Oasis Look So Cool Because They Look the Same
How do you remember Oasis? For me, it’s 1995: the football kits, the bucket hats, Liam Gallagher’s parkas buttoned up to the chin no matter the weather, Noel Gallagher in everyman flannels and polos, wearing beater denim on the red carpet to win an MTV award. It was pure, undiluted lad power.
Now, 14-something years later, Oasis is back. On tour again, being uncharacteristically civil, and looking exactly how I remember them. For seven nights in a row at a heaving, overcrowded, piss-pint saturated Wembley Stadium—at exactly 8:15 pm on the dot—Oasis have walked on stage straight out of a time capsule.
Noel, surprisingly, has given us the most fit variation. The Chief has stuck to his slim-leg jeans, sneakers, and his mod cut, but cycled through a few shirts. He hasn’t been exactly daring here either. He’s gone with a typical denim shirt, a bomber jacket, and a short-sleeve button-up.
Liam, meanwhile, has leaned so far into the nostalgia, I could practically hear a Gibson ES-355 guitar being smashed. For each appearance, he’s worn the same fit: a khaki Awake NY x Ten C parka, a bucket hat, his regular slim-leg jeans, and his sneakers. Sure, sometimes he takes off the bucket hat, but the consistency has been notable. More than that, it’s been really cool exactly because it looks like the Oasis you remember.
Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images
Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images
The band knows they’re not on tour to make TikTok content. They’re not on tour for fans to pass out friendship bracelets. Oasis are on tour to recapture a moment, a vibe, a high that fans have been chasing since 2009. On Wednesday night, as I looked out across the crowd, what struck me about the style was the pure sentimentality. Guys in their 40s and 50s, arms around one other, wearing jerseys and bucket hats, even though they’re probably the sweater-and-jeans type. Fans wearing their kit from the ’90s, beat for beat. Adidas Gazelles and Spezials were purchased specifically for the occasion, because your originals were thrown out in 2012. For over 30 years, Oasis have sourced their power from the people, from reminding us that they’re us—kids from working class backgrounds living in council estates, with no money for designer shit—from the idea that you could walk into a pub in Liverpool, in Manchester, in Newcastle, and look like Liam Gallagher without even having to try (or drop a fortune).
For better or for worse, Oasis knew what we wanted from them, and they gave it to us exactly the way we were screaming for. Call it fan service, if you want. Pandering to the kids. But from the opening headbanging noisefuck in “Fuckin’ In the Bushes” to the fireworks going off as the last chords of “Champagne Supernova” ring out, the set list is pure classics. No deep cuts, no “for-the-true-heads” winks. The stage is minimalist. The backing band is original (shout out Bonehead). The crowd is once again in head-to-toe Adidas.
Liam had plenty of time to get a new shtick if he wanted one. But he doesn’t need or want one. Instead, he leans into the mic, hands clasped behind his back, saying maybeee! He wants to wear his parka and his bucket hat, strutting around the stage, flipping off Man United fans.
Here’s the secret ingredient: the fans want that, too. They’re not here for a six-outfit-change, moving set, pyrotechnics show, backup dancer spectacle. They want Oasis, exactly as they remember them. The divine ruckus of 1996 Knebworth suspended in amber, perfectly preserved. Now, as seven nights at Wembley chip away at their resin chamber, we see them as they were in our dreams: parka on, button up implacable, bucket hat shoved low.
Cause you and I? We’re gonna live forever, they promised us. Maybe they meant it.
This story originally appeared on British GQ.
