Harry Styles, Patron Saint Of Menswear
The Grammys have a strange effect on awards season. Its red carpet teems with proper global superstars, and the fact that it's shoulder-barged itself into the first available date on the calendar means that everything that comes after – especially our homegrown award shows like the Brits – sits in its shadow. But there is some light in the darkness, and we don't just mean Billie Eilish and her big croony Bond song. No, we're talking Harry Styles, in lacy white, singing live – an angel in corporeal form.
Now there's some pride to be had in the fact he's British, and a big name. We have relatively few of those these days. But it's also the fact that Styles is forever changing the idea of what a frontman looks like. Where One Direction had Simon Cowell approving every last psoriasis-hued V-neck, Styles is now free from the shackles of boybandism: he experiments with clothes once associated with the opposite sex. He takes jewellery cues from Dutch ladies in famous paintings. He wears nail polish. He wears lots of trends together that shouldn't work but do.
And he also wears white, lacy boiler suits, which look like the kind of thing they might issue to the chimney sweeps in heaven. At a ceremony where the rest of the red carpet was all about trends-by-numbers, the 26-year-old once again led the way into the future. This is modern, mature, confident Harry Styles, who no longer relies on wardrobe mimicry – the ragtag Mick Jagger, the Bowie-a-like big suits. Instead, we've got Harry Styles doing Harry Styles, and shockingly enough, nobody else does Harry Styles this well.
At the moment, anyway. In spin cycle of pop culture's big soapy washing machine, music execs will be nursing their hangovers this morning with an espresso and stack of 'Harry Styles types' polaroids. But now, enjoy a newly-canonised Styles: bringer of the menswear lighter, and saviour of the Brit Awards.
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