“I bedazzled this myself,” Natasha, a concert-goer standing outside of Brooklyn Steel, explained. She was clad in a black silky robe with the words “Naked in Manhattan” written across the back. “I did it just for this concert.”
At this particular venue, it looked like Halloween had come a few weeks early. Fans of the singer Chappell Roan were lined up outside the concert venue in what could broadly be described as evening wear, for the first night of the New York leg of her Rise and Fall of a Midwestern Princess tour.
Outfits ran the gamut from cozy fleece flannel pjs paired with moccasin slippers to sexy nightgowns and intentionally exposed lingerie. One fan, Téa, used a crosswalk as her personal changing room (with a little help from her friends as body shields). The finished look consisted of a light blue Victoria’s Secret bra and a Dylan’s Candy Bar fuzzy bathrobe.
Kayleigh Rose Amstutz, who performs under the moniker Chappell Roan, announces themes for her shows on Instagram a few weeks before starting her tour. In a post from September, she wrote: “Every show I have a theme that is inspired by a song off the album!” For the New York shows, the theme was ”Slumber Party," inspired by the lyrics of her single “Naked in Manhattan,” a queer coming-of-age romance ballad. Outside the show, a security officer was requesting IDs. “If you’re not wearing pajamas, you won’t be let in,” he joked.
The phenomenon of dressing up for concerts was not invented by Chappell Roan, of course, though her instructions to fans have been notably explicit. Throughout this year, some of the biggest arena tours, including Beyonce s Renaissance Tour, Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, and Harry’s Styles’ Love On Tour, have had their respective styles and uniforms. Tik Tok and other online platforms have been flooded with outfit mood boards for the concerts—shimmery alien for Renaissance or feathery boas and fruity fits for Love On Tour.
In some ways, dressing for concerts is a time-honored tradition. As a tween, I listened to the Beatles on CDs with the angsty attitude of a girl who thinks she was born in the wrong decade. I longed to be swept up in Beatlemania. But looking back at photos from that era, you mostly see fans wearing buttons with their favorite band member, their outfits are decidedly pedestrian. At Woodstock, trends got looser—from tie-dye to nudity—but clothing was not necessarily tied to any particular musician. This continued into the eighties and nineties as fans wore ripped jeans, band t-shirts, and flannels to punk concerts.
Now, however, we re in a new mode, where the outfit you wear is as significant a part of the experience as the music you will hear. And not only are the outfits more connected to the music, there s a degree of specificity that serves as a kind of badge of honor. Beyonce’s Renaissance album and tour was an ode to and a celebration of the Black queer community and the way in which they have uplifted and inspired her music. On Chappell Roan’s tour, local drag queens are opening for her in every city—appropriate given the extent to which Chappell herself is a drag persona. The act of dressing up itself has had historic ties to queerness, and more than ever, artists are making their performances a safe space to use costumes for self-expression.