SMT on Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour Fashion
Are you ready for it?
I’ve watched Taylor Swift’s record-breaking Eras tour unfold all summer with a mix of admiration and fascination. For me, it’s less about the music and more about the fashion. My Instagram feed has been filled with Taylor’s sparkly bodysuits and full-skirted gowns, a dizzying display of more than a dozen ensembles she sports on stage. But it’s the audience’s attire I find most captivating. Seeing excited attendees in their Taylor-inspired best brings such joy — and I wouldn’t even call myself a Swiftie! (Much respect for those of you who are.) I just love to see this level of fandom expressed visually, an enthusiastic embrace of thoughtful clothing and accessories as a way to celebrate a moment.
Now that the Eras tour has arrived here in Los Angeles, I wanted to take a closer look at the style of it all. I have so many questions about Taylor and her relationship with fashion, so I turned to someone who knows a lot about both. Sarah Chapelle began chronicling what the singer wears on her blog, Taylor Swift Style, back in 2011. She has since launched a popular Instagram account, too, and is hard at work on a forthcoming book about Taylor’s style (so exciting!).
“She very much knows the role that fashion plays in making something an event, making something a moment, making something memorable and distinct and fun,” Chapelle told me, calling it “attaching fashion to experiences.” Below Chapelle explains Taylor’s approach to fashion, her epic album transitions and callbacks (that “Red” ring!), her extensive tour-drobe, and what everyone is wearing to the concert.
🪩 But first: Did you see Taylor Swift in concert this summer? I want to know what YOU wore! Please share a pic or two, along with all the thought that went into your ensemble, in this Google form. I’ll be sharing some of my favorites on my Instagram and here on Substack. (Need inspo for what to write? Check out my post about dressing to see Barbie.)
🧣 Also a moment for my middle man, six-year-old Oliver. Thanks to Taylor, he’s learned what a broken heart is all about. Watch the story here.
ICYMI
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Click here for teacher supply lists that need clearing! Please call your local reps and demand better funding for teachers, and then head to our spreadsheet of more than 200 teachers in need of supplies for this fall.
💖 If seeing Barbie is on your dance card list this weekend, check out my newsletters on the history of Barbie’s fashion and the complicated meaning of the color pink. You can also join our Barbie movie discussion thread and catch up on my Barbie SMTs.
So Many Thoughts on Taylor’s Tour Style with Sarah Chapelle
Please note: Our conversation has been edited and condensed.
I’m so excited to chat with you! Let’s start by talking about what drew you to Taylor Swift in the first place.
Sarah Chapelle: What I think makes Taylor so special and her legacy so lasting is how she’s really centered and validated her female experience and to have that experience be taken seriously in her art. Teenage crushes, first heartbreaks, battling with worry and anxiety about moving out of your parents’ house and growing up. Then being ushered into adulthood and real, adult-size heartbreaks and problems.
At every major turning point in a young person’s — especially a young woman’s — life, there’s a Taylor song for it. You get attached to her as a person and her story. Then I got attached to how she presented herself to the world, her style and her fashion.
How would you describe Taylor’s style?
When I first started TSS [Taylor Swift Style] in 2011, celebrity fashion details in magazines were mostly “so and so wore Prada on the red carpet.” And that’s just not something that’s attainable for most people, especially people interested in Taylor’s career. More people are going to be into a sweater she wore while grabbing Starbucks in Nashville or jeans that she wore on her way to a studio in Los Angeles.
I think what’s really interesting is Taylor’s relatability in her music is also a primary tactic in her fashion. In her daily life, street style and candid-wise, she gravitates towards brands that are much more accessible to fans and everyday people. Free People, Reformation, Urban Outfitters, Christy Dawn, Anthropology, Aritzia all make very frequent appearances in her regular street style. These items are probably in the realm of $50 to maybe upwards of $400-ish dollars. At that higher price point maybe it is not something that you would buy all the time but it is certainly more accessible than custom couture. So like with Kate [the Princess of Wales] and Meghan [the Duchess of Sussex], having that accessibility with the replication-duplication factor is certainly at play with her regular style.
Of course there’s an injection of luxury, too. She’ll often pair her outfits with designer accessories, shoes or purses that are Jimmy Choo or Christian Louboutin or Prada. But even then she makes this conscious effort to rewear items to death. Who doesn’t have that one bag or that one shoe that they invest in with the intent to wear and use and love?
