Just as the name suggests, the single ILLIT released back in November highlights the irony of the girl world by announcing they’re “NOT CUTE ANYMORE,” with lyrics like “No keyring, no hand mirror” and “Limited edition kongguksu / Matcha’s got nothing on this” that show a focus on personal taste over trends, while the girls dress up in suits and sagging pants. And yet there’s something about the music video with WONHEE doing isolation dance moves with an indifferent expression before being sent flying offstage by a laser, or just barely cracking a smile behind their palms while singing “I’m not cute anymore” in the chorus, that paradoxically screams cute. The Little Mimi version of the “NOT CUTE ANYMORE” single comes with merch created in collaboration with British brand Ashley Williams, with the figurines that couldn’t be cuter dressed up in kitschy outfits proving so popular that they sold out entirely through preorders and had to go into another round of production. The song continued to prove popular as well, reaching No. 7 on the “Billboard” Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart dated January 17, and trended across short-form videos when it was used as the background music for the so-called hood-grab shot challenge. To put it simply, the irony of a variety of girlishness that rejects cuteness at the same time that it coexists with it forms the core of ILLIT’s aesthetic—everything from their music to the messages in it and their overall style. It’s a point of view that they show so consistently that it’s now being referred to as ILLITcore.

“In the beginning, ILLITcore was closer to describing how conflicting emotions and moods can coexist than to a single aesthetic,” a BELIFT LAB creative representative explained. “It’s a sensibility where a touch of cool aloofness is layered over a cute, girlish vibe.” The rep says the styling for ILLIT’s debut song, “Magnetic,” was all about “using ribbons, frills, and lacy things, but pairing a voluminous skirt with a streetwear T-shirt, or black sneakers with a dreamy silhouette, taking different fashion languages that deliberately clash to create a new form of girlcore.” A BELIFT LAB A&R (Artists & Repertoire) representative for ILLIT added that “Magnetic” was built on “the poignant but adorable sound of pluggnb,” and that it was a balancing act that involved having “a subgenre while keeping the track from feeling too dark overall, and maintaining a certain level of danceability so choreography would be a possibility.” As a result, it was possible for sweet and lovely vibes and a melancholy mood to coexist, and for emotional depth and energetic dance to live side by side.

TikTok challenges also played a part in the success of the emotionally layered “Magnetic.” As the challenge involving moving your hands to the chorus spread, “Magnetic” surpassed one billion views and went on to win Best Viral Song at TikTok Awards Korea in 2024. A representative for ILLIT’s performance directing team at BELIFT LAB explained that they came up with the signature hand moves “while thinking about how so much short-form content is shot from the waist up and about what the sort of moves that would both perform well in that environment and look unique.” The idea of hand-gesture-driven choreography designed with short-form viewership in mind continued on with “Cherish (My Love),” “Billyeoon Goyangi (Do the Dance),” and ILLIT’s first Japanese single, “Toki Yo Tomare,” having since become the group’s signature. Since their debut, this seemingly contradictory sense of balance—the almost ironic mix of fashion choices and moods, the emotionally layered songs, the short-form-ready dance moves—has slowly been shaping what ILLITcore is.

“The most important thing for us when we first mapped out ILLIT’s visual identity was the image of proactive girls who make their own choices,” the creative representative with BELIFT LAB said, explaining how the core of ILLITcore started from an empowered view of girlhood. “Even if they’re cute in some aspects, we wanted girls to be seen not as people who need to be protected, but as confident, with an independent attitude,” describing ILLITcore as “a concept defined not by a single thing or color, but by a sense of balance where girlish chic and bubbly street style exist at the same time, all tied together by girls’ attitude where they refuse to narrowly define themselves within any of that.” ILLIT’s A&R rep likewise shared that the image they were going for with the group’s first mini album, “SUPER REAL ME,” was “the kind of ‘SUPER REAL’ girls you find in everyday life.” The main question while working on the debut album was what kind of music they should use to introduce ILLIT to the world, eventually managing to “capture the group’s personalities and real experiences through a series of interviews, then build out the vibe of the album with cute, feel-good songs that make you smile.” For example, when asked if she ever let her mind run wild at night, WONHEE simply answered, “Thinking about flying through the sky, imagining asking a genie for three wishes,” which was repurposed in “Midnight Fiction” as lyrics like “Suddenly it’s like my whole body’s a bird / I float up without any wings” and “Make a wish to my Genie.” The performance directing team rep also explained, “A lot of ILLIT’s songs have a cute design, but while the most memorable parts are simple, the main highlights of the choreography overall are dynamic steps and rhythms that make them quite challenging.” In fact, the track “jellyous” off the group’s third mini album, “bomb,” turned heads for the taxing footwork during the high-tempo “back off” part. “Girl groups these days don’t tend to do footwork to a beat that fast, so we wanted to have ILLIT switch things up.” In other words, ILLITcore isn’t stuck in a fantasy world and doesn’t represent an objectifying vision of girlhood—it’s a unique sensibility shaped by expressing, in no uncertain terms, the real energy of real girls through fashion, music, and dance taken altogether.

