Browsers can’t just all the sudden make every aspect of a <select> and <option>s styleable, otherwise historical CSS that didn’t apply to them all the sudden does and it would wreak untold havoc on websites. The web doesn’t like to roll like that, and I applaud it for that backwards compatibility. So… there needed to be an opt-in to make it work. A new element can work for that, which for a hot minute seemed like it would be <selectmenu>. But the progressive enhancement story for that basically sucked. So the new opt-in looks like it will be CSS triggered
Select the elements look like they will be style-able in HML in 2025.