On a balmy evening last weekend in Barcelona, the main stage at Primavera Sound—the blockbuster music festival previously referred to as “Europe’s Coachella”—fell to a hush as smoke began billowing from behind a set of metal scaffolding. The silence didn’t last long. Moments later, six backing dancers began strutting onstage, closely followed by Troye Sivan, in a custom Helmut Lang deconstructed tank top, all delivering high-octane choreography to Sivan’s single “Got Me Started”—and accompanied by a deafening chorus of screams.
“I feel a little overwhelmed, to be honest,” Sivan says of the effusive reception to the show. “It felt like a really big moment for us, and I’m so happy with how it went.”
That performance, however, was just the beginning. For the rest of the year, Sivan will be touring his third album, Something to Give Each Other—one of last year’s most stylish, self-assured, and sexiest pop releases—throughout Europe and the US, first solo, and then as part of the collaborative Sweat Tour with Charli XCX in the fall. “Not to get too big-picture about it, or to sound too wanky, but personally, this has truly been a lifelong dream,” Sivan adds. “This is the show I’ve always wanted to put on.”
That excitement is partly, Sivan explains, because of the pride he feels in the body of work he made for Something to Give Each Other—not just the music, but also the internet-breaking videos for “Rush” and “One of Your Girls” that he created with his creative director, Gordon von Steiner: “I really felt kind of the most myself that I’ve ever felt, and creating the visual world around it, the show was at the back of my mind the whole time.” (It’s not hard to see how a song like “Rush,” with its four-to-the-floor stomp and Village People-esque chant of a chorus, was created with the visceral thrill of its live performance in mind.)
The show that Sivan had always wanted to put on, it turns out, is a five-part extravaganza featuring a full live band, that previously mentioned army of backing dancers, elaborate lighting and sets, and a head-spinning number of costume changes. (Oh, and a couple of racier moments that have already set the internet alight, including Sivan getting down on his knees to sing into a microphone placed in a very suggestive position by one of his dancers.) Another highlight comes in Sivan’s performance of “One of Your Girls,” where he channels the cross-dressing spirit of the music video by wearing a custom black bustier by Jean Paul Gaultier that carries more than a whisper of Madonna’s Blonde Ambition tour wardrobe. “The level of extra I aspired to be was to do a look change for ‘One of Your Girls,’ and then do another look change immediately afterwards,” Sivan says, laughing. “We’ve been having so much fun.”
On the fashion front, Sivan’s partner in crime for the tour is Spanish stylist Marc Forné, with whom he first connected in the spring of last year. “This is definitely the biggest styling project I’ve ever done,” Forné says over Zoom from his studio in Barcelona, where the whirlwind of fittings for Sivan’s upcoming shows is taking place behind him, on a stand-in model. The pair first worked together on Sivan’s whistle-stop press tour for his performance in the HBO series The Idol, which began with a major red carpet week in Cannes—and they’ve been inseparable ever since. (Forné also masterminded Sivan’s recent throwback Prada look for the Met Gala.) “I think we have this low-key friendship connection that helps the work a lot,” says Forné. “It’s just very chill, and I feel like I fully get his style. And he’s just the nicest, most humble person—working with Troye is just very pleasant.”
Forné also notes that Sivan and von Steiner’s fully fleshed-out visual world around the album helped when it came to planning the looks for the tour, with the structure of the show revolving in part around the different chapters of Sivan’s music videos. “It’s basically been about starting with those guidelines, and then reinterpreting [them] in a creative way,” Forné says of conceptualizing the fashion for each performance. Sivan being a Prada ambassador, Forné has also had the house’s Milan ateliers on speed dial; a particularly breathtaking look on rotation in the tour wardrobe is an ethereal white Prada suit featuring floating strips of the gossamer-thin organza first spotted in the brand’s spring 2024 collection, to lend Sivan the appearance of a “fallen angel,” in Forné’s words. But the tour has also provided an opportunity to showcase younger, independent designers. (Case in point: the playful appliquéd tank tops created by local Barcelona brand Gimaguas for the Primavera show.)
Still, the show isn’t just a case of Sivan getting on stage and belting out his hits—it is, in all senses of the word, a show. With all that choreography, and all those costume changes, there have been certain practical obstacles along the way. “I think Marc is simultaneously in heaven and hell,” Sivan says, laughing. “He’s a very meticulous stylist, and that’s what makes him so brilliant, but then I’m like, ‘I think this needs a Velcro strap on it, actually, so I can slap it on in two seconds,’ or, ‘I need to swap the laces on these shoes with elastic.’” Making the wardrobe tour-proof, however, is a challenge that Forné has welcomed. “There’s been a lot of tailoring and cutting and adapting, but it’s fun to find a way to make every outfit feel as good as possible for Troye and the dancers,” he says. “It becomes something beyond just regular styling—it’s teamwork.”
In Barcelona, that all came together in the cheeky final look to accompany a bring-the-house down performance of “Rush,” including open-front chaps revealing a pair of custom Gimaguas briefs emblazoned with “Troye” on the rear—all while one of the biggest crowds of the weekend shouted along to the song’s lyrics and fully embraced its hedonistic, sweat-flecked spirit. “The feedback to Primavera was just insane,” says Forné. “I feel like it’s changed everyone’s perspective, and everything feels easier now, and everyone’s up for going all-out.”
If the looks for Sivan’s opening dates weren’t all-out enough, that is. It also turns out that collaboration with a local Barcelona designer won’t be the last—Sivan and Forné have plenty of other location-specific fashion surprises up their sleeve. “Marc has been doing an incredible job working in a way that’s really fluid and responsive to the cities we’re in,” says Sivan. “And we’ve got plenty more special looks peppered throughout the tour.” First Primavera, then the world.