As a casual observer of Taylor’s fashion, I’ve noticed how she changes her aesthetic to mirror each of her albums. I would imagine that approach would be quite difficult?
It’s such a fine line to balance reinvention with recognizability. It’s both “I know who she is” and also keeping it fresh and interesting. It’s very hard to give enough nostalgia and recall to have something to latch onto, while bringing them along through the musical and sartorial journey.
I’d say for most people the whiplash one is 1989 to Reputation. [For 1989] she was a hot New York girl in little crop tops and skirts and heels. Then Reputation was grunge, black cherry lipstick and camo and torn-up fishnets and combat boots and oversized jackets. That one was one very: What is happening?
Is there one album-to-album transition that you particularly appreciate?
The most masterful one, in my opinion, that’s subtle and not talked about is the gentle transition from her debut album to Fearless. Debut was very much introducing Taylor Swift to the world: I’m a country singer and I’m a teenager. Fearless turned up the dial — it was much more polished — and introduced the change: She’s still country, but pop is coming. That was the release of Love Story, which was her first major single that was mainstream and available to everybody. And that’s when she hired her stylist to really focus the vision, making it stronger and cleaner.
I have also noticed — again, as a casual consumer of Taylor’s visual style — how she is referencing some of her album covers as she re-releases the music. I love that. Do you have a favorite nod she’s made?
My recent favorite is during the original Red era in 2012, while promoting it, Taylor wore a ring by Cathy Waterman. She’s a jeweler whose daughter, Claire Winter Kislinger, Taylor is good friends with. It’s this big ring, filigree at the edges, really beautiful milgrain, and “Love” written inside of it.
When Taylor re-released Red in 2021, she worked with Cathy Waterman to recreate the ring. And instead of saying “Love” it says “Red” and it’s on the album cover of Red (Taylor’s Version). If you’re paying attention, that’s one of those “if you know, you know” moments. That recreation was sold as merchandise on her website as well, because: We’re monetizing, we’re smart.
One of the more interesting things to me about Eras tour fashion is I can imagine the backstage area is chaos. People are running around, quick changes are happening, there are hundreds of bodies, you only have a certain amount of time, you’re probably dressing in the dark. But she still takes the time to re-accessorize. She opens by wearing Versace necklaces to coordinate with her Versace bodysuit. And she’ll take off the necklace and re-accessorize throughout the night.
During the Red set on the Eras tour, she wears the “Red” ring. Sure, it’s a small thing — you’re just putting on a ring. But that shows the obvious intention of: I’m dressing to the era. I’m taking on a piece of something that’s an iconic part of the fashion and the packaging of this time. It showcases that very clear knowledge and level of awareness of the power of styling and fashion and creating moments, tying fashion and accessories to memories and experiences. And I just love her for it.
Let’s get into the Eras tour. What is the role of fashion in this tour?
It’s a sequined fantasy land. The Eras tour, by its name, is a journey through the eras. It’s not structured like any other Taylor show before it. On past tours, the set list would be kind of a mixed amalgamation and maybe a few medleys of her songs.
Eras is a very intentional movement through time. It’s not chronological, she doesn’t start from the beginning and go one-by-one through her discography. But the entire show is set up where she’ll dedicate multiple songs, give it its moment, to that album.
She has a costume change for every single album in the show. There are so many throwbacks and callbacks to past iconic fashion from that era represented in her tour wardrobe. She is intentionally making choices that refresh that style ideology. It’s not a dupe-for-dupe copy-paste, which would be quote-unquote “boring.” It’s very much an elevated version of those moments where if you know, you know. You can point to and say, “Oh, I recognize that.”
As someone who has studied Taylor’s style for so long, what are your favorite tour looks?
The opening look from any tour always ends up getting cemented as the most iconic and the most memorable from the tour. Typically it’s because tour photographers don’t or can’t capture the entire set that a musician puts on. Taylor is the exception to almost every rule; this show is such a spectacle and so captivating and insane in its length and duration that we do have coverage from the whole thing.
