Of the many delicious tidbits in Chappell Roan’s conversation with Trixie Mattel for Paper magazine was the revelation that the rising pop star did her own makeup for the The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess album cover. “I had no money to pay a fucking makeup artist,” she told Trixie, noting that she didn’t hire one until this year. Looking at the crowds Roan now commands coast to coast, everywhere from Coachella to the Governors Ball, it’s almost unimaginable to picture her hunched over in front of a ring light, gluing on her own fake lashes — but that scrappy, DIY attitude is indeed part of her charm and her mythos.
This is a woman fluent in her favorite drag icons, a veritable Matisse with a palette of sparkly eyeshadows, and — we can only assume — a frequent customer of Buffalo Exchange. It’s almost too much that her music is as good as it is: pop stars with amazing aesthetics aren’t always accomplished yodelers, too! A great set of pipes married with outré style? That rare combination Roan seems to possess has already netted her comparisons to Lady Gaga and other icons who forever changed the face of pop.
As two elder millennials, we’re not ready to predict that she’ll shatter the mold just yet, but we are savvy enough to see the telltale signs — and to listen to our Gen Z colleagues when they identify a new “mother.” It’s quite possible that one day people will talk about the current Chappell moment the same way us thirty-plus people talk with reverence about Madonna or Whitney Houston. For now, what we do feel equipped to do is have some good old-fashioned astrological fun with the veritable feast of looks Roan has served us already.
Maybe you’re in need of inspiration for something to wear at the next sold-out show, or maybe you just want to see what your particular constellation looks like as a classic Pink Pony Club ensemble. Either way, we’ve got you covered below. Here are twelve Chappell Roan looks, broken down by your zodiac sign. — Samantha Allen
Aries
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Aries is the “My Kink is Karma” video. Exacting revenge by winning at everything while the person who rejected you withers away? At first glance, the vengeful lyrics of “My Kink is Karma” suit several other signs more aptly than Aries, who tend to forget about the existence of enemies who aren’t in their immediate sightline. But then in the music video, when Chappell comes out in that outfit? The bright red bra tassels and fishnet thigh-highs? Suddenly it’s a cardinal fire sign anthem. And besides, these lyrics are definitely accurate to the Aries experience:
It’s hot when you’re going through hell
And you’re hating yourself, I’m feeling myself
Like, listen to this line:
And you’re getting pissed off, it’s getting me off
It’s hot, it’s hot, oh god, oh god, oh god
A horn-headed heart-face? Deciding to mostly not bother with — but also occasionally revel in — the misery of a former lover? I mean, I don’t know what else to tell you. That’s Aries! — Jennifer Culp
I am nowhere near as astrologically gifted as Jennifer but I do know a certain Aries at Them who recently announced that she “understands Chappell Roan now” and then mere days later dyed her hair red. Coincidence? Or influence? — Samantha Allen
Taurus
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Taurus is Spotify’s Best New Artist Party. I have long maintained that Taurus is the most goth sign: the gothiest of us all, if you will. And here, Chappell wears a black snood, black corset, black lace gloves, and black boots, all balanced atop brown hooves. She looks ready to stomp the ever-living snot out of anyone in her path. Yeah… that’ll do for Taurus, good bull. Kink potential aside, Roan’s fit for the 2024 Grammys Spotify Best New Artist Party is essentially Taurus-coded: slightly more formal than most attendees, undeniably attractive while oddly unnerving, Face (with a capital F) on point. Crush the rest of us under your feet, Taurus, please. — Jennifer Culp
Gemini
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Gemini is The Tonight Show. On The Tonight Show, Chappell arrived as Odile, left as Odette, snapped back at Jimmy Fallon, “I Googled you, too,” and dazzled the audience with a bop about how a former paramour will absolutely regret leaving her — but ya know, good luck with that, babe! In short, she was perfect. (I also must make an obligatory mention of Matthew Bourne’s extremely gay Swan Lake, which in my opinion should be considered the canon version of the ballet.) Swan Lake’s “twin” swan-babes represent the Gemini quandary better than most metaphors. One is good, the other is evil and cursèd. They are two halves of a whole, sometimes in competition, always striving for perfection or destruction — why not both? — and eager to spin around on one foot 32 times in a row before jumping into a lake in the name of desperate infatuation. Also, Chappell’s nails here? Horrifically impractical, but excellent for waving about in a judgmental fashion. This double feature of a look is iconically Gemini! — Jennifer Culp
Cancer
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Cancer is GUTS Tour Show 3. Did I choose this selection just because it’s currently Cancer season when I’m writing this, the outfit is blue and shiny, the fringe evokes dripping water, and Chappell Roan wore it as an opening act for the GUTS tour in Phoenix, where I live? Obviously. Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport registered a temperature of 117°F last week, and if you click through to see Chappell’s expression in the last slide of this Instagram post, her face — beautifully, majestically! — represents every Arizona resident zombie-ing our way through late June, just waiting for a monsoon to break the heat in a deluge of delicious liquid moisture. We beg of you, Cancer, have a talk with your season. We all just want to feel cool, blue, and drippy! — Jennifer Culp
