Harry Styles Lights Up the BRITs: Aperture Opening, Chanel Pinstripes, Fake Stage Invaders and a Censored Mandelson Joke
The 2026 Brit Awards delivered a contentious, fashion-forward and musically ambitious evening in which harry styles opened the ceremony with his return single "Aperture" and a carefully staged red-carpet-to-stage look. The night mattered not just for headline performances but for its mix of protest, censorship and standout winners that crystallised a fraught cultural moment.
Harry Styles’s Aperture opening and live performance
harry styles began the ceremony with "Aperture, " a return single that debuted at UK No 1 in its release week but is already dropping down the charts. The performance read as euphoric yet faintly distant: Styles jived with his considerable band and backing singers and twitched in time with dancers in snail T-shirts and sunglasses. He offered only a few grins, holding a degree of reserve—a presence described as one level above the moment. Observers heard vocal lines that called to mind Erlend Oye of Kings of Convenience and Whitest Boy Alive, with a detected echo of David Bowie in tailoring and a thousand-yard stare that took in foreground and background simultaneously.
The Fashion 101 On Harry Styles’s Brit Awards Look
Weeks of speculation about a womenswear-focused red-carpet moment culminated in a Chanel look. The chosen outfit was a black-and-white bouclé pinstripe jacket with matching trousers and a pale mint pinstripe cotton shirt, identified as look 39 from Chanel’s Métiers d’art 2026 collection. The look was credited to a collaboration between Styles and his stylist, Harry Lambert, and retained for the onstage moment—making it the first time Styles flexed his vocal skills live in his "Aperture" era while keeping the red-carpet outfit on.
The fashion rollout around Styles’s current era was described as colour-saturated and humour-filled, with references to a mustard Miu Miu jumper, a Prada bowling-pin shirt and tie, and Elton John-adjacent sunglasses sourced from General Eyewear Vintage. There was an expressed penchant for accessories traditionally deemed feminine, exemplified by mint-green, bow-bedecked Dior mules. Industry chatter before the event evoked Milan Fashion Week—mentions of a Bella Hadid-ification of the Prada runway and Maria Grazia Chiuri bringing back Karl Lagerfeld collars at Fendi—and even speculative names such as Jonathan Anderson for Dior or rare archival Prada pieces. The immediate fashion takeaway: feather boas and harlequin jumpsuits are out; French-girl flats and ballet-pump moments are very much in.
Protests, censors, fake stage invaders and a censored Peter Mandelson joke
The ceremony was a protest-filled, relatively edgy affair that kept the broadcast censors busy. The evening included fake stage invaders and an instance described as a censored Peter Mandelson joke. Artists at the event voiced political alarm as well, saying "We're going into a dark place" while expressing concern about the rise of Reform UK, a theme that threaded through several acceptance speeches and onstage comments.
Winners, emotional performances and surprise guests
The night belonged to Olivia Dean, who emerged as a four-time winner for her album The Art of Loving. In her acceptance speech she said the record is about love and "loving each other in a world that feels loveless right now, " and she carried that spirit into a joyful performance of "Man I Need. " Her stage manner—small wriggles of pleasure and candid delight—underlined a palpable enjoyment of performing.
Ronson received the outstanding contribution to music award and presented an eclectic performance that underscored his unusual path through pop. He scratched vinyl as Ghostface Killah delivered an avuncular roll through "Ooh Wee, " before moving into Amy Winehouse material that highlighted Ronson’s long-ambitious, genre-crossing vision. The piece noted that Raye is now carrying that early sound into arenas and onto the Brit stage in part because of Ronson’s influence.
There was also a notable absence and a surprise: Bruno Mars did not perform "Uptown Funk" despite having a new album to promote—phone calls were suggested to have been sent his way—while Dua Lipa appeared as a surprise guest to perform "Dance the Night" and "Electricity. " Raye’s performance of "Nightingale Lane, " a song about the London street where she watched her first love walk away, culminated in a stunning, wordless expulsion of pain. There was a similar feel to Rosa—unclear in the provided context.
What this Brit Awards night signals
The ceremony fused fashion ambition, political unease and muscular pop moments. The combination of harry styles’s stylistic pivot onstage, Olivia Dean’s sweep of awards, Ronson’s honored trajectory and unpredictable live moments—from fake invaders to a censored joke—left the evening looking both celebratory and unsettled. Details in some areas remain unclear in the provided context; the shape of ensuing conversations around politics and pop will be watched closely by performers and industry alike.
