Liam Payne Vigil in London Brings Fans Together

Hundreds of fans gathered in Hyde Park on Sunday afternoon to mourn Liam Payne, 31, a member of the British group One Direction, who died after falling from a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires last week.

Somber adults and teenagers waited — some, for hours — to lay flowers and handmade signs at the base of the bronze Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens to honor Payne. It was one of several memorials held around the world in the days after his death.

“We don’t know loss like this,” said Brooke Kurzeja, 18, who traveled three hours to attend the vigil. “This is what it was like when Prince died, my mom said.”

The loss is profound in Britain, where fans watched Payne, from Wolverhampton, a town in central England, twice on the British talent show “The X Factor”: first in 2008, at 14, when he was eliminated after a few rounds, and then two years later, when he showed up with more confidence. The show’s judges shuffled Payne into a group with four other British boys who had auditioned as solo artists — Louis Tomlinson, Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, Niall Horan — and the group, One Direction, quickly captured the hearts of teenagers around the nation — before taking on the world.

Alicia Sinclair, 22, posted to X the day after Payne’s death expressing her desire to gather with other devastated fans. “If I need something, probably so many other people need something,” Sinclair said. As the weekend approached, she and a few other fans started a group on WhatsApp, which quickly grew to nearly 1,000 members.