If you, like many others on the internet, are currently looking for a man in finance, then look no further: Harry Styles and Alessandro Michele are officially entering their banking era. This weekend, the pair stepped out in Rome after dining out, and gone were the swinging bell bottoms and outsize sunglasses of yesteryear, instead replaced by something a lot more restrained. Taking their relationship one step further by morphing into one another, the singer and designer wore matching blue shirts and roomy slacks for the occasion, like two hedge fund managers summering in the Hamptons. In true finance bro fashion, Styles completed the look with a jumper (surely cashmere) slung over his shoulders, while Michele wound his long locks into four braids down his back. The off-duty look was a far cry from what we’re used to seeing them in at glitzy events, like 2019’s Notes on Camp Met Gala, when Michele arrived in iridescent pink and Styles with a single pearl earring dangling from his ear.
This weekend’s outing was also something of a reunion – we haven’t seen the pair together since Michele left his creative director post at Gucci in 2022, during which Styles was a constant source of inspiration for the designer. Their master-muse relationship began at the beginning of Michele’s Gucci tenure, when Styles requested a meeting with the designer at the start of his own solo career. The pair were said to have connected instantly, and from there built a long-standing personal and professional relationship, the latter of which resuled in their collaborative collection Gucci HA HA HA. Comprising Michele and Styles’ signature maximalist style, the capsule couldn’t be further from the stonks-coded street style looks we saw them in this weekend. Maybe the business casual attire is a hint at what’s to come from Michele, as he assumes his post as creative director of Valentino?
Elsewhere on his Roman holiday, Styles was spotted in a number of lowkey fits, including one Blur t-shirt with the name of their second album Modern life is rubbish scrawled across the front. And if that kind of depressive doom mongering wasn’t enough to convince you Styles is just like us, after his mate date with Michele the singer was then spotted forgoing the wait for a taxi and hopping on a Lime bike to cycle home instead. We’ve all been there my friend.