“I bedazzled this myself,” Natasha, a concert-goer standing outside of Brooklyn Steel, explained. She was clad in a black silky robe with the words “Naked in Manhattan” written across the back. “I did it just for this concert.”
At this particular venue, it looked like Halloween had come a few weeks early. Fans of the singer Chappell Roan were lined up outside the concert venue in what could broadly be described as evening wear, for the first night of the New York leg of her Rise and Fall of a Midwestern Princess tour.
The line outside a Chappell Roan concertphoto: Lucienne Nghiem
Outfits ran the gamut from cozy fleece flannel pjs paired with moccasin slippers to sexy nightgowns and intentionally exposed lingerie. One fan, Téa, used a crosswalk as her personal changing room (with a little help from her friends as body shields). The finished look consisted of a light blue Victoria’s Secret bra and a Dylan’s Candy Bar fuzzy bathrobe.
Kayleigh Rose Amstutz, who performs under the moniker Chappell Roan, announces themes for her shows on Instagram a few weeks before starting her tour. In a post from September, she wrote: “Every show I have a theme that is inspired by a song off the album!” For the New York shows, the theme was ”Slumber Party,” inspired by the lyrics of her single “Naked in Manhattan,” a queer coming-of-age romance ballad. Outside the show, a security officer was requesting IDs. “If you’re not wearing pajamas, you won’t be let in,” he joked.