As far as stars go, Harry Styles is among the few who burn bright. Nearly ten years ago, the then-teen burst onto the scene as part of One Direction, a five-piece meteor that pierced a starved stratosphere without any warning. As time has passed, leaving what was once our decade’s best boy band in pieces, Styles has emerged the most successful (and critically adored) of what remains. His vocal range has grown to near Herculean strength, his every move tracked with the fiercest of public scrutiny and attention. But there’s something more to Styles that makes him so vital right now. Maybe it’s his moon crater dimples. Maybe it’s his kinship with Stevie Nicks, who praises him as her “little muse.” Maybe it’s his ability to flawlessly rock a sequined jumpsuit. Maybe it’s something deeper, something we can’t possibly put our finger on, a mystical aura beyond description that draws us to him in droves. What’s irrefutable, though, is that the 25-year-old Styles propagates a new form of starpower.
Following One Direction’s earth-shattering split in 2016 (technically they’re “on a break”), Styles rocketed to another dimension of fame as a solo artist. On first glance, it’s easy to liken the adoration to the rock star fanaticism of the 1970s—and Styles makes the comparison easy, dolled up in pussybow blouses, the spitting image of a young Mick Jagger. But that’d be only half his story. He might dress like he just popped in for tea from another decade, but his mentality is that of a new generation—one more sympathetic, one that embraces fluidity and individuality, and one that, simply wants to see the world a little bit brighter.
During the rollout of his new album, Fine Line, Styles has spoken often and at length about his mission statements, or lack thereof. A newly-minted arena-selling rock star, Styles is—intentionally or otherwise—using his platform to break down expectations and convention. “What’s feminine and what’s masculine … it’s like there are no lines any more,” he said in a recent interview. “If I see a nice shirt and get told, ‘But it’s for ladies.’ I think: ‘Okaaaay? Doesn’t make me want to wear it less though.’ I think the moment you feel more comfortable with yourself, it all becomes a lot easier,” he told a Guardian reporter this weekend.
Styles exists, in his fans’ eyes, like his heroes of yesteryear, untethered to outdated, gendered categories. Millions of young, impressionable eyes are watching and learning from his example, one that seeks to reverse course on our perception of pop music—long a feminized genre, which degrades and discredits its power and impact. Rock, conversely, is seen as pop’s older, wiser brother. Because our outdated perceptions of both genres feel so inexorably embedded in our understanding of western music, younger generations are (understandably!) looking for more liquidity. We want stars like Harry Styles to show us the way.
From platform shoes to a flash and panache visible from space, Styles has incorporated the past into his present to bring us into the future. That includes his reverence for ‘70s glam rock, the U.K. movement that championed the style of Oscar Wilde and Little Richard and celebrated ambiguity and fluidity. English music journalist Simon Reynolds described glam as something that “seems to hark backward and step forward at the same time.”
It’s easy to look at glam as a major influence in retrospect, but America didn’t embrace it the way that the U.K. did. We weren’t willing to watch glam gleefully detonate gender conventions with its explicit queerness, ambiguity, and camp. Nearly fifty years later, though, we’re ready for that revolution, and Styles has taken up that mission, mining glam’s influences and updating them for modern times. Recently, he teamed up with Gucci’s Alessandro Michele—a designer who kick-started fashion’s genderless revolution, according to this very magazine—from whom he’s accumulated a colossal and fabulous collection of stellar, glammy suits. Lightning bolt-bedazzled? Check. Double-breasted jumpsuit? Check. The kind of suit a Disney princess might sport were she more woke? Check, check, check.