With festival season upon us, it's time to perfect your festival looks! This guide covers everything you need to know about festival fashion, from essential pieces and styling tips to the latest trends. Plus, we’ve included tips on how to make your festival experience more sustainable. Let’s dive in and make this festival season your most trend-led and eco-friendly yet!
Festival Fashion Essentials: What To Wear To A Festival?
Festivals give you the perfect opportunity for self-expression and are a time for you to experiment with your style. There
are however a few fashion essentials, both unique and practical, that shouldn’t miss from your packing list. Taking into consideration trends, weather forecasts and artist line ups, here’s our guide to what to wear to a festival, all pieces can be found on our website.
Vintage Denim Shorts
Denim shorts are a must have in your festival wardrobe – a piece that can be worn this year, next year, and the year after, and doesn’t limit itself to just events. Particularly when purchased vintage, you’re adding to the lifespan of your product and helping the environment. Vintage denim shorts are promised to be durable, brands such as Dickies are distinguished as hardwearing, and give you space to move freely, which is just what you need for dancing and enjoying music from afar in the field.
Vintage denim shorts are a staple piece that go with everything and can be styled with knitwear, fitted or baggy tees, dressed up with cowboy boots or dressed down with a pair of Vans. They’re versatile to both menswear and womenswear and can be found on our website in an array of sizes, washes and brand names, including Carhartt, Levi’s, Dickies, Wrangler and more.
Vintage Hats and Accessories
We're always trying to make the perfect festival accessories available to you in the new festival collection. You can find bucket hats, bandannas, scarves, sunglasses, belts and more both in menswear and womenswear to spice up your look.
Accessories are essential in the build of any outfit, a colourful belt and sunglasses can elevate a plain tee, denim shorts and boots. Our hats also have the role of protecting from the sun. We offer a range of great quality leathers, all with unique origins and stories. These pieces can act as a staple for a 60s or 70s inspired look if that’s more your vibe. Our bandanas and sunglasses can inspire a Y2K outfit when accessorised alongside sequin or metallic garments.
Vintage Fleeces
Weather is a major factor to be considered when choosing your festival wardrobe. As evenings set in, you may find yourself needing to layer up. We recommend vintage fleeces as the ideal day to night look, offering you brands to choose from such as Adidas, Nike, Helly Hansen, The North Face, Champion and more.
Vintage fleeces don’t have to be just a practical cover up, they can be colourful and/or patterned for both men’s and women’s looks. Adding a fleece as a layer can fully transform the vibe of an outfit. If you opt for a plain black The North Face, you’re likely to re-wear the piece out of season too. Similarly, a Nike logo fleece can be worn in different contexts: either with a tee, baggy jeans and trainers for practicality, or a mini skirt and high boots to dress it up.
Vintage Boots
Vintage boots are a style of footwear that go with anything. They’re super versatile for any weather type, for varied styles, and are a major festival trend. Choosing vintage boots allows you to give your outfit an identity, they come in an array of shapes, colours and sizes and are guaranteed to match any vibe, from 60s, to 00s and contemporary fashion.
Find cowboy boots, Timberlands, Dr Martens and more in both menswear and womenswear. Vintage boots have a long lifespan, leather pieces in particular are long lasting and resistant. Don’t worry about minor imperfections in the material, as a used look adds more character and is something vintage lovers always appreciate.
Vintage Band Tees and Graphic Tees
If you’re planning on seeing one of your favourite bands this summer, such as Kiss or ACDC, we’ve got you covered with the perfect vintage tees. Graphic tees are another one of our festival recommendations – easy to pair with denim jeans, shorts, skirts or layered with dresses, our all over printed tees will make the simplest outfit stand out.
You can also find Nascar and football tees as some of our best selling styles. Graphic tees are one of the most versatile pieces for festivals, you can wear them with anything! We suggest styling with bottoms of the same colour as one of the graphics to coordinate and complement.
Vintage Jackets and Coats
Festivals unfortunately aren’t always sunny and warm. With unpredictable weather and sometimes cool evenings, it's best to be prepared with a vintage jacket or coat. We have you prepared with branded jackets of many styles. You can choose from windbreakers, to denim, workwear or leather jackets in both men’s and women’s.
Levi’s, Wrangler, Diesel, Carhartt and Nike are just a few names you can choose from in preparation for your go to festival cover up this year. The advantage of vintage jackets is that their material tends to be super resistant, so you’re covered for bad weather and can re-wear for years to come.
Vintage Shirts and Blouses
Bold prints, colours and patterns make vintage shirts and blouses the ultimate statement peice. Not only do shirts create a great outfit piece, they can act as a light cover up, or can be styled by tying around the waist of your shorts/skirt. Our festival collection includes blouses of different styles, from feminine cuts to oversized, frilled, laced, sequinned, sheer, long or short sleeved.
Some of our most popular pieces include heavy printed shirts, sheer blouses and cropped blouses. To build your festival outfit, we suggest styling any of these with a pair of cowboy boots and denim shorts. Don’t forget to accessorise!
Vintage Bags
What’s a festival without a vintage bag? A must have for keeping all your essentials safe as well as a great accessory, our festival collection offers both men’s and women’s bags in a variety of styles and sizes. Our most popular pieces include bum bags, backpacks and crossbody bags – all of these are practical for camping and long days of being in crowds.
