Feather boas and bald caps: the wacky world of concert fashion

LIKE MANY pop stars, Pitbull exudes sexual confidence. In his hit song of 2009, “I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho)”, the American rapper repeats that phrase no fewer than 16 times. Yet Pitbull seems to have got it slightly wrong. His fans do not want him: they want to look like him.

At every stop on his European tour, fans—most of them women—have been dressing as the artist. They have been donning suits, fake goatees and, crucially, bald caps (see picture). The fact that this looks ludicrous rather than stylish seems to only add to their merriment. In June, when Pitbull was performing in Britain, searches for bald caps surged by an estimated 760%.

The dressing-up trend is harmless fun. Yet it reveals a lot about fandom, and the way people enjoy concerts today. It is no longer the done thing to buy a ticket to a gig and turn up in any old kit: instead, the most committed fans demonstrate their affection for the artist by wearing the right stuff. That means parkas for Oasis, mini skirts for Sabrina Carpenter and cowboy gear for Beyoncé’s latest tour.

This is not entirely new: people wore Ziggy Stardust face paint to watch David Bowie perform in the early 1970s and mimicked their favourite Spice Girl in the 1990s. But what has changed is the breadth and depth of fans’ devotion to fancy dress. On TikTok hundreds of thousands of #ConcertOutfit videos show fans trading ideas for gigs of all genres. Many start preparing their outfits months in advance. Some talk about what they will wear to an event they have not yet acquired a ticket for.

Chappell Roan, an American singer-songwriter, sets themes for her shows and encourages followers to discuss their outfits on Discord, a messaging platform. Brands and fashion labels have curated concert-specific collections; Fanatics and Complex launched a range with Blackpink, a K-pop group, for the American leg of their tour. “It’s a feedback loop,” Lucy Bennett, a specialist in fan culture at Cardiff University, says. “Fans start it, artists amplify it and brands follow.”

The pandemic provided an impetus. After months of being cooped up at home, people celebrated being in stadiums rather than on the sofa by wearing flamboyant apparel. When Harry Styles’s “Love on Tour” gigs were able to go ahead in 2021 after delays, fans copied his outfits and turned up in a riot of colour. (Sales of feather boas, of the sort that he had worn to the Grammys that year, took flight.) By making a special effort, Mr Styles’s admirers conveyed that they did not take the concert—or him—for granted.

The same was true of Taylor Swift’s Eras tour. Tickets were so hard to obtain that many who managed to snag one felt the need to prove their Swiftie credentials. Some created detailed replicas of her past outfits or fashioned looks based on obscure lyrical references. The theme of the tour—a retrospective of the pop star’s 11 studio albums—gave fans plenty of inspiration, from the pastel-hued “Lover” record to the snake-themed “Reputation”.

Musicians are more likely than other kinds of entertainer to inspire such dedication. According to a study by Deloitte, a consultancy, 37% of people regard their love of a particular musician to be “extremely or somewhat important to their identity”, more than their support of a sports team (35%), tv show (27%) or movie franchise (21%). The generations who most cherish their fandom, Gen Z and millennials, are also the generations who strongly value experiences. If you are paying handsomely to attend a concert—the average price of a ticket to Ms Swift’s tour was $250, and climbed to $7,000 on resale sites—you may as well go all out.

Concerts today are immersive spectacles with custom-built stages, lavish digital designs, props and pyrotechnics. Clothes offer a way to participate in the extravaganza and feel part of a community of like-minded folk. When fans dress up, it “blurs the line between performer and audience, where the live music show is not just on stage any more, but instead, it’s all around you”, says Ms Bennett. Watching Pitbull, in short, is a lot more fun if you’re surrounded by thousands of people in bald caps. ■