Six girls, clad in slate grey schoolgirl uniforms, stand on stage, eyes watery and wide. Their tears are well-founded. Sophia Laforteza, Manon Bannerman, Daniela Avanzini, Lara Raj, Megan Skiendiel, and Yoonchae have, for the past two years, worked to disprove the age-old adage that stars are merely born and not made. At this moment—mid-summer 2023—they’ve just been officially ordained as popstars by way of a Netflix-sponsored competitive reality show. They are now part of a brand new global girl group that will manage to entrench itself in the pop cultural zeitgeist almost immediately.

It’s rare to be able to pinpoint the very inception of a cultural phenomenon; it is a heady thing to know that, from your couch, you are partaking in a moment that will be relevant to pop culture for years to come. For better or worse, we were all voyeurs as Netflix turned the dreams and aspirations of teenage girls all over the world into an interactive game courtesy of their collaboration with HYBE X GEFFEN for Pop Star Academy: KATSEYE. We watched as the final six were announced, standing onstage in schoolgirl uniforms, and KATSEYE was born.

Two years later, we’re still watching. Successive hits, a social media presence so endlessly memeable it rivals that of working comedians, and a plethora of viral live performances have turned KATSEYE into the very thing they trained for years to become: stars.

Those same six girls now sit in a random dance studio (I will learn this later when the girls unceremoniously pick up whatever device they’ve been staring at all morning to offer me a tour of the space), clad in what looks like rehearsal gear—tank tops and dark joggers stark against the white industrial-looking wall they’re sat in front of. We’re doing this over Zoom, me in Leicester, UK, them in LA. It is, in many ways, an interview of two halves. The first is marked by an uncharacteristic demureness, part muted politeness as they try to suss me out, part press tour-aided exhaustion. They’ve worked tirelessly on the rollout of their second EP Beautiful Chaos; not even Manon’s birthday puts a dent in their promotional schedule. When I ask her what she’s done to celebrate her 23rd, her answer is coy.

“Oh, you know. This and that.”

We get all the formal questions out of the way in this first part: What was the process like for putting this body of work together?

As is often the case when the girls talk music, Lara takes the wheel. “This is just how we work as of right now, but we’ll get demos, we’ll cut them in the studio, and add our own flair. A lot of the creative work really goes in[to] the performance. We spend a lot of time every day in the studio, dancing and practicing everything like our facials. I can’t even explain how much work goes into us all synchronizing well. Just lots and lots of hard work.”

It is said that the only fair test of a musician’s artistry is the stage. Curated earworms and catchy hooks are heightened in KATSEYE’s hands thanks to some extraordinary performances. Take, for instance, the release of their song-of-the-summer, 2025’s “Gnarly.” The erudite hyperpop track stirred up conversation almost immediately, with its intricate choreography and cheeky hooks. Unsurprisingly, my mention of “Gnarly” seems to be the thing that jolts the girls awake.

“We really saw so much potential with the song,” Megan tells me. “We wanted to make it ours. And then when we started practicing, we had so much fun…especially with the dance. The most iconic thing about ‘Gnarly’ is the performance. We were going crazy. When we put it out, there were a lot of mixed reactions because it’s so different from what we’ve done before. I feel like [people] were just shocked. When we performed it for the first time with the dance, with the whole vibe, everyone switched up and we saw it happen in real time. It was actually so crazy, but we knew it was going to happen.”

The irony here is that K-pop fans will often lament the deadened, formulaic output of pop acts in the same breath they deride any music that dares push the needle forward. There is no pleasing the faceless mass on the internet hell-bent on shoving a group as allergic to labels as they are to bad performances into convenient little boxes. Female artists have had to contend with this compulsive mantra of stay neat, stay pretty, stay predictable from the very start. Looking to those women like guides has helped keep the group’s spirits up.

“Not to compare ourselves to Lady Gaga, but her journey is such a beautiful one to look at in our position and really any artist’s position,” Lara notes. “People hated her [at the start] because they didn’t understand her, and it was uncomfortable. We kept talking about her and saying that Gaga is the person who will get us through this.”

Manon and Sophia chime in with the name of another woman who knew how to ruffle some feathers: “Madonna too.”

Sophia captures their dilemma. “We’re learning that it’s hard to be ahead.”

There’s a defiance in the KATSEYE girls that makes it really easy to root for them. While a lot of their predecessors like Little Mix and Fifth Harmony worked overtime to make sure all the members were going to be viewed through the same Eurocentric lens to appeal to fans, KATSEYE wears their diversity with self-assuredness: it’s Lara wearing her bindi in concept photos, it’s Yoonchae teaching us how she does her aegyo sal in a get ready with me video; it’s Daniela singing a verse in her mother tongue on their latest single, “Gabriela.”

