s Gen Z-coded marketing. Vogue sits down with them for an exclusive look inside the $1.3 billion tech brand’s vision.
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To do that, Pei hired Smith from Loewe, where the latter spent seven years as CMO working alongside Jonathan Anderson. “I’m loving it,” says Smith of his first six months out of fashion and into tech. “Technically, it's not my first time working in tech; my very first client was Nokia back when Nokia had 40% market share, and Snake was a big thing. I’ve also worked with Google and Microsoft. But working at Nothing has reminded me how creative it feels to be at the frontier of what’s possible.”
Nothing counts 900 employees globally with offices in London, San Francisco, Tokyo, Shenzhen, New Delhi, and Bangkok. The company recently raised $200 million in a Series C round at a $1.3 billion valuation, and has aggressive growth plans for the year ahead, with a focus on the US market. “If you look at the wearables category globally, by far the highest penetration of products like smartwatches is in the US,” posits Smith.
“We’re planning to open a studios-slash-store in San Francisco later this year, as well as one in New York. We’re also working with partners to establish a physical retail presence across the US, because currently, we’re only stocked on Amazon. Hopefully, by the end of this year, we’ll have a much greater footprint and awareness in the US,” he adds.
Outside the US, Nothing has just opened its second store in Bangalore (the first was in London in 2022) and is also planning a store in Tokyo in 2027.
But Smith’s hiring and the partnership with Charli XCX signal that Nothing’s ambitions go far beyond people’s wallets. According to the most recent press release, “scale is now directed towards a new kind of company at the intersection of technology and culture, built in partnership with the creative community.”
“Tech has kind of become a bit boring and perfect. There is a lot of glass and aluminum,” Smith explains. “I remember technology being way more fun when I was growing up. I had a Casio G-Shock that I was super proud of and a hi-fi system that used to have scrolling text saying ‘good morning’ to me. I feel we’ve lost some of that fun and lightheartedness, and we want to bring it back. Charli stands for that kind of playfulness and irreverence as well. Also, we’re a British tech startup and, you know, Charli’s a British music icon.”
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