Golden Girl
Wearing a somewhat understated Blonds’ look, Taylor Swift took to the stage in 2022 at the 50th American Music Awards not just once but six times, winning Favourite Pop Album, Favourite Female Pop Artist, Favourite Music Video, Favourite Country Album, Favourite Female Country Artist, and Artist of the Year. She dazzled in a golden halter-neck jumpsuit created by designers Phillipe and David, who are self-confessedly inspired by the everlasting glitz of legendary great glamour goddesses, including Josephine Baker, Marlene Dietrich and Marilyn Monroe as well as slightly more contemporary fashion power-icons such as Grace Jones and Cher.
The Blonds’ aesthetic is full-powered fantasy over-thetop wear. A close look at their work reveals a gender-fluid wardrobe wonderland. Their bling-tastic approach has garnered a powerful following and the likes of Beyonce, Daphne Guinness and Lady Gaga have all showcased their
The name’s Blond – Swift arrives at the 50th AMAs in 2022.
Are You Ready for It?
Taylor often fizzes and shimmers in her clothes. It’s been that way ever since she first began appearing on red-carpets and at award ceremonies right down to her famous silver sequin guitar. But when she debuted Reputation, her 2017 album, fans marvelled at the rocky, glamazonian wardrobe that came with it. The new look had an edgy confidence, a steelier shine.
For the October 2018 American Music Awards, Swift wore a silver Balmain mini dress, composed by French designer Olivier Rousteing. Having launched its first collection a month after the end of WWII, Balmain today is known for its hyper modern take on luxury. Just like that first collection with its defiant luxury, Balmain clothes continue to transport the wearer to a new and fabulous place, and the ‘Balmain Army’ is a troop of international devotees who are loyal to the opulent brand. Taylor’s reflective body-con Balmain gown, with matching thigh-highs, evinced a cutting-edge and commanding charisma. As she won four more AMAs, taking her total to a fine 23, thereby breaking the record for most won by a female artist ever.
this page: On point – Taylor sparkles as she accepts an award for Reputation at the 2018 AMAs.
opposite: Glitz and Glamour – Taylor Swift arrives at the 2018 AMAs.
Lavender Haze
The video for T-Swizzle’s ‘Lavender Haze’ from her 2023 Midnights album was a minestrone of mauve. And Swifties were hot on the case, chasing every possible lead to uncover the meaning. What was the title saying? What is a lavender haze? Taylor herself went online and told the world via Instagram that having first heard the expression in the hit TV series Mad Men, ‘I looked it up because I thought it sounded cool and it turns out it's a common phrase used in the ’50s where they would just describe being in love. Like, if you were in the lavender haze, that meant that you were in that all-encompassing love glow, and I thought that was really beautiful’.
Gaze at the video for long enough and you can see something far more than, what Tay calls: ‘the 1950s shit they want from me’. It’s a psychedelic miasma of swirling midnight thoughts and, dressed in a shaggy periwinkle shrug and matching
this page top: Pan’s purple – Tay arrives at the Verizon Wireless and People party in Hollywood.
this page bottom: On the red carpet at the 50th Annual GRAMMY Awards at the Staples Center in LA, 10 February 2008.
opposite: Taylor Swift attends the Billboard Music Awards at the MGM Grand Garden Arena on 1 May 2019.
Duffle Shuffle
After hitting the streets in a bright yellow shortie duffle coat in December 2014, Swift took to Instagram to ask ‘who wore it better?’, comparing herself to a certain bear from deepest darkest Peru. Posting a pic of Paddington alongside her own, Tay Tay added that the bear had of course won the fashion contest. Although the duffle coat started life as a military musthave – first produced in the mid-19th century and taken onboard by the British Navy – it has since become a fashion icon. In the ’50s, the Jazz Generation of bohemian beatniks in Paris, London and San Francisco adopted the duffle as a countercultural statement, appropriating deadstock from the armed forces and wearing it to write, smoke and read poetry. In 1960, Brigitte Bardot wore one as the free-thinking, radical Dominique Marceau in cult film La Vérité. Swift has loved many a duffle over the years and has been spotted all over the world wearing them. They make an easy, casual contrast to the shiny, happy stage-wear she’s celebrated for.
this page: Brigitte Bardot on the set of La Vérité, directed by HenriGeorges Clouzot, May 1960. opposite: Taylor Swift is seen on 25 January 2012, in London, United Kingdom.
