Blue Gucci dress of Harry Styles

English singer Harry Styles wore a blue Gucci dress for Vogue's December 2020 issue, becoming the first man to appear solo on the magazine's cover. Designed by creative director of Gucci, Alessandro Michele, the dress was well received by the general public for challenging toxic masculinity and gender stereotypes.

The dress received reactions from both conservative and progressive public figures. Conservatives condemned the perceived corruption of traditional masculinity, while progressives defended Styles after the criticism. The dress generated a significant amount of conversation about sexuality, race, and privilege. It was featured at Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear, a 2022 exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Background

Harry Styles has been labelled a fashion icon and one of the most influential men in fashion by several publications. He won the British Style Award at the 2013 British Fashion Awards. In 2014, Styles started to wear Yves Saint-Laurent regularly and met stylist Harry Lambert. The following year, his wardrobe was expanded to feature Gucci, as well as small designers such as Daniel W. Fletcher. In 2016, Styles did his first solo editorial shoot with Another Man magazine. He modelled for several publications in the following years, including Rolling Stone (twice), The Face, L'Officiel Hommes, The Guardian, Music Week, and Beauty Papers. Styles became the face of three Gucci tailoring campaigns throughout 2018 and 2019, and also of their gender-neutral fragrance, Mémoire d'une Odeur.

Styles co-chaired the 2019 Met Gala alongside Gucci's creative director, Alessandro Michele. In 2019 and 2020, he wore several androgynous fashion pieces, including fishnets in the Beauty Papers shoot, a black dress in The Guardian shoot, a tutu on Saturday Night Live, and Mary Janes at the 2020 Brit Awards. On November 13, 2020, Vogue announced that Styles would be featured on the cover of their December issue as their first solo male cover star.

Design and photography

The dress, worn by Styles on Vogue's cover, is a periwinkle blue-coloured lace gown with a ruffle trim and suivez-moi-jeune-homme ribbons; it was paired with a black double-breasted tuxedo jacket. Eliza Huber from Refinery29 drew similarities between the dress and other gowns in the Gucci Fall 2020 collection. The outfit was constructed by Michele, and the Vogue shoot was photographed by Tyler Mitchell. The creative vision for the shoot was rooted in androgynous fashion, with Lionel Wendt's 1930s homoerotic portraits of Sri Lankan men and Irving Penn's 1950s photographs of Dior and Balenciaga supermodels both serving as inspirations. Other items of clothing featured in the shoot included a Harris Reed dress-and-trousers combination, a Comme des Garçons kilt, a Gucci pussy bow blouse, a Wales Bonner skirt, and a Maison Margiela trench coat.

Reception

The dress was met with mixed reception. According to Grazia's Isabelle Truman, "thousands of people worldwide" praised Styles for challenging toxic masculinity and gender roles, emulating other musicians such as David Bowie, Freddie Mercury, Elton John, and Prince. Huber praised the shoot and thought that the dress was a natural progression of his tendency to buck gender norms in fashion; she wrote although he was not the first male celebrity to wear a dress, he was among the first to do it on a global level. In response to the commotion caused by the dress, The Daily Telegraph's Chris Harvey highlighted other male celebrities who donned gowns before Styles, including Bowie, Brad Pitt, Kurt Cobain, Young Thug, and Iggy Pop.

Several conservative political commentators criticised the outfit for lacking masculinity. Ben Shapiro said it was "a referendum on masculinity for men to wear floofy dresses", and Piers Morgan on Good Morning Britain called the dress "a bit weird" and asked, "why do men need to wear dresses?" Politician Ted Cruz compared the Vogue cover to a portrait of Bill Clinton in a dress that sex offender Jeffrey Epstein displayed on his wall. Candace Owens expressed her disapproval of the cover in a tweet: "There is no society that can survive without strong men. The East knows this. In the west, the steady feminization of our men at the same time that Marxism is being taught to our children is not a coincidence. It is an outright attack. Bring back manly men." Styles responded one month later by sharing an image of himself eating a banana and wearing a baby blue suit with a ruffled blouse, accompanied by the caption "bring back manly men", referencing Owens's tweet. Several progressive public figures defended Styles following the conservative criticism, including politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, actress Olivia Wilde, activist Jameela Jamil, and actor Elijah Wood.

Black gay actor Billy Porter and non-binary performance artist Alok Vaid-Menon both expressed mixed feelings about the Vogue cover. The latter conveyed their happiness at witnessing Styles being honoured for openly defying gendered fashion standards, but believed that "white men should [not] be upheld as the face of gender neutral fashion" because "trans femmes of color started this and continue to face the backlash from it". In an interview in October 2021, Porter offered a more scathing critique of Styles and the cover. According to Porter, "he doesn't care, he's just doing it because it's the thing to do. This is politics for me. This is my life. I had to fight my entire life to get to the place where I could wear a dress to the Oscars [...] All he has to do is be white and straight." He later apologized for centering Styles in the conversation: "It's not about you. The conversation is not about you."

Legacy

The dress cemented Styles's status as a fashion icon, and he was voted GQ's "Most Stylish Man of the Year" in 2020. He was inducted as part of The Business of Fashion's Class of 2022, an index of people that shaped the global fashion industry. Following the dress controversy, Lambert garnered significant media attention for being the man who "put Harry Styles in a dress" and his "secret style weapon". Singer Charlotte Sands wrote a song called "Dress", inspired by the Vogue cover look; it went viral on TikTok and has been added to over 37,000 Spotify playlists.

In March 2022, the blue dress was featured at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London as part of their Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear exhibition. It was displayed with a wedding dress worn by drag queen Bimini Bon-Boulash on the second series of RuPaul's Drag Race UK and a black dress worn by Porter at the 91st Academy Awards. A portrait of Styles wearing the dress was included in the 2024 History Makers exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London, honouring individuals who have influenced contemporary culture.