Our festival collection also stocks leather and embroidered bags with a lot of character. They look great styled with a plain tee, denim shorts, a pair of Timberland’s and a leather or woven belt to complement.
Vintage Dresses
Vintage dresses are a great festival outfit option. They can easily be styled with trainers, Timberland’s, or cowboy boots. Our collection includes flowy dresses that are lightweight and easy to pack as well as sequin, denim and knitted dresses, all found in different sizes and lengths; maxi, mini or midi.
We are also happy to stock our unique Remade Vintage Dresses, all handmade in our South Yorkshire HQ. These are a great sustainable piece, created from materials that were originally destined for landfill. Check out our collection and the Remade tag so that you can take a step to dressing more sustainably this season.
We hope to have inspired your festival wardrobe, and give you some styling tips for the upcoming season. The main idea for festival looks are comfortability and confidence. It’s all about having fun with the build of your outfit.
Festival Fashion Trends
Here are some different festival trends and styles you might see this summer and that might inspire you.
Indie
Indie style bases itself on individuality and is in favour of nonconformism and challenging mainstream fashion. You can spot an indie inspired outfit at a festival by keeping an eye out for elements such as crochet, floaty dresses, cowboy boots, suede and leather. This style has been around since the 60s and 70s; indie festival outfits remain one of the most common fashion trends for summer events at present.
If this is your style or something you’d like to try, our festival collection has the perfect pieces. Vintage garments are in particular very fitting to the indie aesthetic, you’ll find great quality leather accessories, fun band tees, footwear and everything floaty to help you create your own identity in festival fashion. We suggest sizing up a size or two to get an oversized look.
Rave
Rave festival fashion is another major trend you’ll come across this summer, especially as it’s specific to the season. Ravers have remained popular from the days of 90s hip hop, their aim to signify unity and love is represented through bright, bold colours, contrast of cropped tops and baggy bottoms and a lot of diamante accessories.
Build your rave festival outfit with our statement Remade parachute pants, handmade by our team. They’re one of our best selling products, and can be found in black, green, brown, beige and purple in sizes Small, Medium and Large. You could pair these with one of our other Remade pieces: keyhole tank tops. They come in an array of prints and colours and create a perfect rave garment. You can also find other sequin or cropped blouses from our general vintage, as well as many striking accessories for extra bling.
Gorpcore
One of the most common contemporary fashion trends, gorpcore is bound to follow us throughout this year’s festival fashions. We predict to see a lot of outdoor products and trend specific brands, we’ve got you covered!
Our products include fleeces, cargo pants and jackets from the likes of Patagonia, Helly Hansen and The North Face. Our Remade parachute pants mentioned above were originally designed with the gorpcore trend in mind, they’re a perfect start in building your outfit.
As the gorpcore trend is at its peak (pun intended), many brands will be mass-producing garments from materials not as ethically sourced and at temptingly inexpensive costs. Investing into second hand products of good quality that can be worn again or recycled will ensure you’re doing your bit in protecting the environment.
@jessjesscraig
Y2K
Y2K is another major contemporary fashion trend, particularly popular with Gen Z. 00s fashion is easily recognised by elements such as low rise, cropped tops, over-accessorising and denim. This style is particularly worn well during summer, its flirty and colourful vibe providing the perfect festival eye-catcher.
You can find brands such as Miss Sixty, Diesel and Guess in the form of track tops, baggy low rise jeans, crop tops and mini skirts, all in our Y2K section on our website. Make sure to check our Y2K board on Pinterest for inspiration from the 00s icons such as Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and Destiny’s Child.
5 Tips on How To Be More Sustainable This Festival Season
1. Go Plastic Free
Ditch the plastic cutlery and water bottles this festival season where you can, taking your own will save your pocket in the long run and the environment.
2. Keep Your Tent
In the UK alone, 250,000 tents get left behind at summer festivals and most are known to be sent to landfill. If you've bought one especially - take it with you. If not ask friends or family if you can borrow theirs.
3. Leave No Trace
Make sure to clean up after yourself and leave your spot how you found it. It's likely that rubbish left behind will not get recycled and can harm wildlife if caught in wind. Most festivals now provide recycling bins too.
4. Green Travel
Car sharing will not only help with the ever growing petrol costs, excessive build of traffic but also the environment! Taxi's aren't free though, so do make sure to pay where you can!
5. Choose Second Hand
In 2022, 42% of festival goers bought a new outfit for their time in the field. This is approximately 29.6 million new outfits with their own environmental footprint. Looking fresh and on trend can be done more sustainably through buying second hand and ensuring that if you are buying a new outfit you give it the love it deserves and wear it again and again.
Shop Vintage Festival Fashion
We hope to have given you some insight into this year’s festival fashion trends, and a starting point for your wardrobes. Be practical, comfy, but also have fun, express yourself and be confident. Take a look at our men’s and women’s festival collection, and remember, shopping vintage is always better for our environment.
The Glass Onion team wishes you the best time and we'll see you at Boardmasters and Leeds Festival in August! ♻️
Sources: ourgoodbrands.com, BBC Earth