Squad Goals
I don’t think that’s something you sign up for; I just think it’s something you inherently have inside of you, and I think that’s Taylor. — Selena Gomez, iHeartRadio Music Awards, 2023. ‘ ’
She’s a role model.
Out of the 14 nominations she received at the 2015 Billboard Awards (including Top Artist and Top Female Artist), Taylor took home a grand total of eight. And with 11.1 million viewers tuning into the show, she could easily be forgiven for basking in the limelight. Tay did get her fair share of fun when debuting her video for ‘Bad Blood’ – as well as flaunting a ‘Bad Blood’ box purse, just in case anyone missed it. But the video was a celebration of her friendship group and their support for her. The cast included some of her besties, like Selena Gomez and Karlie Kloss, as well as a roster of female fabulousness, from supermodel Cindy Crawford to Empire actress Serayah.
Taylor’s moment on the red carpet felt like a party for her gal-pals, as she cuddled up with Zendaya and Lily Aldridge who were there to cheer her on. She also spent the evening in a white, cut-out, Balmain jumpsuit from Olivier Rousteing’s summer 2015 collection, underlining her role as a key player in his ‘Balmain Army’. In an interview with Allure, Rousteing revealed that army to be a fierce group, saying: ‘All my girls
Taylor arrives at the 2015 Billboard Music Awards.
You're Beautiful
In May 2006, Taylor Swift stepped onto one of her first ever red carpets wearing a BCBG by Max Azria dress. BCBG is French shorthand for bon chic, bon genre, which loosely translates as ‘good style, good attitude’. Taylor was just 16 at the time, but even then, she had both! She was no ordinary teenager, of course. She’d upped sticks to Hendersville, Tennessee, from Pennsylvania a couple of years earlier and had reportedly taught herself to play guitar by copying a tune by Texan country band The Dixie Chicks – later rebranded as The Chicks. The frock she chose for the 41st ACM Awards had an appropriately western feel to it. Made from boho patchwork, it was feminine, but sweetly unassuming compared to the traditional rhinestone country music wardrobe – just right for Tay Tay’s age and profile.
With its handkerchief hem, the effortlessly on-point gown was typical of Azria’s contemporary and laid-back take on style. The brand, launched in 1989 and designed by founder Max until he left in 2016, had first shown on the New York
Sweet sixteen – a young Taylor Swift arrives at the 41st Annual Academy of Country Music Awards, held at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, Las Vegas, Nevada, 23 May 2006.
Red Hot
Red is about to be mine again, but it has always been ours. Now we begin again.
Taylor Swift,
Twitter, 12 November 2021.
Tay became Queen Crimson when Red was released in October 2012. Looking like a 21st-century Sandra Dee, she regularly showed up in rouge, vintage-inspired daywear with retro, ironed-flat hair and bangs. ‘For me, being 22 has been my favorite year of my life. I like all the possibilities of how you’re still learning, but you know enough. You still know nothing, but you know that you know nothing’, she told Billboard just days after the release.
As well as her burst of reddish hues, Taylor experimented with black Saint Laurent trousers and Jimmy Choo booties for an extra adult aura. Teamed with Paris-based label IRO’s red lurex biker jacket, it made a suitably robust outfit in which to perform her now iconic tracks ‘I Knew You Were Trouble’ and ‘We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together’ at the Times Square New Years’ Eve party in December 2012. IRO’s brand is openly inspired by the ‘American rock scene’ of the ’70s and ’80s, and ‘driven by the desire to build a simple and strong wardrobe composed like a soundtrack’. Could anything be
Taylor Swift poses backstage during the 2012 iHeartRadio Music Festival at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, 22 September 2012.
Never Out of Style
There’s one thing you should know about me before we begin: I was born in 1989.
Taylor
Swift, onstage, The 1989 World Tour Live, December 2015.
