“I think you know what this is.”
This poster girl of modern-day pop whispers seductively and crawls toward the camera, her face completely engulfing the fish-eye lens plastered on huge monitors around the arena.
It feels impossibly intimate and underproduced.
“I think you wanna uh,”
She sweeps long, blond tendrils of hair out of her eyes as the wind blows them back, an illusion created by a hidden fan.
“No, you ain’t got no Mrs.”
Her toned arms are shiny with sweat, her mascara is smudged and her blowout is framed in a halo of frizz from the humidity of the stadium.
The outfit she is wearing fits her perfectly — a cerulean blue bandage set that toes the line between what Paris Hilton would wear to Hyde Lounge in 2008 and what an Olympian might wear to practice.
“Oh, but you got a sports car.”
She looks like she could be on her way to a night out clubbing with friends — if she were not performing in front of 15,000 screaming fans instead.
The context
Over the past few years, artists have veered away from “trying too hard” in their styling — they want to appear as if they are cool but unaware of it, presenting themselves as effortless “it girls.”
Thank God for Tate McRae — one more pop star in the industry who is not afraid of being a diva.
She knows she can dance. Years of competitive dancing have given her a dynamic edge in her live performances that pop music has not seen since the irreplaceable Britney Spears.
And, just like Spears in her prime touring years, McRae’s styling is unapologetically sexy, a screeching pivot from the ultra-refined “clean girl” aesthetic in modern music seen among artists like Dua Lipa and Billie Eilish.
The culture
Everything is big with McRae: the production, the hair and makeup, the fashion and the sound.
It is a refreshing, long-overdue pendulum swing toward realism. Amid AI-generated models and artificially created music, there is a desire to return to the human bedrock of live performance.
This gritty, nostalgic, star power appeal is achieved not only through the theatrical choreography of her shows and the sensual quality of her lyrics, but also through intentional choices made by her styling team.
McRae has never shied away from a hard-hitting cultural reference, and she is slowly cementing her place in the lineage of pop royalty.
In a direct homage to Spears’s sheer, black lace Dolce & Gabbana mini dress in 2001, McRae wore a direct imitation of the dress created by Roberto Cavalli — one of her most frequently worn designers — at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2024.
The music video for her hit single, “Exes,” is an unmistakable homage to Christina Aguilera’s iconically controversial music video “Dirrrty,” from the boxing ring set to the literal X’s on McRae’s shorts.
Perhaps the best examples of this appeal to early 2000s nostalgia are the custom Hervé Léger sets McRae has worn on her Miss Possessive Tour.
They are also something distinctly her own, as the sets were created for and in collaboration with McRae herself. The elasticity of the structured fabric mirrors McRae’s flexibility both physically and sonically.
The peacock blue boy shorts and crop top with strapping hand pieces are both athletic and feminine, allowing McRae’s trademark dancing to coexist with her femininity on stage.
They bring to mind the Hervé Léger bandage dress, which is one of, if not the, most poignant visual markers of clubbing culture before the internet age. It is a symbol of a bygone era, and as current Hervé Léger Senior Vice President Melissa Lefere-Cobb said, “Everyone has a story about this dress.”
McRae’s set takes inspiration from Hervé Léger’s Spring 2009 collection, designed by Max and Lubov Azria, which featured monokinis and bikinis in the bandage wrap style and became the house’s signature calling card.
McRae’s image is a reflection of her versatility as an artist and her commitment to excellence. She works with stylists such as Brett Alan Nelson, who styled “Sports car,” to source vintage, emerging brands that best represent her vision.
Her movement and artistry are incorporated into the way she participates in fashion. As McRae said in an interview with Vogue, she strives to “honor the pieces” she wears with her dancing.
