The Soundtrack to Style: Live Music’s Influence on Fashion

The connection between live music and fashion goes far deeper than your For You Page.  Clothing style choices for live music events are very deliberate and emotional decisions that are carefully and playfully planned out for months.  Fans tell us their outfit choices (much like their diverse musical tastes) are curated to represent their distinct, layered identity to the world.  So, when they’re going to a live show it’s incredibly important for them to find the perfect ‘fit to match the vibe of that specific event and the vibe of the artists they are planning to see.

I encourage you to pause and watch the thousands of fans entering the next concert or music festival you attend—it’s like a living runway show of eclectic and personal fashion choices.  Fans are beaming with an excitement that has been building up for months, paired with an air of confidence knowing the look they put together is finally getting its moment in the spotlight—both on the ground and across their social media.  So, how do fans choose what to wear? What impacts their decisions? How can brands get involved? That’s exactly what we wanted to find out when we surveyed over two thousand fans for our latest “Fashion of Live” Study.

For a fashion marketer, live music represents a distinct and powerful moment for your brand to make a lasting bond with consumers who are driving cultural trends, drawing style inspiration from everything around them and ultimately shopping for the items to construct that new look.  In fact, U.S. live music goers collectively spend over $26B a year on clothing for concerts and festivals.

From re-emerging brands like American Apparel to OGs like Levi’s and recent Reggie Award-winner Forever 21, we’ve witnessed incredible excitement from apparel brands turning to live music to stand out from the pack and make meaningful connections with their target consumers (our event attendees). Here are a few highlights featuring our partners doing it right:

American Apparel

American Apparel is re-introducing itself (and indie sleaze style) back into music culture in multiple ways—from nurturing the roots of the music industry with emerging artist showcases and collaborations (example 1, and example 2) to engaging fans at major festivals like GovBall by putting creativity in their own hands, while also providing incredible SKUs for concert and festival merchandise (example 1, example 2).

Forever 21

We are beyond excited that our partnership with Forever 21 and Rolling Loud has been recognized by the marketing community with two Reggie Awards! The partnership brought Rolling Loud, Bunny Zingler (influencer and creator of Bunny’s Bae Bar) and Forever 21 together for a collaboration that extended across a capsule collection, in store events, consumers promotions and a next-level experience at Rolling Loud California and Miami in 2023 (example 1 & example 2).

HUGO

We partnered HUGO with experiential visionary artist Mokibaby to construct an immersive art installation at Miami’s III Points festival as a creative space to showcase the brand’s latest collab collection with TikTok icon @BellaPoarch among the wildly on-point crowd in the 305. (example 1 & example 2).