Artist Details How Working with Harry Styles Changed Her Life — and Led to Her Engagement! (Exclusive)

Artist Elena Fiorenza Gatti speaks with PEOPLE about the immense impact Harry Styles had on her career — and relationship with her fiancé John Postlethwait

• Elena Fiorenza Gatti designed the iconic tour visuals and merch used during Styles’ Love on Tour in 2021 — an opportunity that kickstarted her art career 

• Gatti got engaged to her longtime boyfriend John Postlethwait on June 22

• A few days before the proposal, Gatti bought three nail colors from Styles’ beauty brand Pleasing and painted her nails with them

Elena Fiorenza Gatti always dreamed of being an artist, but she never thought her career — and her relationship with her fiancé, John Postlethwait — would flourish because of her work with one of the music's biggest stars. 

Gatti, 26, first met Postlethwait, 27, in an art class at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2018. "We needed to make groups for a group project and I wanted to start my own group,” Gatti tells PEOPLE. After she put her name on the board, “John beelined to the board and put his name right under mine and I was like, ‘Who is this guy?' "

From there, the two became best friends and “quickly fell in love."

“I've never experienced anything like that,” Gatti says. "Instantly when I met him, I was like, ‘Yep, that's my person.’ Not a doubt in my mind."

With encouragement from Postlethwait, she then started an art page on Instagram in 2019 called Fiorenza Art — a passion project that Gatti worked on in addition to her full-time advertising job. Two years later, Styles' team came across Gatti's Instagram page and asked her to design art for the singer's Love on Tour in 2021.

"[Working with Styles] was my first big music gig,” Gatti says. “[The team] sent me a vague DM and email to set up the call and they told me then it was for Harry."

Gatti designed Styles' now-iconic rabbit artwork — her signature design — that was used in Styles' tour merch and videos during the 2021 leg of his tour. Through the process, she and Postlethwait “dove into the world of Harry Styles together."

"I have a record player in my room and I remember and we bought [Fine Line] and we'd blast it and just be dancing to it in my room," she says. "We became like really big fans together."

After completing the project, she remembers “watching the TikTok [live of the first Love on Tour show], and John's just crying.”

“He was so happy and he's like, ‘I can't believe you did it,' " she says. "He was very emotional during the entire process, because he knew how hard I've been working to become an artist. It was exciting and surreal for him and it didn't really hit me at all until after the opportunity.”

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In September 2021, Styles invited Gatti to attend his Love on Tour show in Chicago and she brought her sister and Postlethwait with her.

“[When Harry] did the shout-out on stage at the Chicago show, there are videos of John just crying and holding me,” she says. “It was so cool, being there live, dancing to the music together. It was seriously one of the most fun nights John and I have ever had together, besides our engagement"

Fast-forward to June 2024, when Postlethwait popped the question.

Before the proposal, Gatti and her sister visited the Pleasing Astro Milk Bar — a pop-up store for Styles’ beauty brand in Chicago. “We knew that the pop-up was coming to Chicago and we were so excited,” Gatti explains. “We're like, ‘Yes, we have to [go].’ My sister knew about the proposal for months, so she knew what she was doing and she wanted me to pick a nail polish and paint my nails.”

Gatti says that her sister was “getting nervous when she saw me pick three colors" — Syrupberry, Sprouting and Bell Boy Blue. But the unique and vibrant choice seemed to be the right one for the big moment.

Postlethwait proposed to Gatti at their favorite spot near Lake Michigan in Chicago, where they would often visit during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. "I would always go there to draw, and John would meet me there, and he would watch me,” she tells PEOPLE. “We’d catch up about the day, and we’d go home to our separate apartments.” 

“He picked [the spot to propose at] because it's kind of where my art career started in a way,” she says. “It’s where it really started to blossom because I drew the rabbits there all the time and it was the spot where John and I had a big conversation about leaving my job to pursue art full time.”

When Gatti looks back over the last few years, she credits Postlethwait with encouraging her to follow her passion, which led to “getting the biggest gig of my entire life with Harry, which completely changed the trajectory of my life and my career.”

“We never would have thought that us listening to Harry and dancing in my bedroom would turn into us dancing, crying and holding each other at the tour together thinking, ‘This is so crazy that this is actually happening,' " Gatti reflects.

“This experience gave John and I so many memories that I wouldn't trade for the world. For us, enjoying those little things that brought us closer, and celebrating our wins together is so so special."

Now, the couple is looking ahead at the big day: Sept. 13, 2025. They'll, of course, nod to Styles "1000%," says Gatti. "The bunnies will make an appearance at the wedding for sure," the bride-to-be tells PEOPLE, adding that they also plan on asking their reception band to learn some of Styles' songs.

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