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For every stop of her sold-out Guts World Tour, the singer Olivia Rodrigo hits the stage wearing a sent-up version of a complicated menswear artifact: the ribbed white tank top. She dons it ’90s Gwen Stefani-style, with the hemline hacked off at the midriff. Each night, Rodrigo deploys a new cropped tank printed with a different pithy catchphrase—“I kiss better than I cook,” “Ur mom,” or, in a direct nod to Stefani’s 1995 No Doubt hit, “I’m just a girl”—that recasts the plain garment as pointed stagewear.
(For her first New York City concert, Rodrigo’s “Carrie Bradshaw AF” shirt was appropriately cosmopolitan.)
Rodrigo’s usual tour wardrobe of combat boots, ripped fishnet tights, miniskirts is punkish, youthful, and proudly girly. It’s akin to her casual dressing off stage, where she incorporates easygoing, menswear-ish pieces (not unlike the ensembles of another Los Angeles-based Gen Z creative, Malia Obama) in a manner that also feels punkish and proudly girly.
One recent chilly spring morning in between her sold-out MSG shows, she wore a black-and-white bouclé tweed coat and faded black jeans with a prim white dress shirt, thick-soled Doc Martens, and a rolled-up black beanie. She repurposed a few of the same garments some days later, rotating in a hefty wool overcoat and a pair of beat-up black Adidas Sambas—a shoe whose menswear bonafides have extended its popularity far beyond its intended consumers (indoor soccer players) to, now, pop stars and prime ministers.
For a Manhattan lunch with her musician pal Conan Gray, Rodrigo punctuated her go-to pieces (plaid miniskirt, torn nylon tights, Dr. Martens Mary Jane shoes) with an Acne wool coat and a playful vintage shirt from the very ’90s brand Human-i-tees. The now-defunct label specialized in illustrated graphic tees with neo-hippie slogans, like the one on Rodrigo’s shirt: “Harmonize with the world around you. Roll with the hills. Dance with the trees.”
(The Human-i-tees shirt I had growing up, which featured a majestic illustration of elephants with a slogan insinuating their forthcoming extinction, was slightly more distressing.)
In the manner of Taylor Swift, the trend of dressing on theme to attend live-music events has become a booming business, with concertgoers shelling out for outfits to fit the visual cues of an artist’s current work—or, as the case may be, their current “era.” Fans of Olivia Rodrigo, however, tend to dress like Olivia Rodrigo: the Doc Martens and Chuck Taylors, the plucky T-shirts, and plenty of plaid and denim. It’s a formula—killer vintage tee, statement coat, classic footwear—worth following, whether or not you plan on screaming your heart out in an arena alongside them.