How Harry Styles became the new Mick Jagger

From the X Factor to solo success, the boy from Redditch has evolved into a global superstar likened to Mick Jagger – with fans of all ages

If you happened to tune into the CBeebies Bedtime Story on Monday evening, you – or perhaps a smaller member of your household – would have found yourself lulled into slumber by the flat vowels of pop superstar Harry Styles.

Wearing a chunky necklace and some polkadot Gucci pyjamas, his Mick Jagger pout on point, the 28-year-old read Jess Hitchman’s In Every House, on Every Street. “I love that story,” he said at the end. “Every house is different, but every house has something in common …”

He was referring to love, but at the rate he’s going, he might as well have said that every British household also contains a Harry Styles fan. And if that sounds hyperbolic, just give it time. You’ll give in eventually.

There comes a point in the career of any musical icon when they transcend from being merely wildly popular with their original target market (usually teenagers), and arrive on a plane of universal, if begrudgingly-given respect.

It would be fair to say that Harry Styles is currently enjoying his transcendent period, 12 years after bobbing onto the stage to audition for Simon Cowell on The X Factor.

The Telegraph’s Neil McCormick gave Styles’s Brixton gig the full five starsCredit:Lloyd Wakefield

Tracks from Styles’s new album feature on both the BBC Radio 1 and Radio 2 playlists this week, and dominate the charts. Already this year he’s both appeared in Better Homes & Gardens magazine and sold out two nights at Wembley Stadium – surely a first, however hard Alan Titchmarsh has tried.

Essentially, resistance is futile. Middle England has been won over, one sparkly catsuit at a time. Having him read us a bedtime story in his pyjamas was fitting. For now, at least, it’s Harry’s House, we’re just living in it.

The family

Styles with sister Gemma and his mother Anne in 2013Credit: EROTEME.CO.UK

As origin stories go, it’s not the grittiest – but then David Bowie and Jagger grew up in uneventful middle class suburbia, too. Styles’s parents, Desmond and Anne, porced when he was young. Harry and his older sister, Gemma, now a writer and designer, were raised by Anne and her two subsequent husbands.

Though he and his father got along well in what sounds a solid, happy childhood, Styles is particularly close to his mother, now a philanthropist with 2.6 million Instagram followers, and has appeared in joint magazine shoots with Gemma. They were both at his Brixton gig on Tuesday night.

“I never thought I would say ‘Cocaine, side-boob, choke her with a sea view’ with my mother in the audience …” Styles pondered at one point, considering some of his lyrics.

The music

At the 2019 Met Gala; performing Coachella 2022; at The BRIT Awards 2021Credit: Photo by Karwai Tang/WireImage | Kevin Mazur/Getty Images | JMEnternational for BRIT Awards/Getty Images

If you haven’t clocked the evolution of Harry Styles style, he’s the reason your teenage son might be wearing nail varnish or pairing his T-shirt with a set of pearls. Tuesday night’s Brixton get-up was relatively low key – polka dot T-shirt, leather trousers, Adidas trainers and big, beaded necklace – but he knows how to set the internet alight with calculated fashion performance.

There was his turn at the 2019 Met Gala, where he donned a lace blouse and pearl earring, and his 2020 Vogue cover wearing a ruffled dress. He even has his own brand of makeup and nail varnish, aimed at men, called Pleasing.

The particulars of the Styles wardrobe are fine tuned by his stylist Harry Lambert, and he’s something of a muse to Gucci designer Alessandro Michele, who has dressed the star in various exuberantly gender-fluid ensembles from floral suits to spangly catsuits.

Styles, however, is also fond of serious tailoring – a pink suit he wore in 2017 was crafted by the elder statesman of British suiting Edward Sexton. He has also been known to give young designers a platform, for instance British fashion wunderkind Steven Stokey-Daley, who told The Daily Telegraph, “Harry pushes boundaries like no-one else today.”

So if the Gen Z man in your household is looking particularly experimental, you know who to thank – even if fans of Bowie, Prince, Jagger and Boy George know it’s nothing new.

Celebrity connections

Styles splits his time between Los Angeles, New York and London. His LA friends are many and various, from Adele to Kendall Jenner, but among the closest are two other expats: James Corden and his producer, Ben Winston.

The latter, who directed many One Direction music videos, made Styles godfather to his daughter, Ruby. She can be heard at the beginning of his current number one single, As It Was.

The relationships

Olivia Wilde is just one of many famous women Styles has been linked to over the yearsCredit: Jordan Strauss

Sitting alongside Anne and Gemma in the circle on Tuesday was reportedly Olivia Wilde, the US actress and director, who Styles has been dating for around 18 months. Wilde, who has two children with the actor Jason Sudeikis, is 10 years his senior. She and Styles met during the filming of Don’t Worry Darling, which she’s directed and he’s starring in.

Wilde is one of many famous women Styles has been linked to over the years. For a few months, when he was 17 and she 31, he dated the late TV presenter Caroline Flack. Then there was Taylor Swift. Then the model Camille Rowe. Though of course, perceived sexual ambiguity is as much a part of being a musical icon as eyeliner.