What midlife men should wear to an Oasis gig (the second time around)

Telegraph

7 hours ago

You've bought the tickets. Planned the reunion with your gig-going pals of old. It's nearly time to wave your lighter – ahem iPhone – in the air more to the strains of Wonderwall. But the question remains: what to wear to the Oasis reunion tour? Does donning a bucket come with an expiry date?
Do's
Consider a plaid shirt; discreetly Liam-coded but not as obvious as an Adidas track top.
Switch up your denim, older men should steer towards more structured, straight-leg selvedge denim rather than the stonewashed, distressed varieties of the 1990s.
Haul out your old tour T-shirts if you have them, to show you're an OG fan.
Don'ts
Let your hair become a cringe factor. Even Liam's tidied up the shaggy barnet in recent years. You've got a mortgage and a favourite chair now.
Actually, please step away from a Stone Island jacket. It's not quite the message a man with responsibilities wants to convey.
Forget that deep down, you're still that young guy who was awestruck at Knebworth. Let him out for one night only and go mad fer it.
As any Oasis fan knows, style matters. The Mancunian supernovas were never solely a musical phenomenon (Definitely Maybe became the fastest-selling debut album in UK history), the band had an unmistakable sartorial aesthetic. And few could argue that Liam and Noel haven't had a sustained impact on menswear in the intervening 30 years.
The Oasis look was rooted in British working-class fashion, 1960s mod culture (parkas) and terrace casualwear, labels like Adidas, Stone Island, CP Company, Fred Perry and Clarks, accessorised with round tinted sunglasses and shaggy mop-tops, the look came to define Britpop.
'They were honest about their influences and they were completely unedited,' says stylist Catherine Hayward. 'It's accessible and seductive, isn't it? If you're a fan it's not expensive to get a military green parka and a Wallabee-type shoe… and you've got the look. Although maybe you can't do the hair. Because the hair does look a bit silly after a certain age.'
Whatever one may think of Oasis's motivations to get the show back on the road, you can't deny the timing of their reunion is impeccable in style terms. 'In fashion, we're going back to the 1990s now,' says photographer Paul Shard, whose exhibition Oasis Fans 1994-1997, co-curated by the British Cultural Archive, opened this week and runs at the Kimpton Clocktower Hotel in Manchester until August 31. 'Haircuts, jackets, everyone is looking like that again.'
Brands have not been slow to notice. Liam has recently fronted campaigns for Stone Island and Berghaus. Last month Adidas unveiled its multi-million-pound Oasis Live '25 official clothing range tie-in. On Tuesday I got an email from the retail service Klarna saying that sales of bucket hats were up 89 per cent in the last three months, Harrington jackets were up 71 per cent and polo shirts were up 24 per cent. Sales of tambourines are apparently up 155 per cent.
Dress code: style that's gonna live forever
When the tour kicks off in Cardiff this Friday, expect to see a lot more fans of all ages dressed the same way this time round. It's a relatively easy mode of dressing for guys in their 40s, 50s and 60s thanks to the fact that its various components can be broken down to incorporate into looks that don't look try-hard: the Adidas trainers with a suit, the track tops with sports kit, the parkas with just about anything (and actually looks pretty Burberry-esque atop a suit).
As for the iconic textured Liam mod cut? As Hayward suggests, the hair's a bit of a push for older guys now – what once was roguishly bedraggled is now just shaggy and unkempt on most of us (if you've still got hair, that is). I'd also recommend a swerve away from the bucket hat and the rimless glasses that have been so adopted by Gen Z: a baseball cap if you must is less obviously 'in tribute', and classic black Ray-Bans tend to hide the dad-bags under the eyes better.
If you are thinking of recreating the Aran knit jumper look that Liam famously wore for their legendary 1996 Knebworth gig (borrowed from his then fiancée Patsy Kensit), well, it might be a bit warm for summer 2025.
You could possibly track down some Pretty Green online, the label run by Liam, which indulges in his paisley period and, yes, those military jackets. As for the eyebrows, it's likely by now they're as shaggy as Noel's and Liam's anyway.