Modern life is confusing – and nowhere more so than in fashion. Take Harry Styles. He was voted the best-dressed musician in the world last year by GQ, pictured flouncing about in a high-shine Gucci jumpsuit and fluorescent pink coat at Coachella. He was named one of Glamour magazine’s best-dressed men on the planet in February, pictured in the black crushed-velvet number he wore to this year’s Brit awards.
Styles posted a picture of himself recently in a 2011 One Direction tour T-shirt, prompting fans to predict a reunion, with sales of said T-shirt going bonkers. The Watermelon Sugar singer is a man who could wear a bin bag and look a million dollars.
So, what is his secret? Is it all down to his chiselled good looks, or can an ordinary man measure up without breaking the bank? Armed with some top tips, I took to charity shops and secondhand websites to try to recreate some of Styles’ styles for myself.
Monday
Festival Styles
My first pit stop is a local charity shop, which sells everything from Paul Daniels Magic Show kits to duck tea pots. Will I have any luck finding my first Styles outfit – the fluffy-jacket, shiny-trouser combo he wore for Coachella in 2022?
Browsing the ladies’ rails, I spot a good approximation of the strides. There is one problem. Styles is a strapping six-footer, but even he would be floundering in these monsters. I haul them together with a sparkly belt, but there is so much excess flare that I could camp under them at Glastonbury.
Harry Styles at Coachella; Rich Pelley’s homage. Composite: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images; Linda Nylind/The Guardian
The pink fluffy jacket from the rail above fits much better. I check the mirror. Styles wig? Yep. Styles tats? Check. Cue photoshoot.
I am so busy making love to the camera that I hardly notice the small crowd of schoolgirls who demand to know what I am up to.
“Oh, we thought you were Harry Styles; can we have your autograph?” they say, sarcastically.
Styles likeness: 🍉🍉🍉🍉
Model wears: charity shop fluffy pink jacket (£17); charity shop metallic pink trousers (£13); charity shop sparkly belt (£6)
Tuesday
Harlequin Styles
Styles is as fashionable on the red carpet as on stage. My next outfit is the harlequin jumpsuit he wore to last month’s Grammys. I sew together a ladies’ jumpsuit from the charity shop sale rail and a baby play mat I find in a bin. I don’t have a red carpet, but, as I stroll around the garden, I feel pleased with my upcycling. Sustainable fashion is de rigueur, after all.
Styles’ Grammys outfit; Rich’s upcycled imitation. Composite: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic; Rich Pelley
“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” agrees Amy Powney, the creative director of the sustainable fashion brand Mother of Pearl. “If you’re a celebrity, you should think: ‘Can another celebrity wear this?’ Or else it’s about buying things you’re going to wear over and over and, when you’re finished, resell or recycle.”
She is right. There is no reason Styles couldn’t borrow the meat dress off Lady Gaga, or that dress from Liz Hurley. He would look fantastic.
In terms of treasure, I doubt anyone would consider my outfit – now with an added crotch hole where it split – anything other than highly inappropriate.
Styles likeness: 🍉🍉
Model wears: charity shop jumpsuit (£3); discarded baby mat (free); charity shop orange Crocs (£10)
Wednesday
Pirouette Styles
I recreate Saturday Night Live 2019 ballerina Styles by telling eBay I am looking for an embarrassing outfit to stitch up my mate on his stag do. There is nothing worse than turning up to find someone wearing the same thing as you …
“I used to hate that,” says Ellis Ranson, who styled Kate and Rio Ferdinand for this year’s Brits. “Styling is all about pushing the client outside their comfort zone. With Harry, you can push that quite far.”
Styles in his SNL outfit; Rich in his bathroom. Composite: NBC; Linda Nylind/The Guardian
I am certainly out of my comfort zone as I pirouette on the side of my bath because Linda, the Guardian photographer, assures me it will look artistic. There are risks to being Styles. For example, that time last year when he got hit in the face by a Skittle and Skittles ran a full-page advert in the Los Angeles Times reminding fans not to lob sweets at him. I hope I don’t slip off as my tights spladge my nadgers with every croisé.
Styles likeness: 🍉🍉🍉
Model wears: eBay tutu (£17), Vinted tights (£4), Vinted pink vest top (£4)
Thursday
Vogue Styles
To celebrate appearing as the first solo male cover star in Vogue’s 127-year history, Styles wore a dress. To celebrate appearing as G2’s first cover star in Styles drag, I get into an eBay wedding dress bidding war.
It is windy up on my local common; now I know how Marilyn Monroe felt standing over that air vent. Quite the breeze flies up my nether regions. Neither mums with prams nor a bloke doing squat thrusts turn a head.
