Ten years ago, you could recognize a Lollapalooza outfit well before anyone reached the gates at Grant Park. Most attendees started with high-waisted denim cutoffs, often paired with a halter top, bodysuit or DIY crop top, and something featuring crochet, burnout-style lace or questionable “tribal” prints. From there, festivalgoers accessorized with the likes of a floppy hat, mirrored sunglasses, ankle boots or a black choker, along with a brightly colored wristband for the weekend.
That was the festival style scene when Lollapalooza celebrated its 25th anniversary from July 28 to 31, 2016. WWD’s street-style coverage captured printed jumpsuits, loose dresses and plenty of short shorts, while the lineup brought Radiohead, LCD Soundsystem, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Lana Del Rey, J. Cole, Future, Ellie Goulding, Haim, Major Lazer and more to Chicago.
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Now Lollapalooza returns to the Windy City from July 30 to Aug. 2, landing almost exactly a decade after the 2016 edition. The internet has spent much of this year campaigning to make 2026 the new 2016, and several pieces from the old festival uniform are sticking around. Low rises, micro shorts, crochet and platform boots have all moved well beyond festival grounds. The floppy felt hat may still need a stronger lobbying effort outside Wimbledon and royal garden parties.
There are numbers behind the comeback. In April, Trendalytics fashion and beauty director Kendall Becker told Sourcing Journal that market adoption of micro shorts had increased 135 percent from the previous year, while low-rise denim shorts were up 124 percent. The platform also recorded a 46 percent increase in online conversations about platform boots.
So yes, 2016 music festival style is back, albeit in pieces. What has not returned is the one-look-fits-all styling. Ten years ago, many attendees dressed for the festival. Now, fans increasingly dress for the artist.
Sourcing Journal previously tracked how the fandoms surrounding Charli XCX, Taylor Swift, Beyoncé and other musicians have pushed trends well beyond a concert or album cycle. “Traditional trend cycles were once dictated from the top down — from runways to magazines to consumers. However, fandoms have flipped that script,” Michele Smith, chief executive officer of the Museum of Pop Culture, told SJ Denim.
Fans now use clothes almost like identification. A color, an accessory à la Swift’s friendship bracelets or a familiar silhouette can tell the rest of the crowd who someone came to see before the set begins.
Lollapalooza’s 2026 headliners make that shift especially easy to see, given that quite a few of them are style juggernauts even outside of the performance realm. Charli XCX, Lorde, Tate McRae, Olivia Dean and Jennie share top billing with John Summit, the Smashing Pumpkins and the xx. Five women now occupy a headliner tier that was dominated by male artists and male-fronted bands in 2016, and each arrives with a fashion identity developed enough to inspire her own section of the crowd.
Charli offers several possible dress codes, given how many style personas she has taken on in her nearly 20-year career. “Brat” supplied the summer of 2024 with the ubiquitous acid green, tiny shorts, dark sunglasses and clothes ready for a club with questionable air-conditioning.
Her new “Music, Fashion, Film” period has kept the short proportions but traded much of the green for black, patent finishes and striped back styling. At Lollapalooza, that could mean black, silver, exposed bras and the occasional Von Dutch reference and flash of neon green from fans unwilling to let “Brat” stay in 2024.
Lorde has taken a more stripped-back approach since the release of “Virgin” in summer 2025, favoring white and gray, loose shirts and low-slung denim, often offset with metallic bra tops, sheer layers and intentionally makeshift details.
Tate McRae’s performance wardrobe mixes Y2K sportswear with lingerie, pairing baggy silhouettes including billowing high-low dresses and low-rise pants and micro shorts with cropped jerseys, bras and corsets. Her crowd may come closest to reviving the skin-baring proportions of 2016, only with low-slung bottoms replacing the era’s high-waisted cutoffs.
Jennie brings a different fashion apparatus to Grant Park. The Blackpink member has worked with Chanel since 2017 and sits at the meeting point between K-pop fandom and luxury fashion, where fans track ambassadors, campaigns and airport appearances as closely as performances. Olivia Dean’s romantic dresses and vintage references offer another option entirely, one typically not associated with the sometimes grimy setting of Grant Park.
The electronic and rock acts could split the weekend further. John Summit fans can pull from contemporary rave dressing, including micro shorts, platform boots, pashminas and shield sunglasses. The Smashing Pumpkins and the xx offer darker references from two different periods in alternative music. Their catalogs reach from ’90s rock to the late-2000s hipster era now recast as indie sleaze, which may bring out festivalgoers whose vintage concert shirts came from their own closets as opposed to resale sites like Depop, followed by tight jeans and boots or Chucks.
To be clear, crochet and denim cutoffs are unlikely to disappear from Grant Park, or any summer festival setting, for that matter. They remain practical enough for a hot, muggy Chicago weekend and familiar enough to survive another trend cycle. This time, however, the person wearing them may have chosen everything else for Charli, Tate or Lorde.
Lollapalooza may still look like 2016 from a distance. Up close, the silver layers, exposed bras, rave sunglasses and genuinely old band tees should make it much easier to tell which stage everyone is headed toward.
