Dutifully fulfilling the role of ‘famous person who just had an album out’, Harry Styles was on Saturday Night Live at the weekend. While pulling double duty – both hosting the show and performing tracks from his new album Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally – Styles’ opening monologue quickly turned to fashion, namely the flamboyant outfits he wore on his last world tour. “Back then, people seemed to pay a lot of attention to the clothes I was wearing, and some people accused me of something called ‘queerbaiting’. But did it ever occur to you,” he began, before pausing, “that maybe you don’t know everything about me, Dad!?” The singer bellowed the last part in mock anger, and the audience erupted in passionate applause. Continuing to parody the obsession with his sexuality, Styles was then joined by SNL cast member Ben Marshall, and honoured the name of his album by kissing Marshall on live TV. “Now that’s queerbaiting”, Styles said to camera one, pointing and winking down the lens.

A sketch later in the show also referenced Styles’ exuberant taste in clothes. In a quasi-QVC segment, the singer introduces ‘Harry for Him’, a line of Target dupes aimed at middle-aged househusbands who long to emulate his style. Marshall was back wearing a knockoff of the Egonlab jumpsuit the singer wore to the 2023 Grammys, and Styles marvels over how good his “tushy” looks. Another cast member arrives in Styles’ outfit from the 2019 Met Ball – the sheer Gucci blouse and pearl drop earring – and the singer asks him to leave his wife. Styles himself has on a cropped collarless jacket that your grandmother might wear.

Though the debate has raged on since the beginning of time, Styles recent intervention on SNL has reignited a dormant discourse about who has the ‘right’ to wear certain clothes. Since 2023’s Love on Tour, Styles’ fashion sense has evolved from Elton John jumpsuits and jazzy flares to the Chanel grannycore we see today. His much-talked-about appearance at the 2026 Grammys saw him don jeans and a Dior bar jacket – traditionally a women’s garment – while he wore a leopard print Chanel women’s jacket from the recent Métiers d’Art show to an SNL afterparty, and the matching leopard handbag a week before. Take one look at Twitter, and you’ll see countless posts connecting the musician’s feminine style to the continued accusation of queerbaiting.

At the other end of the spectrum, Styles’ return to the spotlight has also been marked by a kind of David Byrne cosplay, wearing a slouchy Chanel zoot suit to perform at the Brit Awards, and a grey pinstripe two-piece for his SNL monologue. “Ditched the dresses and nail polish cause the gender bending isn’t as profitable in the current anti-trans climate,” wrote a disgruntled X user, over a video of the SNL outfit.

But Styles’ embrace of granny jackets shouldn’t bar him from occasionally wearing a suit, all because he refuses to tell you who he has sex with. When it comes to the queerbait capsule wardrobe, he’s clearly damned if he does or damned if he doesn’t, so it’s nice to see him finally just take the piss out of the whole thing. I, for one, think he looks good in both the Byrne suits and the granny jackets, and at the end of the day, isn’t that the primary function of great fashion – to look good?

Even as I write this from the lobby of my mum’s apartment building in Wembley (it was Mother’s Day yesterday), a young man has just walked in wearing a black Chanel-style scoop neck cardigan with white contrast button plackets at the top of its four pockets. While the whole thing was very Matthieu Blazy for AliExpress (Sheinel, if you will), I was not compelled by the spirit of Christ to obstruct his path into the building and demand to know his sexual proclivities. I just thought, “Oh, look, he’s dressed like Harry Styles”. Now, I would never be so bold as to assume someone’s sexuality, but this man was definitely gay and looked it too. That’s hardly the point, though. The point is that, no matter what you “think” someone may “be”, encouraging a culture where we constantly police people’s self-expression is actually a detriment to everybody, including the queer people that these callouts supposedly protect.