Rich and Styles lookalike Nancy Mitchell. Photographs: Linda Nylind/The Guardian
In 2017, a study declared that Styles’s good looks are down to the distances between his features. His eyes alone score 98.15 on a scale where 100 equals perfection. My budget stretches to charity shop buys, but not facial realignment surgery. Maybe Nancy Mitchell, a 24-year-old chiropractic assistant, model and actor, can tell me what it is like to be super-attractive, after TikTok users started saying she looked like Styles.
“We’re both Aquarius. We have similar mannerisms. I don’t conform to gender stereotypes. Harry wears dresses; I’ve always dressed masculine. Our mums are both called Anne. How similar can you get?” she says.
In the flesh, Mitchell totally looks the real McStyles. But the big question is: does she fancy Styles?
“Harry is an attractive guy, but I don’t think attraction is skin-deep. I’d need to get to know him first.” Quite right!
Styles likeness (me): 🍉🍉🍉
Styles likeness (Mitchell): 🍉🍉🍉🍉🍉
He wears: eBay wedding dress (£35), Vinted dinner jacket (£6). She wears: Vinted black crushed velvet jacket (£7), Vinted black flared trousers (£12)
Friday
Halloween Styles
Styles dressed as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz for a 2021 Halloween concert in New York. This frilly granny-pants garb is the most ridiculous yet, although strangely I feel the most at home in it.
Is there room for comedy in fashion? “The most fun fashion does have an air of comedy,” says the stylish comedian Tom Allen. “If you look back 200 or 300 years, there was a great sense of playfulness, with puffball sleeves and crinoline. People were exuberant and extravagant.
Two takes on Dorothy. Composite: @harrystyles/Instagram; Linda Nylind/The Guardian
“Elton John and Freddie Mercury were very playfully dressed. Harry Styles is doing that for a newer generation. Clothing is often a protest, a way of saying: ‘I’m going to have a positive stamp on a world that feels ever more frightening.’”
I certainly look frightening in this get-up. To lighten the mood, I drink a beer from my shoe, like Styles did in Australia. Now, my trainer is soggy.
Styles likeness: 🍉🍉🍉🍉🍉
Model wears: Vinted check summer dress (£4), Vinted tights (£4), Vinted white lace shorts (£6), eBay hair clip (£3)
Saturday
Pinstripe Styles
Every outfit Styles looks amazing in makes me look equally terrible. For reference, I should test a different Harry. But Harry who? Houdini? Too bendy. Kane? Too beardy. Duke of Sussex? Nah. If only I could think of another Harry.
Rich meets Harry (Hill). Photograph: Rich Pelley
“It’s great, because you get away with anything,” says Harry Hill, as I drop by to wonder what it is like being a Hill instead of a Styles. Hill gets his suits and shirts from a bespoke tailor in Soho. And his yellow Bake Off jumper? “A present from my wife.” I love Hill and could never replace him. All that looking-to-side camera stuff and seven years training to be a doctor is far too much work.
Hill likeness: 🥚🥚
Model wears: eBay fancy dress costume (£24)
Sunday
Inflatable Harri
The dream is to get Styles to comment. I send him my photos, but he doesn’t reply, as he is busy on tour. Oh well.
I try some other options. The electrical contractor Barry Styles doesn’t get back to me. A Midlands-based professional singer, Barry Styles, who has sold more than 26,000 copies of his album Wedding Day Songs, thinks my idea for a Styles parody “is no doubt good thinking”, but prefers not to be interviewed.
So I talk to Harri, the 29-year-old south Indian designer behind this year’s most talked-about outfit, the inflatable suit Sam Smith wore to the Brits. How do I make one of those?
“It’s made from 100% latex, with 80 panels stuck together by hand. There’s a lot of mathematics to get the shape,” Harri tells me at his show at London fashion week. “It’s based on my dog, Kai, a seven-year-old pug, and how he sees me from his perspective.”
Similar Harri suits sell for £4,000. In my inflatable wobbly fancy dress attempt, you don’t want to be going anywhere in a hurry. “It’s occasional wear for making a statement,” continues Harri.
What would he create if Styles got in touch? “I know exactly what,” he says, smiling. “A bright, colourful, deflated trouser.”
Smith likeness: 🐕🐕
Model wears: Morphsuits inflatable Megamorph costume (£30)
Monday
Bedtime Styles
After a week of being Styles, I can hardly be bothered to get dressed. Except – didn’t he once wear a pair of custom polka-dot Gucci pyjamas to read a CBeebies Bedtime Story? Damn it! He even looks hot in his jammies.
Night and day … Composite: Amanda Searle/BBC/PA; Linda Nylind/The Guardian
That’s it. I am officially retiring to my scruffy jeans and hoodie.
Styles likeness: 🍉🍉
Model wears: Vinted men’s red tartan pyjamas (£8), Homer Simpson slippers (model’s own)
Amy Powney’s film Fashion Reimagined is in cinemas now. Tom Allen is on tour now. Tony! (The Tony Blair Rock Opera) by Harry Hill and Steve Brown tours from April
