This article originally appeared on Noisey US.
On a crisp morning in April I screamed into the void, “Someone give me 2000 words to write about why Harry Styles’s sense of fashion is a small beacon of hope in these trying times.”
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And I never expected a real response. I expected the normal things – a couple thousand likes, a few hundred RTs, a proposal from Harry himself – but never a commission to do exactly what I’d suggested, never the chance to take off my metaphorical boot and bang it on the table while shouting about how right I am about everything all the time (because I am). I never expected a miracle.
Which was my own fuck-up. As our post-1D world burns down around us, I’ve learned that even the smallest of silver linings have become the comforters with which we’ve shielded ourselves. Last year, the silver lining was that Zayn’s debut was far better than the video for “PILLOW TALK” and it was a shinier silver lining that Harry Styles’s turn in Dunkirk looked better than Timberlake’s cinematic debut in Edison. But this year, Harry has extended the shiniest silver thermal blanket of all: his sense of fashion.
It will save us all.
To start, Harry isn’t re-inventing the wheel. In fact, he’s brazenly co-opting the look I embraced back circa 1998 in the proud belief that my own plaid pants would guarantee a spot in my elementary school’s social elite. (They did not).
But where I made the mistake of pairing plaid with a tattletale attitude – and fluorescent green turtleneck – Harry learned from my mistakes and ventured down the road of early-days Mick Jagger, capitalising on the fact even a baby could recognise that the two music phenoms look like twins whose time-travelling parents insisted they dress the same way. Which, like, fair: Harry’s been vocal about building his solo album around the legends of classic rock. So by reminding us that he could be a version of Mick who cares more about kale than about drugs, he’s keeping both feet firmly planted in the Accessible Boy Band™ and grown-ass man camps.
