This weekend, Halsey will close out the last few dates of her For My Last Trick tour. Since May, the pop star has been busy living life on the road—performing songs off her 2024 album, The Great Impersonator. “This has been the most exciting and challenging tour I have ever done,” says Halsey. “I’ve just been so overwhelmingly grateful every single night. I didn’t know if I was ever going to get the chance to tour again. Being healthy, and feeling strong in my body every night, and playing songs from the past 10 years of my career, is such a surreal experience.”
Halsey is no stranger to a big, blowout tour. But this time around, the performer wanted to take a more narrative and theatrical approach with her show. Drawing inspiration from Alice in Wonderland, she plays the part of a pop star who falls down a rabbit hole—and enters a series of new worlds, playing her bops along the way for fans. “I got to work with so many incredible creatives from the Broadway world to make these practical sets (and practical tricks) come to life,” she says. “It was so refreshing to build a tour that relied so heavily on physical sets and performance art, in a space that is growing more and more digitally rendered every day. Something about it felt so human to me—and I really needed that.”
Impressively, Halsey played an entirely different setlist every night of her tour. “I think by the end we had performed almost 70 different songs,” says Halsey. “I got to surprise each crowd with an old hit, or a new deep cut. I even played two new unreleased songs, ‘Carry the Weight’ and ‘Lucid,’ that I wrote while I was on the tour. It was just so electric and exciting every single night.”
For stage looks, meanwhile, Halsey matched the flamboyant spirit of the show with costumes that were just as spotlight-worthy. The star worked with stylist Lyn Alyson to craft a series of different moods and characters throughout the show. The designs they came up with were surreal and entirely fantasy-filled. “I wanted to incorporate classic silhouettes from iconic designers, but also bring some new talent to the stage as well,” says Halsey.
There were the edgy, fetish-inspired Zana Bayne looks; ethereal and dreamy Selkie frocks—“Selkie has been a personal favorite of mine for years,” Halsey says; or the more structured and corseted pieces by Vivienne Westwood. “I have a long relationship with Vivienne Westwood, and her designs and spirit have always felt quintessentially me,” says Halsey. “I knew we’d use a Vivienne silhouette for the witchy section of the show.” Halsey also sported a sweet blue Anna Sui babydoll dress—her homage to Alice in Wonderland. “I knew I’d need a babydoll dress that was perfectly cute and toylike to establish the Alice in Wonderland theme.”
While she enlisted the help of the stylist pros to bring her stage wardrobe to life, Halsey’s striking beauty looks, meanwhile, were all her own. Using products from her brand, about-face beauty, the star treated her face as a canvas for even more storytelling. “The [makeup] look had to evolve for each [act], and they are very dynamically different,” says Halsey. She began with an Old Hollywood look, and transformed into an edgier, witchier beauty aesthetic as the show progresses. “In the intermission, I have four minutes to do a full makeup, wig, wardrobe, and equipment change. It’s a wild ride every night,” says Halsey. “I change over the look by building on the eyes, the contour, and changing the lip. It all becomes a lot more grungy and undone.”
Last week, as the singer played her final shows of the tour in Salt Lake, Portland, and Seattle, Halsey allowed Vogue to document the performances and behind-the-scenes moments. “The [shows] were awesome,” says Halsey, who admits this tour has been one for the books. “This tour is definitely at the top in terms of morale of any I’ve ever done. Everyone is just so awesome: The dancers, the crew, the band. We all just hang out, have fun, and joke around, and it makes every day feel like we’re on some big lovey summer camp vacation. Hard to believe it can be that good after a decade.”
Now that tour is wrapping up, Halsey says she is ready for some much-deserved R&R. “I’m ready to go home and nap for a week straight,” she says. “Catch up on some shows and movies I’m behind on. I have some bread to bake, tomatoes to slice, and some little barefoot feet to chase in the grass. Then it’s back to work, cause I can’t play new songs and not get ready to release them!”
