Before Taylor Swift had even announced her now-sold-out Eras tour, 29-year-old Alleé Keene, from Arizona in the US, had planned her outfit. After workshopping multiple iterations and eventually settling on a replica of a heart-print dress from Swift’s 2019 ME! music video, Keene spent more than two months finding the right pieces to execute her vision.

“I’m the type of person who loves any excuse to wear a costume or an elaborately planned outfit, but a big reason why I chose to dress up for this show specifically is because Taylor has always encouraged it,” she tells Stylist. (After the show, Swift herself commented on Keene’s TikTok showing off her outfit, giving it her seal of approval.) Madeline Small, a 23-year-old Swiftie from Michigan, also started sourcing materials for her costume – a handmade rhinestone bodysuit – as soon as she purchased her Eras tickets in November 2022. All in all, it took Small over three months to complete the look, which involved glueing thousands of gemstones to a corset by hand.

In 2023, dressing up for a concert is no longer as simple as wearing a new top or trying out a sparkly make-up look. For fans of artists such as Swift, Beyoncé and Harry Styles, gigs come with their own unofficial dress codes and aesthetics. Between disco cowboys at Beyoncé’s Renaissance world tour and fruit prints and feather boas at Harry Styles’s Love On Tour (aka HSLOT), we’re in an era of celebrating our favourite pop culture moments through our clothes, with cinema-goers even attending screenings of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie clad in the doll’s signature pink.

From Eras tour outfits to Renaissance disco cowboys: why does nobody wear normal clothes to concerts anymore?