Leo
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Leo is Chappell’s Divine-inspired look. Other signs might wear and even rock leopard print, but all large feline iconography ultimately belongs to Leo. This photoset urges me to bring back the old Twitter styling of inserting 👏 clapping 👏 emojis 👏 between words. Instead, just imagine that I am making exaggeratedly forceful, emphatic hand gestures as you read. Look at the face! Look at the poses! Look at the big-ass Uggs-adjacent animal-print boots, and look at the angles that rightfully should be bad… but obviously they aren’t, because just look at Chappell Roan in this ensemble! “Finger guns” have never looked better… except for any and every time that a regular, real-world Leo becomes inspired to aim them at a subject of desire, which is always the best thing that has ever happened every time it occurs. — Jennifer Culp
Virgo
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Virgo is the Grammys afterparty fit. Like many Capricorns, I have a complicated relationship with Virgos — and similarly complicated feelings about this pairing of a porcine prosthetic with a medieval hat, which Roan wore to Universal Music Group’s Grammys afterparty. (Look, she better get invited to the main event next time!) The juxtaposition is meant to be jarring, of course. The pig nose from visual effects artist Tyler Green is a playfully crass centerpiece for Roan’s otherwise elegant, almost painterly crimson attire. But what sticks out most about this look is the attention to detail and the absolute commitment to the bit.
Virgos don’t fuck around — and they think of everything. Green’s Facebook post about spotting the nose in the wild includes this amazing credit line: “Pig Nose Application by: Sasha Glasser.” In a lot of ways, Virgos are the living embodiment of an itemized account of exactly how a snout got onto a pop star’s face. (And if I’m being honest here, the reality is I’m deeply envious of Virgos because they are often better at being Capricorns than we are.) — Samantha Allen
This pic announces a “new chapter” for Chappell Roan, per her Instagram caption, and the “sorry not sorry you’ll never do better” message of “Good Luck, Babe!” certainly suggests Virgo vibes. But another Chappell video also evokes Virgo energy to my eye: “Red Wine Supernova.” Why do y’all keep falling in love with stoners? Nobody cares — least of all you at the start of a relationship — but you know they’ll always end up getting on your nerves. — Jennifer Culp
Libra
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Libra is the Nylon princess look. I immediately pegged this look for Libra and thought, “Ugh, Libras are going to be mad at being assigned the ‘princess’ archetype again.” Then I saw Chappell’s inspiration for the makeup and realized that Libras are just gonna have to stay mad about it. Y’all are never beating the world-weary sparkle-face allegations! Stay pretty and exhausted (not like you can really help that part, lol), put on your pointy veil hat, and deal with it.
Come to think of it, Libra resembles the whole video for “Naked in Manhattan.” Yeah, yeah, Chappell’s own sun sign Pisces gets the lyrical shout-out in the song, but just check out the aesthetic. Excruciatingly airy. — Jennifer Culp
Scorpio
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Scorpio is Bonnaroo. Flouncy latex and black-stitch brows while showing out flamboyantly on a stage in Tennessee? I’m not sure how it’s geographically possible, but this is literally how every Scorpio on earth (including myself) is born. In its early days, Bonnaroo was known for hosting acts like Widespread Panic, Old Crow Medicine Show, and Béla Fleck and the Flecktones. Love them and everything, they’re great, but they all seriously lacked in their swingy latex miniskirt game… and over 20 years after the festival’s beginning, Chappell Roan has arrived to show them the way. Tim Burton just wishes one of his early animated movies starred Chappell in her outfit from Bonnaroo 2024! “Club kids never left this bitch,” Roan herself wrote in the caption on her post about this look, and in this context? “This bitch” is Scorpio. — Jennifer Culp
Reader, I first met our resident astrologer Jennifer “Scorpio” Culp in her home state of Tennessee. One October when I came to visit her, she did my makeup in the style of a haunted doll, pulled my hair into pigtails, and took me to a Halloween costume contest at a local dive bar, where I came in second place despite not knowing anyone in her smallish town. Being kinda Coraline-coded in the American South just comes naturally to her, so I’m not at all surprised this is her pick, and I fully endorse it. — Samantha Allen
Sagittarius
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Sagittarius is mini golf Tinkerbell. I didn’t see this now-42-week-old outfit until moments before writing this paragraph. I have no clue as to its occasion — [Editor’s note: I believe it’s the Fun Acres Golf Course in Springfield, Missouri, where she filmed portions of the “Hot to Go!” video. — Samantha Allen] — but I’m obsessed. It’s simple, it’s out of drag, it’s offstage, but based on that metric, it’s my personal favorite Chappell Roan look to date.
