It’s early morning in the Eurostar terminal of London’s St. Pancras International Station, where Harry Styles fever is already in evidence: a crew of iced-matcha-wielding young women are wearing feather-trimmed chapeaux studded with lyrics from Styles’s latest album, Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally. Cloistered in the lounge, I can hear “Watermelon Sugar” trilling on repeat from earbuds close by, and Pleasing merch (Styles’s lifestyle brand) parades past in primary colors. Once onboard and speeding toward Amsterdam Centraal, I pick up on more women strategizing for the night ahead via a WhatsApp group chat titled “Harry’s Housewives.”
This month, the British pop phenom sets off on a mammoth, multi-city residency tour titled Together, Together. After 10 dates at the Johan Cruijff Arena in Amsterdam, he’ll head to London, New York, Mexico City, São Paulo, Melbourne, and Sydney, playing 67 shows in all. Styles’s 30-date takeover of Madison Square Garden has already proven history-making; according to Ticketmaster, the pre-sale period racked up 11.5 million registrations for tickets—the highest volume ever recorded for any artist. Some 585,000 of them—about 5%—got lucky.
And I’m part of the roughly 56,000 people in attendance on night one of Together, Together, three years after Styles’s last tour. In February, his Brit Awards performance of “Aperture” was a jazz-handed human melee, a euphoric first taste. In March, Styles gave British fans in Manchester a one-night-only preview of what was to come. There’s been some time since to luxuriate in the megahits of Kiss All The Time…, refine the fan favorites, and build the live show’s visual world. And with longtime stylist Harry Lambert and creative director Molly Hawkins on board, Styles has all the right components to craft an electric modern pop experience. And, fittingly for an album that Styles says was inspired by dancing with strangers (and, probably, a few jaunts to Berlin superclub Berghain), it’s all kicking off in one of Europe’s best party cities.
In Amsterdam, the “Harries” make themselves known. The PleasingLand pop-up in the center of the city has queues trailing down the block, and every time the door swings open to reveal another frenzied fan, a so-called “scent arcade” sings out with vanilla and citrus. At my hotel—the sleek Pulitzer Amsterdam—“Aperture” is on rotation in the main bar, and fans gather in the lobby to dust on more layers of face glitter.
I get to the Johan Cruijff Arena in the mid-afternoon, around the time Styles is doing soundcheck. Fan fashion runs the gamut of flamboyant outfits, with a Harry Styles-in-Alessandro Michele feel: feathers! Sequins! Ties! Groovy jumpsuits!
Photographed by Se7en
Photographed by Se7en