For Taylor, that first opening outfit is courtesy of Versace. It’s a soft pastel Lover era look, very much like the Lover album cover shoot. Baby pink, some blues, and pastels and sequins. It’s a really appropriate way to pick up and remind people of where we last left off with Taylor. Pre-pandemic, she was originally about to go on tour. She had a series of dates in the US called Lover Fest. Those dates obviously had to be canceled. Opening the [Eras] show with Lover rather than, say Midnights, which is her most recent album, or Folklore, which is an album that a lot of people kind of got reintroduced to her music, we’re picking up where we left off with her with Lover.
The bodysuit itself is so sparkly and just so, so pretty. It looks like cotton candy, clouds in the skies. It’s a whimsical, sparkly, Barbie-like moment.
It reminds me of what was known as the “Princess Promise” back in Princess Diana’s day. She wanted to deliver on what people thought a princess might wear. I can imagine all the younger fans who come to the show might love that look.
Taylor loves a sequin, has always loved a sequin. On tour, sequins and sparkles are not just a pretty thing, but it’s also kind of a necessity. It’s a big stadium and you don’t want to lose her, so you just look for the sparkliest thing on stage.
What other looks of Taylor’s from Eras do you like?
Much like HRH blue, I have TSS [Taylor Swift Style] green. She wears this beautiful celery green gown by Alberta Ferretti during her Folklore set. And for me, that’s obviously my favorite because of the color, but also just the way that it flows. It’s a very woodsy, whimsical, mystical energy of that album. She opens the Folklore set by lying on top of a log cabin roof. It’s moss-covered and she just looks like she belongs. It’s integrated into the set design and the world she’s creating.
And then a third is, for the Reputation set, she wears this asymmetrical jumpsuit by Roberto Cavalli. It’s perfect. It’s covered in snakes, obviously. And the asymmetry, to me, symbolizes the light and the dark aspects of that album.
Back when I was covering the original Reputation tour, she wore this custom dress that has a very dramatic notched leg cutout. When I saw the blurry, cell phone camera photos from the early days of that tour, I had noted: Oh, is that a one-legged jumpsuit? I hope so because it looks cool. And now she’s wearing a one-legged jumpsuit for Reputation. It’s in one of my captions from that time period — wild.
What do you make of the gowns? Such a contrast to the bodysuits!
She currently rotates through five different versions of the gown for her Speak Now set. It is one of her many very clear, highly aware, self-referential style moments on the tour. To move through that many years of music is one thing, but how do you capture it visually in a way that makes each era its own visual moment? It’s no small feat to make intentional callbacks to the past versions of your personal style while still being fresh, interesting, modern, and distinct enough to be clearly “now” and not “then.”
The gowns she selects for this portion of the set, to me, are a very clear reference to the Valentino gown she wore as her finale number on the Speak Now tour but made even more dramatic and elevated, almost to correspond with how much bigger she has gotten since that tour in 2011 to 2012. That time period in her life was very much characterized by a desire to hold on to girlish fairytale whimsy.
So Taylor doesn’t wear the same pieces every night?
She has many different versions of an item per set. For the Lover bodysuit, there are three versions. This tour has multiple dates in one city, like in Los Angeles there are six shows.
I know that there are obviously a lot of people who missed out on tickets, but in the world of Swifties there are people who will attempt to go to multiple tour dates. So say, for instance, you are going to multiple tour dates in one city. Taylor has version one for night one, a version two for night two, a version three for night three. Even if you see the show multiple times, there’s still an aspect of freshness and surprise and fun. I have a spreadsheet dedicated to documenting all the versions: She wore version one in this city on this date, and then version two in the city on this date. Love a spreadsheet.
Tell me about what you wore to Eras.
I went to three Taylor shows. I am from Vancouver, Canada, so Seattle was the closest tour stop to me. I bought a plain black bodysuit and we DIYed. I had a friend — who was more talented than me! — glue-gun tons of jewels. I presented to them the vision of what we were going for and they executed perfectly. [Laughs] It was completely bejeweled in reflection of the bejeweled bodysuit that Taylor wore in the Bejeweled music video. And then on night two, I wore a green sequin dress that I picked up on Amazon.
And what fashion did you see in the crowd?
It’s so fun how much concert culture has shifted to really make the experience of attending a concert into an event, its own moment. It’s something that Taylor notes during one of her speeches on tour. She says, “Raise your hand or make some noise if you put a lot of thought and effort into what you wore today.”
