The lights dim over Mohegan Sun Arena, and Harry Styles takes the stage. He’s wearing reddish orange Gucci pants and a glittery gold top. Amidst the deafening screams and blinding spotlights, all of your focus is on the spectacle in front of you. You can barely remember what you’re wearing, never mind what the person next to you is wearing. But up until that very moment, the outfits we chose felt so important.
So let’s take a few steps back. When preparing to attend Love On Tour, it is so easy to spend weeks agonizing over what to wear. Despite the fact that all of the attention is on Harry Styles and not on any individual attendant, there is a pressure to live up to what everyone else is wearing. So you scroll through Instagram posts; you see blazers, boas, and dresses that people have waited months to wear. Some recreate Harry’s past iconic looks, and others break out the vintage pieces they’ve been dying to finally debut. So the second I entered Mohegan Sun on Saturday, I knew I would be captivated.
There was a sea of bright colors, boas, flared pants, gogo boots, and people wearing recreations of Harry’s past looks (the most common being outfits inspired by the album cover, that patchwork cardigan that everyone died for, and the Grammy’s outfit). It was easy to get overwhelmed by everything going on, but I knew I wanted to find out more.
I started out easy. The first person I spoke to was on a Starbucks line in Mohegan. She was wearing green wide leg pants and a white corset-like top, and she had crystals strategically placed around her eyes. We had already begun talking and bonding over the horrible line experience, so I gently broached the subject of her outfit. She excitedly told me that she planned way in advance and bought two potential outfits with similar factors (“big pants, small shirt”), and her main goal was to be comfy and simple but still feel pretty. This was a sentiment that we agreed on, as I was not one to go above and beyond for a concert, but I still wanted to look nice.
After that, I made my way through dozens of people taking pictures, which I definitely ended up in the background of. Along the way, I started talking to a girl whose outfit caught my attention straight away. She was wearing cherry earrings, a skirt made of tinsel, and fishnets with crystals on them. She was so kind and immediately lit up when I asked about her to talk about her outfit. She started by sharing that the skirt was homemade and it was all planned in advance. She excitedly said that Harry Styles influences her everyday style a lot, and when I asked how she felt about Love On Tour fan fashion as a whole, she told me, “I love the community Harry creates because I feel like anybody can wear anything and they will be accepted.” This was further proven later when Harry stood on stage urging everyone in the crowd to be whoever they’ve always wanted to be that night.
The final person I talked to was wearing an outfit that seemed to be inspired by the Fine Line album cover look and clutching a knit hat (that looked eerily similar to the one that would later be thrown on stage and put on by Harry Styles himself, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves). They said that they had just gotten their ticket about a month before and immediately started planning the outfit. Now, a month sounds like more than enough time to plan an outfit for a concert, but this one was different. For some reason, a Harry Styles concert is a fashion show at the same time.
As I walked towards the merch stand and quickly passed it when I saw how long the line was, I got the best idea of the overall fashion of the night. There were people on the line dressed casually, people dressed in heels and dresses, people wearing nearly exact replicas of Harry’s looks, and people who looked like they came straight out of the 70s. It was captivating and intriguing and so, so hard not to stare at.
My main takeaway from observing all of the outfits at Love On Tour is that people really did take it as a chance to wear whatever they wanted to. Some people wanted to wear jeans and a t-shirt. Others wanted to wear bright patterns, boas, and so many sparkles, but not a single one of them looked out of place. The entire experience reminded me that we all waited nearly two years for this tour, and not a single person would take it for granted. When Harry left the stage and the main lights came back on, my attention was drawn to the crowd once again. And if the floor full of feathers and glitter left behind was anything to go by, I think everyone had fun.