A music magazine made for young people by young people.
Costume culture
COSTUME CULTURE
Dressing up is a fantasy game we play as children but the feeling and joy that we get from playing dress up carries us into adolescence and adulthood, dressing up for concerts has -especially in recent years- become a part of the whole experience, particularly for large tours and productions. Large tours almost come with their own dresscodes and fan-established outfits, themes and accessories.Taylor Swift's Eras Tour in 2024 sparked trends of friendship bracelet trading and collecting throughout cities managing to connected fans who had traveled from a wide span of places through being able to collect and swap handmade beaded bracelets with lyrics,albums and references on, but dressing up for concerts has only really become a thing in the past 10 years.Yes, people have always worn fun and elaborate outfits for concerts/gigs people have always planned outfits and dressed up wearing merchandise or tour tshirts, but the views of dressing as a generic nice dress event has shifted into dressing for / like the artist, or in costume and actual fancy dress.
Tours come with staple accessories and key pieces that fans collectively wear; Harry Styles' Love On Tour meant feather boas of all kinds, Beyonce's Cowboy Carter Tour cowboy hat trend, Oasis' reunion tour meant their old trend of bucket hats was resurfaced, The Eras Tour friendship bracelets, Pitbull concerts and bald caps or more recently Olivia Dean's The Art Of Loving Tour and polka dots Global tours and their fan dress codes dont stop at accessories however, in major cities its clear when tours are in town as when walking to,from or nearby a venue its obvious who is headed to the concert, Fans are easily spotted outside in their distinctive outfits and glam. Even smaller tours and local shows have managed to accumulate an overall style and theme between all fan outfits, styles of clothing seem to match up with music genres and stereotypical listeners of a certain genre fit into sub categories of general style, however there are always exceptions to this.The style isn't always made by artists alone, people tend to listen to the artist that aligns with their own style rather than change their style for an artist. Heavier rock music drives in more alternative styles and music by softer pop girls may drive in audiences wearing babydoll dresses and more feminine silhouettes. So style isn't exclusive to each and every individual artist but more so their genera and their own personal styles, yet for mainstream stadium tours they tend to develop their own subcategory of style and more so theming.
Concerts in the mid 2010s meant face gems, glitter eyeshadow basic skirts and trousers and artist tshirts, put together yet simple and easily attainable outfits that don't require weeks of planning ahead and extremely out there outfits. This spike in real elaborate outfits is partly social media's blame, obviously social media apps like twitter and instagram were incredibly popular