In terms of easy to replicate, you see a lot of debut era Taylor, which is most recognizable by curly hair, a cute little sundress, and cowboy boots.
Another very popular one — I think you can never go wrong with replicating the Junior Jewels t-shirt that she wore in the You Belong with Me music video. There’s a whole scene where she and the guy that she’s talking to are communicating via paper. So 2008! Now they’d be texting, which is not nearly as much fun or whimsical as holding up signs to your next door neighbor in your childhood bedroom windows. It’s basically a plain cotton t-shirt that you Sharpie.
And Taylor from the 22 music video. There’s a sequin shirt that says “Not a lot going on at the moment,” which was by Ashish. As a throwback to that, she also wears that as a tour costume and it’s also by Ashish. The fact that she knew not only to homage that moment for tour, but also to go back to the original designer and make it for her? Excellent throwback. 100% accuracy. But again, another easy thing to DIY at home.
I have seen some really incredible tour costume replications.A lot of people have attempted to make the Reputation one-legged jumpsuit, which is, you know, high goals. [Laughs] Far above my pay grade! I’ve also seen people recreate the Lover opening body suit that she wears too, which is thousands of sequins and gemstones.
One of my favorite things though, specific to this tour, is in a song off Midnights called You’re on Your Own, Kid she makes a reference in a lyric to friendship bracelets.
Oh yes! I’ve seen those. It looks like such fun.
It’s become a thing where people show up to tour with hundreds of friendship bracelets and we trade them. It’s this beautiful, beautiful thing. After the most intense part of the pandemic and being at home and not being able to socialize, it’s kind of like a family reunion of Swifties. It’s emotional seeing old friends, so it’s extra adorable to have the friendship bracelets be traded. People will walk up to you and ask: Do you wanna trade? And you end up leaving with an arm full of bracelets.
It’s wild and crazy to think somebody spent time — those things take hours to make when the beads are that small! I get emotional thinking about it. You leave the show having seen her and she’s incredible, but you also have this tangible thing that somebody you don’t even know spent hours on their bedroom floor making. Just to give out to other people, for the sheer joy of it!
Do you have any advice for how to dress if you are going to Eras?
It depends on the vibe you are going for — all are valid. If you were trying to be a Folklore or Evermore Taylor, you have a big cozy cardigan, some kind of linen gauzy dress and then you put your hair up in little space buns or a braid. Anything with black and snakes is Reputation Taylor. Lover Taylor is going to be if you’re wearing anything soft and whimsical with pastels. Maybe you want to dip dye the ends of your hair pink or blue — very, very Lover Taylor.
Don’t stress. Make it as complicated as you feel comfortable with. The fashion and the fun is a moment — but it can also create this strange pressure-cooker situation where your measurement of how invested or into it you are is represented in how dressed up you are. If you are lucky enough to be there, you should just be happy that you managed to get there. [Laughs] I mean, you’ll get a friendship bracelet no matter what!
My thanks to Sarah! Make sure to follow TaylorSwiftStyled on Instagram and check out her blog, with all of her Eras tour coverage, at TaylorSwiftStyle.com.
🪩 And don’t forget to send me photos of what YOU wore for the Eras tour! Upload a picture and all of the thought that went into your outfit (the most important part!) via this Google form. I’ll be sharing some of my favorites on Instagram and here on Substack. (Have questions? You can reach me via email at Hello@SoManyThoughts.com.)
I was lucky enough to go to one of the shows in Foxboro in May. Not only was I blown away by the creativity of the outfits people wore but also by the sense of community. Everyone was there to have a good time - no one was drunk or pushing or being rude. I've never been to a Patriots' game but I'm sure the experience of leaving the stadium was the antithesis of what it's like on game day!
At one point during the show, I Face Timed a friend who'd just had a baby and was sad she couldn't make the show. She was holding her new little bundle at the time. A few minutes later someone tapped me on the shoulder and handed me a friendship bracelet. "This is for your friend. We see she has new baby." It still makes me teary to think about!
My dream crossover! Two of my favorite corners of the internet in conversation with each other - LOVE! I so appreciate how thoughtful you both are in your respective content, and for providing an outlet for us to have meaningful conversation about something a lot of people deem “frivolous.”