In August 2014, during a Yahoo! and ABC live stream in NYC, Taylor told fans she was making her first ‘official pop album’ and that she ‘woke up every day not wanting but needing to make a new style of music’. So, when Swift wore plastic, poptastic sunnies to sing ‘Welcome to New York’ – the opening track of her 1989 album, as well as the corresponding shows – it consolidated the tone for a new epoch. She also sported a sparkling sequinned, sea-green Libertine bomber jacket by Johnson Hartig, the LA designer whose label epitomises playful cool. It was all part of the new pop package. To match the slick, retro-synth tracks, she took to wearing shiny, bright, and decidedly ’80s outfits.
At the 2016 Grammys, Taylor stepped onto the red carpet in a lively colour-block ’fit, choosing an Atelier Versace, custommade, tangerine boob-tube and a shock-pink satin, floorlength skirt, open at the front to reveal matching high-waisted big knickers. Donatella Versace, the architect of this bubblegum burst and queen of many a strong ’80s ensemble,
Onstage in Chicago, Illinois, during the 1989 World Tour, July 2015.
Lover-Girl
Pastels bring a special set of cultural semantics. Their softness is often seen as feminine and also evokes spring flowers, thereby symbolising new beginnings and growth. But the soft shades Taylor chose for the release of Lover turned into a fashion celebration that reached far beyond such gentle sentiments. It was a splendid style volte-face after her dark and stormy Reputations era and she brazenly revealed her fresh Lover look at the 2019 iHeartRadio Music Awards ahead of the album drop a month later. Both the tracks and wardrobe chimed with the replenished confidence of a bright spring morning – a new dawn, a new day. Her red-carpet outfit was a shimmering technicolour sequinned romper suit by British designer Rosa Bloom, matched with a pair of silver stilettoes – flared at the heel with butterfly wings – created by shoemaker to the stars, Sophia Webster. The final touch was the debut of her pink dip-dyed ponytail.
The cover-artwork and campaign for the album was shot by photographer Valheria Rocha, who fit the new Tay Tay brief perfectly, telling Billboard.com: ‘I’ve always seen things through a very glittery, iridescent, pink and pastel filter, with
Taylor Swift arrives for the 2019 iHeartRadio Music Awards 14 March 2019.
Star Attraction
Zinging with energy after announcing her Midnights album at the 2022 MTV VMA awards, Taylor changed into a custom Moschino playsuit designed by Jeremy Scott for the after party at the Fleur Room in New York. The satin, lazuline, allin-one outfit featured a bustier embellished with rhinestonestudded stars. Matched with the highest of butterfly glitter, ankle-strap, platform sandals by Alexander McQueen and a faux-fur shrug jacket, Swift worked a ’70s disco diva look that wouldn’t have looked out of place at Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager’s legendary Studio 54 nightclub. It was, of course, her second major sartorial statement of the evening, firmly establishing Tay Tay as the head-girl bad-ass.
As she grooved under the club lights, her Instagram chimed at 12am, teasing the tormented restlessness of the ‘13 sleepless nights’ behind the new album’s narrative, along with some sneak-preview imagery in which Taylor’s sapphire-blue eyeshadow contrasted her beige interiors to set a dusky tone. A month later, Swift created a series of TikTok videos,
In blue-and-silver star playsuit and fluffy jacket, Tay Tay arrives at the Republic Records MTV VMA after party at the Fleur Room, 29 August 2022.
TAYLOR SWIFT and the clothes she wears
I know how hard it is to be in pop music. You’ve gotta wear a lot of sequins...
Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift is the quintessential millennial. Free-thinking and creative, she navigates pop stardom with boundless charisma and a keen eye on her digital presence. She has become a truly global phenomenon but remains intimately connected with her fans. A born storyteller, her outfits mark the different phases of her whirlwind life every bit as clearly as her songs. From cowboy boots to cottage-core, Saint Laurent to sci-fi, onstage and on the street, her clothes are always carefully chosen to match the moment. These pages reveal those moments in gorgeous photographic detail with reliably astute analysis from the author of Harry Styles and the Clothes He Wears. The latest in a popular celebrity fashion series, this book charts the style evolution of a hyper-chic superstar at the vanguard of 21st-century culture.