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“I’ve always wanted to have music out in Spanish,” shares Daniela. “I spoke to the team [about how] I’d love to do a verse in Spanish…I’m so glad it’s out now. Seeing everyone’s reactions honestly makes me so, so happy. I feel like people are still figuring out that I’m Latina and that I speak Spanish because there’s new fans every single day.”

Manon, our Black girl in the center, pays homage to the hair culture she grew up obsessed with in the “Gnarly” music video, the song title adorning the side of her head, braided in.

“Growing up in Switzerland,” she says, “it was kind of hard to find someone who could, first of all, even braid my hair, but second of all, it was so expensive—kind of a Black girl in a white country experience, but I was just trying to figure my hair out on my own, watching YouTube tutorials, braiding it myself. Hair has always been a very big part of me. I’m obsessed with it. There’s so much history connected to it.”

While many are grateful to see themselves and their cultures reflected so proudly by these young women, being non-white and in the public eye is to attract the sort of racialized online abuse fandom has normalized. As Lara once aptly put it: bitches be racist. It’s hard not to view the hard work of KATSEYE—at least in part—as a reaction to the expected bad-faith criticism and cruelty they’re forced to fend off, almost as an attempt to try and out achieve their marginalisation.

On a whim, I ask: Who is the biggest perfectionist?‍

Their answer is both unsurprising and slightly saddening.

“We’re literally a group of perfectionists,” Sophia says. “In Korea, we had to record this dance performance for ‘Gnarly’ called Studio Choom. When we flew to Korea, that was the first thing we filmed for ‘Gnarly’ and we were all by the video monitor, critiquing ourselves so much like we have to get it perfect. We just have to.” It supposedly got so bad that the staff called an intervention part way through the recording session in an effort to get the girls to stop being so self-critical.

“They had to call us into a back room and tell us to calm down and have fun because we were already doing really well. But we couldn’t see that,” Manon shares, nodding and adding, “The teaser had come out and people already had so much to say, so we felt extra pressure to really deliver.”

The conversation takes a delightfully unserious turn around this point when someone off camera hands the girls iced coffees like some phantom barista.

A plethora of apologies come my way, delayed by their lagging connection.

“I’m so sorry,” Manon giggles as she grabs her and Megan each a cup. It serves as a letting go on both ends of the call; all formality promptly evaporates with the rattling of ice in cups and questions about my own life and accent. At one point, we all decide that the only way to continue our conversation is if the girls only talk in British accents for the remainder of the interview.

The call seems to take on the energy you’d find in a girls bathroom during a night out with friends; strangers trading earnest compliments and reassuring each other they’re having a great time. It’s silly and endearingly sweet. At another point, they all decide to lavish Sophia with attention, and tell her she’s doing a good job by literally giving her head pats and holding her hand.

“Let’s all touch our leader,” Lara says with a grin. And they do; Manon, Megan and Lara cradle her hands, Yoonchae reaches out, grinning in her direction, while Dani stretches across the table to take part in their little love fest.

“We find a way to make everything fun,” Lara admits, still in her British accent. “We always find the silliness. It’s how we get through. We have a KATSEYE sense of humor and I value that so much. I laugh with them more than I laugh with anyone else. I hope that never changes.”

It’s easy to forget that beyond all the noise, they’re a group of girls. We’re literally watching them grow up. I feel a sudden wave of protectiveness come over me as our call ends. We part ways, but our conversation lingers for days afterwards. The odds are stacked against them— fame has a disturbing way of stripping people of innocence and joy, of jading. But if anyone can beat the odds though, it’s KATSEYE. Long may they giggle. 

Photographed by Davis Bates

Styled by Jyotisha Bridges 

Written by Ayan Artan

Creative Director: Christopher Campbell

Hair: Fitch Lunar at Opus Beauty using Unite Hair 

Makeup: Valerie Vonprisk using Huda Beauty 

Flaunt Film: Jordan Moran and Maxwell Hughes

DP: Alexio Mah

Colorist: Rafaim Correia

Flaunt Film Editors: A.T. Etzweiler and Jordan Moran

Market Editor: Jaiin Kang

Styling Assistant: Guess Niumataevalu

Makeup Assistants: Elias Velasco and Drea Diaz

Production Assistant: Maria Berkowitz

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