Every summer produces a new cast of names that seem to be everywhere at once, but 2026’s crop got there through very different routes — a viral TikTok, a runway debut, a role that reframed a whole career overnight. Here’s who’s actually shaping the season, and how they got there.
By Alegria Haro
The It Girl has never been an official title, more a kind of consensus that forms in real time, decided by whoever happens to be paying attention that season. It used to take years to earn — a run of films, a decade on the party circuit, a magazine willing to say so in print. This summer’s version moves faster, and the qualifications have gotten stranger: a phone camera, a family tree, a single sold-out T-shirt. Below are the women redefining what it means to be an It Girl in Summer 2026.
Deva Cassel
Deva Cassel walked Dolce & Gabbana’s Alta Moda show at seventeen, before she had a single acting credit to her name, which made her early career a strange kind of preview: famous for a face that hadn’t done anything yet. That changed fast. Her 2023 debut in The Beautiful Summer was a warm-up; her turn as Angelica in Netflix’s The Leopard got reviewed on its own merits, parentage barely mentioned. This year she plays the Virgin Mary in Zero A.D. and Anastasia in the new Phantom of the Opera, two roles that ask an audience to forget whose daughter she is for two hours straight. So far, this It Girl has managed exactly that.
Iris Law
Iris Law spent Casablanca’s Resort 2026 campaign playing a version of herself she doesn’t quite live yet — the classic L.A. girl, shot lounging through John Lautner’s Sheats-Goldstein house while the Beverly Hills valley does the rest of the work. She’s a London native who’s adopted the city as a second home, and when a magazine asked her about it, she skipped the polished sound bite for walking directions: “Normalize walking when you can,” she said, “but people just think I’m crazy.” It’s a small detail, but it tracks — she treats a fashion campaign like an excuse to talk about something else entirely.
Odessa A’Zion
Odessa A’Zion spent nearly a decade collecting cult-favorite acting credits before I Love LA turned her into the face of a very specific kind of downtown cool. Then Marty Supreme happened. Suddenly she wasn’t just another promising actress opposite Timothée Chalamet—she was arriving at her first Met Gala in custom Valentino, walking awards-season red carpets without a stylist, and becoming the rare performer whose off-duty wardrobe gets dissected almost as much as her performances. Hollywood has plenty of rising actresses. Very few become fashion references at the exact same time. That’s exactly how an It Girl is made.
Hailey Bieber and Sabrina Carpenter
Few people can turn an ordinary wardrobe staple into the most wanted item of the season quite like Hailey Bieber and Sabrina Carpenter. This summer, a simple Cou Cou Rina T-shirt sold out almost immediately after both were photographed wearing it, proving that their influence no longer depends on red carpets or campaign launches. Between Bieber’s continued grip on minimalist beauty and fashion and Carpenter’s rapidly expanding style identity, the two have become the kind of celebrities whose everyday outfits shape shopping habits overnight.
Lola Tung
Lola Tung may have become a household name through The Summer I Turned Pretty, but Summer 2026 feels like the moment she stepped beyond Belly Conklin for good. Fresh off a string of film roles, including Forbidden Fruits and Halina Reijn’s upcoming A24 project Please, she’s simultaneously becoming one of fashion’s most sought-after young faces. Coach recently named her its newest Global Ambassador for eyewear, watches, and fragrance, confirming what fashion editors have been hinting at for months: Tung is no longer just the star of a hit series—she’s becoming an It Girl in her own right.
Sienna Spiro
“Die On This Hill” introduced Sienna Spiro to millions before she had much of a public identity to attach to it, but 2026 has become the year she proved the song wasn’t a fluke. Her debut EP arrived to an audience that was already listening, and her cinematic blend of soul and pop has made her one of Britain’s most closely watched new artists. Most musicians spend years figuring out their aesthetic. Spiro arrived with one already fully formed, all vintage glamour and smoky vocals, as if she’d skipped straight to her second act.
Alexandra Leclerc
As recently as mid-2024, Alexandra Leclerc (formerly Alexandra Saint Mleux) was still a relatively private figure outside Formula 1 circles. Since then, she has become one of fashion’s most closely watched new faces, appearing regularly at major events while building an identity that exists beyond her relationship with Charles Leclerc.
She studied art history at the École du Louvre and has long shared an interest in visual culture, reflected in the carefully curated style that made her stand out online. She still maintains her art-focused account and remains one of the rare new figures in fashion whose appeal comes from a sense of taste rather than constant visibility — a quieter kind of celebrity built around the feeling that she was never trying to become one.
Apple Martin
For years, Apple Martin existed in the shadow of two famous surnames: Paltrow and Martin. That changed when she stepped into fashion on her own terms. After making her Paris Fashion Week debut at Chanel Haute Couture, she has continued building a presence in the industry, most recently appearing in Chloé’s latest campaign. With her blend of inherited fashion history and a distinctly personal style, Martin represents a new generation of It Girls who arrive with a legacy behind them — but still have to create a look of their own.
Lourdes Leon
For most of the last decade, Lourdes Leon has been introduced with a footnote: Madonna’s daughter. This year gave her something to replace it with — original vocals for Ottolinger’s Paris Fashion Week presentation recorded under her stage name Lolahol alongside musician Erwan Sene. Equal parts musician, model, and fashion muse, Leon has quietly carved out an identity that feels deliberately separate from the legacy she inherited, proving that sometimes the most compelling reinvention is the one that arrives without an announcement.
Sunday Rose Kidman Urban
Sunday Rose Kidman Urban made her runway debut for Miu Miu, but 2026 is the year she stopped feeling like a celebrity child making a guest appearance and started looking like fashion’s next obsession. With campaigns, front-row appearances, and an unmistakably understated style, she has quickly become one of the industry’s most closely watched young faces. Like the generation before her, Sunday Rose arrives with a famous surname. Unlike many before her, she’s already giving fashion something more interesting to talk about than her family.
The Pattern, If There Is One
Talent shows up in this list, and so does lineage, and so does sheer timing, but none of those alone explain who made the cut. What actually connects these names is a kind of fluency — knowing exactly when to lean into a moment and when to let a project do the talking instead. The It Girl title has always worked this way: awarded by consensus, revoked without warning, never up for a vote. This is simply who has it right now.
Ask again by fall. The answer will have already changed.