The track “little monster” off the same mini album is another example of the realistic image of girlhood ILLIT portrays. The song speaks to the emotional experiences of real, ordinary girls, taking all the depression and stress they deal with and describing it as a kind of “monster.” The falsetto vocals layered with autotune for the hypnotic repetition of “I don’t wanna know” in the chorus heightens the sense of melancholy even more. “The doom and gloom of ‘little monster,’ and the strange beauty that shines through it, really capture the feeling of uncertainty and inner turbulence that everyone experiences at least once in their teens,” ILLIT’s A&R rep explained. “Expressing that nostalgic aching deep in the heart—that numb yet oddly beautiful feeling—sonically” is a major pillar of ILLITcore. The BELIFT LAB creative rep likewise emphasized that the meaning embedded in the group name—“I’ll (be whatever) it (is)”—and the message of “NOT ME,” a track off “NOT CUTE ANYMORE” that’s about not letting any one thing define who you are, are both vehicles that expand ILLITcore. In the process of designing ILLIT’s visual language, “instead of establishing one immutable character or image, the focus was always on how to translate the ever-changing self into something visual. … With the premise that today I might be cute, tomorrow I might be standoffish, and in another moment I might be strong and sharp, feminine elements like ribbons or frills can always be interpreted in different ways in these totally unique contexts.” In short, the coexistence of emotions that can’t be summed up in a single phrase, and the flexibility to morph into anything, are the driving forces that build out the world of ILLITcore.

That’s why the irony ILLIT pursues with having cuteness as the central motif of “NOT CUTE ANYMORE” can be seen as a further variation on ILLITcore that expands what it stands for. ILLIT’s A&R rep described the thing that sets “NOT CUTE ANYMORE” apart the most as the fact that it “conveys the concept of a girl who’s more than just cute in a direct way by putting vocals and emotional expression front and center, rather than relying on musical tricks. … We stripped away some elements that had been core to ILLIT’s identity, like vocal chops and chiptune, and went with a spacious topline instead of a fast tempo and hook-centric structure so that the group’s voices could take center stage.” ILLIT’s performance directing team rep likewise talked about how, for the “NOT CUTE ANYMORE” choreography, “rather than rhythm-heavy isolation moves and big hand movements, we wanted to visually convey not a cute but a cool attitude through poses that keep the hands near the shoulders, chin, and head.” At the same time, they “sprinkled in details that reveal ILLIT’s uniquely playful side, like key moves focused on the upper body or the move in the chorus where they cover their faces with their hands and their faces are just barely peeking out.” This was based on “the belief that ILLITcore becomes clearer when a sense of restraint is taken together with their outgoing energy.” The BELIFT LAB creative rep also explained how the Little Mimi merch for “NOT CUTE ANYMORE” was designed “intentionally around the irony of saying you’re not cute while using figurines with an undeniably cute image,” and said they aimed to create Mimi figurines that feel cool and trendy in an ILLIT way by “layering things from their performances like lace and ribbon headsets, and streetwear touches like long, baggy jeans, over Mimi’s established cute-and-lovely aesthetic.” In this way, each new iteration of ILLITcore presented with every album takes the world of girls who, true to the group’s name, can be anything, and makes it a little bigger each time.

“ILLIT’s music spans a wide range of genres and styles, but when you actually hear the final product, there’s this distinct flavor that makes you go, ‘Ah, this is definitely an ILLIT song,’” ILLIT’s A&R rep said, explaining what ILLITcore is aiming for. “I think the force that ultimately ties all these different songs together is the theme of self that ILLIT sings about,” adding, “Just like in ‘NOT ME,’ there’s a focus on not being defined by any one thing, and that perspective naturally seeps into the lyrics. When the group expresses that with their voices and through their own personal interpretations, that’s when a song truly becomes an ILLIT song, I think.” For example, YUNAH felt like the way her voice breaks slightly in “NOT CUTE ANYMORE” on the line “limited edition kongguksu” sounded like a mistake at first, but it ultimately became one of the things that defined the song and how real it feels. “They’re the kind of group that can take a cute concept and give it more variety, whether that’s something dynamic or something kitschy, and I think they’ll be able to do even more going forward,” ILLIT’s performance directing team rep said, noting how the group’s grown more vocal about their ideas for the stage over time and are constantly striving for a more and more polished final product. Notably, “ILLITcore is less a finished product and more something undergoing a process of ongoing updates,” as the BELIFT LAB creative rep said. “Changing emotions, the cracks that appear as you grow, and the questions people ask themselves all become material for the visual side of things, and because of that, I think, even if they show a completely different side of themselves with every album, it can all still be connected as one through ILLIT.” In other words, with each album ILLIT keeps evolving—sometimes as girls who go full beauty queen with lace and bubble skirts while still putting on a casual air, sometimes as magical girls who still harbor real-world worries, and sometimes as girls in suits so big they look like they were pulled from their dads’ closets in an effort to reveal a new side of themselves. From all that personal growth, a new world emerges—one that floats on the voices of the ILLIT quintet, and, beyond them, the fantasies and realities of so many different girls from all around the globe. And that is how ILLITcore, the dynamic girl aesthetic, stays in motion.