Dec 3, 2020
Updated: May 17, 2021
By Jacob Gallagher
HARRY STYLES wore a dress. You may well know that already even if you don’t follow fashion or music closely. Photos of the British singer in the custom Gucci frock—snapped for the cover of Vogue—swarmed the internet a few weeks ago, sending his brigade of fans into a tizzy. Scads of tweets and online articles recycled the images. And while most of the coverage lauded Mr. Styles for his beguiling, gender-bending outfit, some conservative pundits including Candace Owens predictably wrung their hands, interpreting the hubbub as a death knell for the so-called “manly man.”
Mr. Styles's Vogue cover elicited little more than "a shrug" from Andrew Groves, 52, professor of fashion design at the University of Westminster in London. As Prof. Groves pointed out, when Bowie wore a dress in the early '70s, it was "really provocative because it was outside society's norms."