Think back to your social media feeds during Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, Beyoncé’s Renaissance shows or Oasis’s reunion tour. With one quick scroll, you could tell immediately which of your friends and acquaintances was headed to which show — by what they were wearing.
It might have been a chill but unmistakable nod, like a Gallagher brother-inspired bucket hat and anorak, or a head-to-toe costume recreating one of Swift’s many eras.
Pin up-esque pop star Sabrina Carpenter, whose Short n’ Sweet Tour stops in Toronto on Nov. 10 and 11, has praised her audiences’ tribute outfits from the stage. “I really, really love it. Your makeup and your nails … everything’s just so thought through. I can’t tell you what that does to me,” she said during a show in Connecticut last year.
Her fan base, affectionately called the Carpenters, shows up to her concerts in coquettish costumes featuring corsets, heart motifs, short shorts, glitter, towering platform shoes and retro-styled hair with Dolly Parton-level volume.
“Social media has turned concert fashion into a collective experience,” said Toronto stylist Christal Williams. “Fans share outfit inspiration online, while artists reinforce their esthetic through consistent album-era looks.” She pointed to Beyoncé’s silver dress code and Nicki Minaj’s fans (known as Barbz) wearing shades of pink. “This feedback loop has transformed concert fashion into a form of creative participation.”
The joy — and anxiety — around posting your outfit on social media has become a major driver of the themed-fan-dressing explosion. “There’s the FOMO factor,” said Caitlin Donnelly, who researches cosplay, fan marketing and merchandising as a master’s student at Toronto Metropolitan University and a research fellow at York University.
“‘Get ready with me’ videos and concert clips fill our feeds, and fans start to feel like dressing up is part of being a good fan. It’s as much a social moment online as it is in person.”
Two other factors have contributed to the combustion of concert dressing. “First, there’s been this post-lockdown renaissance of events. Especially here in Toronto, where we were in lockdown for so long, I think we really realized how special it is to gather and celebrate the things we love. So now, when we do get to go out, we want to make it count. We saw that with the Blue Jays recently as well,” said Donnelly.
We’re also motivated to get the most out of the moment. “Concerts have become such a big investment: Fans spend hundreds of dollars and battle Ticketmaster queues months, if not years, in advance. So these nights don’t feel casual anymore; they’re major events. Dressing up has become part of that anticipation and celebration.”
In fact, the current era of concert dressing could be considered a form of cosplay. “When people hear ‘cosplay,’ they think comic cons or someone lining up for a midnight Star Wars premiere,” said Donnelly, a cosplayer herself. “But at its most basic, cosplay involves a fan, a desire to dress up as an existing “character” and a fan event.”
While mainstream music fans might not resonate with the term, often associated with adult-sized Pokemons and fun-fur everything, its definition applies here.
“When concertgoers show up in outfits that recreate an artist’s look or reference a song or album — that’s cosplay to me. I’ve seen fans hand-beading replicas of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour bodysuits, recreating album covers or making inside-joke outfits only other fans would get — just like you would at a convention,” said Donnelly. “Interestingly, I’ve even seen people starting to cosplay as artists like Taylor Swift and Chappell Roan at comic conventions like Fan Expo Canada, so the two worlds are definitely overlapping.”
While modern music fans are going all in on themed concert dressing, it isn’t a new concept. “It has roots in earlier fandoms, like Madonna’s Like a Virgin tour, Spice Girls’ Spice World tour, David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust tour, Kiss, and Michael Jackson’s Thriller and Bad tours,” said Williams, who often dresses artists for music videos and events, working to “visually connect their music to their styling.”
Genres like punk and emo have always had their own dress codes, but this feels new, said Donnelly. “It’s been building, especially over the past five or six years, spreading from tour to tour, fandom to fandom.”
Taylor Swift’s fans upped the ante. “During her earlier tours, like Red and 1989, fans realized that dressing up creatively could get them noticed by her team, maybe even lead to a meet-and-greet,” Donnelly said. “Over time, the outfits just got bigger and bolder, and by the Eras Tour, it became a full-on art form.”
The first time Ottawa-based journalist and podcast producer Victoria Christie dressed on theme for a concert was for Eras. “How could you not?” she said. “You were the odd one out if you weren’t dressed up.”
Christie went all out, outfitting herself and her mom in a combination of new and DIY’d items. “On the day of the concert, which just happened to be my birthday, my friend and I spent most of the morning and afternoon doing our makeup, getting dressed and filming TikTok transition videos — it was just as fun as the concert itself.”
At Beyoncé’s Renaissance tour of 2023, the audience was a sea of sparkles, a visual experience guided by Queen Bey herself. “For the Renaissance World Tour, she asked fans to wear ‘fabulous silver fashions,’ and the BeyHive absolutely delivered,” said Donnelly, adding that this continued with country-inspired looks for her Cowboy Carter tour. “She even featured fan looks on her website, which only fuelled the creativity.”
It was Harry Styles’ own flamboyant dress sense that pushed fan dressing forward during his Love on Tour that ran from 2021 to 2023. Loyal followers wore Styles’ sartorial signatures like feather boas, flares, crochet cardigans and Elton John-inspired sunglasses.
“His fashion has always been part of his identity, so fans echoing his looks just made sense,” said Donnelly, who created a “Watermelon Sugar”-inspired dress to wear to one of his shows, a process that took almost three months. “The JW Anderson crochet cardigan moment back in 2020 really kicked things off, and by the time the tour hit Madison Square Garden, the fan outfits were literally featured in Vogue and the New York Times.”
For audiences at these shows, themed dressing is a means of building community. “It’s not just about getting attention. Fans swap outfit ideas online, take pictures together, and recognize each other instantly at shows,” said Donnelly.
“Dressing in theme is incredibly unifying,” said Williams. “It allows fans to connect with the artist and each other, turning the venue into a visually cohesive community and a shared celebration of music and style.”
And it’s not just Billboard chart-topping artists whose fans dress on theme. Take the recent Toronto concerts of Jamaican dancehall icon Vybz Kartel. “Fans showed up in looks inspired by Vybz Kartel and classic dancehall eras, turning the crowd into a style showcase,” said Williams, who created an Instagram reel of herself wearing three dancehall-themed outfits to mark the occasion. “It was a reminder that in Caribbean culture, fashion isn’t just about dressing up; it’s a form of storytelling, identity and pride.”
If there are downsides to concert cosplay, one is fandom peer pressure. “It’s definitely a double-edged sword,” said Donnelly. “Fans see all these posts and start to feel like they have to dress up to be a ‘good fan.’” There are financial obstacles to going all out. “Making or buying these outfits adds to already expensive tickets and travel costs.”
There’s an environmental impact, too. “Unlike cosplay for conventions, a lot of these looks are made for one night only, often from fast-fashion pieces that end up at thrift stores or landfills after the show,” said Donnelly. “If you walked into thrift shops in Toronto after the Eras Tour, you could immediately spot the outfits that were clearly from concert nights.”
Dressing up for a concert can be invigorating and unifying — just try to shop your own closet or second-hand stores so the excitement of the big night isn’t an environmental and financial buzzkill.