My favorite sign is every sign, but Sagittarius is just a little bit extra favorite, and this type of nonsense is why. It’s performative, but sort of obliviously so, and I can’t resist the allure of an egregiously charming dumbass physically blocking traffic with an overtly on-the-nose announcement of her own magnificent presence! In this case, the assignment is “astroturf,” and Midwest Tinkerbell has schooled us all into astonishment at her actualization of the theme. Clap, clap to keep her alive on the putt-putt course!
My runner-up Chappell/Sag selection is her biker outfit from an ostensible “Femininomenon” video that never came to fruition, but slays, because of, well, everything but especially the dolphin and Missouri patches. — Jennifer Culp
Aside from the fact that my favorite Sagittarius lives in Missouri, few activities are more Sag-coded than mini golf. The archers among us love whimsical side quests, and putt-putt is basically 18 silly, ultimately meaningless tasks chained together. My broken Capricorn brain (see immediately below) means that I’m focused on making par even when I’m standing in front of a plastic brontosaurus, but Sagittarians can actually have fun on the course and look like magical gay fairies while doing it. — Samantha Allen
Capricorn
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Capricorn is angel wings. As a Capricorn myself, it feels almost arrogant to assign the angel look to my own sign. But as I type that sentence, I realize that choice is actually perfect because a little bit of (healthy, I tell myself) arrogance is part of our whole deal. It’s not my fault I’m correct about almost everything! I was born this way! But there’s an insecurity beneath every sea goat’s self-confidence. Roan’s stylist, Genesis Webb, told Vulture that Roan’s angel wings were “way worse and way smaller” than the magnificently weighty fins she dons for her more recent butterfly appearances, and that’s often how I feel, no matter how much my dear friend and co-author Jennifer Culp protests: like I’m some more boring version of a flashier, prettier thing I could be. Instead, I’m choosing to see the good of Capricorn in this all-white, pearl-draped, almost bridal garb. We may think we’re more angelic than we actually are, but damn it, we pull it off sometimes. — Samantha Allen
Capricorns are the best of us all, truly earth angels. The rest of the zodiac is fortunate that they choose to remain on the ground and help make everything function instead of flying away to loftier locales. — Jennifer Culp
Aquarius
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Aquarius is the Statue of Liberty. Nobody loves liberty like an Aquarian! Also, marijuana has now been legal in enough places for long enough that barely anybody alive can remember the previous requirement of playing a few rounds of Forza with the plug. It’s a bit of a headtrip to have once been a conscious entity in 2004 and to presently observe this image in 2024. We are truly living in the future! Anyway, every Aquarius on the planet is part alien, and underneath a few layers of epidermis, they’re all a faint shade of green. But extra-planetary though their souls may be, Aquarians seriously care about politics down here on Earth. Members of the fixed air sign want to ensure that everyone can be exactly as weird as they want to be. — Jennifer Culp
Only Aquarians could earnestly talk about “liberty, justice, and freedom for all” moments after emerging from a red apple that looks like the Richard Scarry car. Y’all are bizarre, but your commitment to autonomy is absolutely vital for the rest of us. — Samantha Allen
Pisces
Pisces is the Tiny Desk Concert. If every Pisces on earth could pour out their soul for millions of loving viewers and be widely hailed as artistic geniuses, would they finally feel unburdened? Or would they just get even deeper in their feelings? Roan, a Pisces herself, seems to have answered that question for us with her recent tearful acknowledgement that it’s been “really hard to keep up” with her own success — a rare, bracingly honest peek into the pressures of fame as it occurs. It’s perhaps fitting that one of her most iconic looks ever is also, in my opinion, the best representative of her own sun sign. Sterling Tull’s doll-like face for Chappell’s NPR concert, with dramatic blue shadow splashed like shimmering lagoons over a base of pasty white foundation, lives somewhere in the blurry intersection of artistry and tragedy — a place our fishy friends know perhaps too well. — Samantha Allen
“Casual” is just, like, the epitome of the early twenties Piscean experience. Apologies for blowing up y’all’s spot, but I know a few Pisces, and the whole falling in love with a bloodthirsty sea monster who doesn’t deserve your affection, only to find yourself eventually humiliated in an abandonment and anger routine is a Piscean canon event that cannot be interfered with. Chappell Roan just nailed it with this one, uncomfortably honest in any guise. — Jennifer Culp
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