Harry Styles became the first man to ever land a solo cover on U.S. Vogue Friday, immediately earning him widespread praise for his stylistic choices, which do away with gendered clothing norms.
On the cover, photographed by Tyler Mitchell, the singer — formerly one-fifth of One Direction, currently 3/100ths of Billboard’s weekly song-ranking chart — wears a Gucci dress and jacket.
In accompanying shots for the Vogue feature, he appears both alone and with sister Gemma Styles, who tweeted her congratulations for his history-making cover, which came after 128 years of the fashion bible’s publication.
She wasn’t the only one posting about the pics Friday, either. He got plenty of praise from the accounts set up to track and promote his every move, but some of celebration came from outside the Directioner fandom. Styles and Vogue began trending on Twitter as observers noted he is “redefining what it means to be a ‘man.’”
He spoke to that assessment in his interview: “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.”
.@harry_styles is our December issue cover star!
Read how the star is making and playing by his own rules: https://t.co/tQPLi5OEtj pic.twitter.com/AxZgxE68Rx
— Vogue Magazine (@voguemagazine) November 13, 2020