Match The Rhythm: Fans Who Dress The Part

Designed by Sara Mouasher

Not only did The Eras Tour bring an estimated $1 billion in hotel revenue, but it also brought thousands of dollars to Etsy shops selling friendship bracelets. With the increase of musicians taking their talents on the road, fashion trends and aesthetics are being either introduced or revived in pop culture.

It seems like posting outfits on Instagram, TikTok or Pinterest has become part of the concert-going routine. Fan’s outfits frequently match song lyrics, the album, the style of the singer or the theme of the concert.

Swifties dressed up as the traffic lights in line with lyrics from “Death By a Thousand Cuts” as seen on a post by Taylor Nation, the official fan club account on Instagram: “I ask the traffic lights if it’ll be alright, they say, ‘I don’t know.’”

Each girl in the post had a black shirt with 3 colorful circles to represent a street light and a respectively assigned color that repeated a word from the lyric.

Other fans took The Eras Tour as an opportunity to recreate old looks of Swift herself. They dressed like Swift did in her old music videos, they matched the color schemes of her albums, even recreating some of her looks during other world tours or recent Eras Tour looks.

One fan that attended the last Toronto tour date decided to recreate the outfit Swift wore for the Red (Taylor’s Version) album cover. In the Instagram post by Taylor Nation, the fan is seen wearing the iconic burgundy-colored Matti fisherman velvet cap, a beige peacoat and red lipstick. She added the red scarf from her song “All Too Well,” a patterned skirt and boots while friendship bracelets were stacked on her wrists.

While The Eras Tour allowed fans to have a variety of themes, Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter Tour highlighted one specific aesthetic: country western. Her recent album highlighted country style for the Rodeo Chitlin’ Circuit environment.

The Cowboy Carter album cover features Beyoncé on a white horse wearing a patriotic cowboy suit in white, blue and red while carrying an American flag.

Fans stayed true to Queen B’s vision of country outfits featuring cowboy hats, boots and fringe vests. On TikTok fans are sharing their outfits, recently one picture went viral of 4 men dressed in the men’s bathroom. It features the user Alonzo (@storyofalonzo), The King Toz (@thekingtoz), RLETTO (@rletto), and Alix Garza (@alix622).

Alonzo wore a fringe vest, half blue with white stars, while the fringes were white and red. His white cowboy hat matched how white cowboy boots, he added more American colors to his outfit by having a red durag under his hat. The finishing touches included an American flag tucked in the back of his jeans.

Next to Alonzo stood Alix Garza, who donned a brown fringe vest with bedazzled jewels around the upper corners, added western accents with cow prints, a cowboy hat and silver jewelry.

To the right of Alix Garza was The King Toz, who was dressed in a golden cowboy suit with a golden cowboy hat and golden cowboy boots. However, his suit had cuts outs from his shoulders to knees to recreate Queen B’s Mugler bodysuit from the Renaissance tour.

At the far right of the photo is Rletto with a sparkly black cowboy hat, a bedazzled denim jacket, with shiny and glittery white pants with a black bandana filled with white skulls which was tucked at the back of his pants, black boots and necklaces.

They called themselves “The Cowboy Carter Avengers” and filmed TikToks with multiple other fans inside and outside the stadium in order to express their outfits.

When fans are allowed to go to events like concerts, they’re given a place to express themselves completely. When Swift first came to Chicago for The Eras Tour, I failed to get tickets, but decided to still stand outside of Soldier Field. Despite not having tickets, I still tried to dress for The Eras Tour, listening from home in my Reputation era biker jacket I got to take part in the growing tradition.