Harry Styles is All the Blazer Inspiration We Need in 2021

Harry Styles is the gift that just keeps giving. If you’d told us, back in 2010, that the clean-cut lad from a tween-fantasy boy band would still be making waves more than a decade later, we’d have laughed.

But here we are, and Styles has gone from pop band star to solo artist to actor to feminist and queer ally to fashion icon. Now, in 2021, young Harry Styles has taken the throne as king of the blazer, lord of tailoring, ruler of all he surveys.

He made history last year when he was the first cis male to appear on the cover of Vogue, dressed in a Gucci gown and woman’s tuxedo jacket.

In the interview accompanying the extremely luxe gender-neutral photoshoot, he discussed his love of dressing up at length.

“The people that I looked up to in music—Prince and David Bowie and Elvis and Freddie Mercury and Elton John—they’re such showmen,” he said.

“As a kid it was completely mind-blowing. Now I’ll put on something that feels really flamboyant, and I don’t feel crazy wearing it. I think if you get something that you feel amazing in, it’s like a superhero outfit. Clothes are there to have fun with and experiment with and play with.

“What’s really exciting is that all of these lines are just kind of crumbling away. When you take away ‘There’s clothes for men and there’s clothes for women,’ once you remove any barriers, obviously you open up the arena in which you can play. I’ll go in shops sometimes, and I just find myself looking at the women’s clothes thinking they’re amazing. It’s like anything—anytime you’re putting barriers up in your own life, you’re just limiting yourself. There’s so much joy to be had in playing with clothes.”

Gucci frocks aside, Styles is a man who knows how to wear a blazer. He has a constantly evolving wardrobe of blazers in a rainbow of colours and a variety of (mostly immaculately tailored) shapes.

In response to the backlash he received for posing in a dress (how very dare he?), he posted a photo to his Instagram in this, frankly delightful, frilly periwinkle suit. The tailoring! The colour! The little hint of chest hair! The blatant middle finger of a caption! What’s not to love about a man who can wear a blazer like that?

Caption: “Bring back manly men”, Image: @harrystyles

And he really can wear a blazer. When he was in Sydney, back in 2018, he took to the stage in this Calvin Klein beechnut embroidered-sleeve double-breasted suit jacket (with matching pants, naturally), over a black tank top.

A couple of months later, he appeared on stage in Dallas in an envy-inducing custom Alexander McQueen suit. The pink suit jacket, worn over a plain white shirt, had large roses embroidered down the front and was paired with matching flared trousers. Styles looked magnificent.

When he announced the release of his song Golden on Instagram, it included a photo of himself in a bright blue ’80s-cut blazer, complete with shoulder pads and extra length. The blazer by itself was fabulous, but the addition of the crochet gloves (and the not-so-subtle middle finger he was giving the camera) reminded us again that he knows how to dress.

But the style moment that cemented his role as blazer royalty for us was his outfit in the music video for Treat People With Kindness. High-waisted white flares, Argyle sweater picked through with silver thread, white collared blouse and, be still our beating hearts, a glittering tailored tuxedo jacket. All Gucci, naturally, and all utterly perfect.