How Her Fashion Decisions Affect Brands

• When Taylor Swift wears a brand’s clothing, the seller may see increased interest from fans.
• One fashion journalist said Swift’s mix of designer and affordable items strengthened her relationship.
• Swift’s fashion choices are generating boom but also posing challenges for small businesses.

A few months ago, I was on Instagram and getting ready to buy a dress.

This isn’t uncommon for many shoppers, but this dress was special: Taylor Swift had just worn it and the exact brand was shared on Instagram.

It was a $75 velvet mini skater dress from Little Lies, a small Scottish company. I could afford it, unlike most of the high-end designer pieces she wears, so I pressed purchase.

Across the pond, Jade Robertson, co-founder of Little Lies, had received my order – and her phone wouldn’t stop ringing. She had woken up to messages from a member of the product team whose brother is a huge Swiftie. He was doing his morning scroll of X when he spotted the pop star’s dress.

“My first thought was, shit, did we accidentally copy a brand we didn’t know? Because obviously the dress looked like mine, but I was like, it couldn’t be mine,” said Robertson to Business Insider. But her team was able to trace an order sent to New York and realized that it had actually been well-received by Swift. It was a shock to Robertson and his team.

“It wasn’t like we gave it to a stylist or to her. It was just an order,” Robertson said. “And there she was out to dinner with Blake Lively in one of our dresses.”

Little Lies, a boutique-turned-brand launched in 2015, knew about Swift’s move. Swift wearing one of your pieces is more than just a celebrity appearance: it’s a commercial boom. This can represent a huge opportunity for businesses, but it also needs to be exploited with caution. An influx of orders can be a double-edged sword for some businesses, wondering how much more inventory and staff they need to add to accommodate the increase.

When Swift wore the Little Lies dress, the company reached its monthly sales goal in one day.

Why fans want to wear what Taylor Swift wears – and what happens when orders start pouring in

For as long as there have been celebrities, people have tried to dress like them. While dressing like some famous people might be more ambitious (not everyone can afford custom sewing), Swift’s marketing prowess extends to the clothes she wears.

Sarah Chapelle, a fashion journalist who created the fashion blog and Instagram account Taylor Swift Style, described one of the pillars of Swift’s style as mixing “high and low” pieces, or wearing designer items. designers alongside pieces from more accessible retailers.

“That kind of approach really emphasizes her approachable, approachable image,” Chapelle said.

Chappelle said she thought this style was what Swift gravitated toward. It has the added benefit of “creating an entry point for her fans to identify more with her and buy into a part of her – to really foster that relationship of connection with fans, to be able to emulate something that she likes aesthetically and to have a little bit of that in your own real life,” she said.

Representatives for Swift did not return Business Insider’s request for comment.

For brands like Little Lies, a surprise appearance from Swift is a test of resources. Robertson said her company had to stop pre-orders for the velvet dress after 48 hours. If orders had continued, the company could have sold triple or quadruple what it did – but if all that stock came in and people returned it, it could have put Little Lies out of business, he said. -she declared.

“Overnight success is actually a challenge, and it’s something that’s very difficult to deal with,” Robertson said, adding that stopping pre-orders meant the company didn’t need to hire more people nor to use other manufacturers.

Little Lies, unlike other affordable brands that Swift frequently carries, offers more expansive sizes. Robertson said this has earned the company a lot of love and more customers who can actually wear its clothes.

Kat Cacho has worked alongside him, selling vintage clothing and handmade accessories through her business Kut the Knit, since 2018. Swifties may have seen her knitted Kansas City Chiefs hat on Swift’s head at the Gillette Stadium on December 17.

Cacho included the crocheted hat in an order she was packaging for Swift from Westside Storey in Kansas City, where Cacho works as a social media manager. Cacho was checking social media the day of the Chiefs-Patriots game when she spotted a video of Swift getting out of the car while putting on what looked like her beanie.

“I posted on my Instagram out of excitement and was flooded with messages and orders,” Cacho told BI in an email. “My phone was constantly buzzing to the point where it would freeze and stop working.”

The 30 hats that Cacho initially had in stock were sold out within minutes. She added 20 more and then those were sold. Ultimately, she capped at 200 orders until she could find a system to make all the hats — or figure out if she even had the capacity to make them. She sold her first 200 hats for $30 each; when she restocked 100 extra hats at Christmas, she priced them at $60.

“It allowed me to pay a fair wage to whoever was helping me, which is extremely important to me,” she said. “Now I have a team of eight amazing crocheters who help me fulfill these orders as quickly as possible.”

Gain legitimacy and long-term business opportunities

Wove Made, a jewelry company founded in 2021, is the brand behind Swift’s delicate “TNT” bracelet that she wore to a Chiefs game on January 28.

Wove Made started as a custom engagement ring company and, over the past year and a half, has expanded into fine jewelry and diamonds, said Susan Bali, the brand’s marketing manager.

Wove has her own collection with golf star Michelle Wie West, a friend of Swift’s boyfriend Travis Kelce. Bali said he heard about the pieces and asked for his own TNT bracelet to give to Swift. Bali added that a few weeks later, Kelce came back and said he would like one for himself. Wove made a larger size and sent it.

“It was kind of thrown into the ether, and we’re like, let’s hope they carry it,” Bali said.

And they did: Swift wore it in the photo of her hugging Kelce after the Chiefs won the game that sent them to the Super Bowl. “We had a 5,000% increase in traffic to the site that week, and an immediate 2,000% increase in sales,” Bali said.

Bali said the brand typically doesn’t hold a lot of inventory and usually makes things on site in an effort to be simpler. Before Swift’s boom, her philosophy was to release a “Lover”-themed bracelet at a lower price point, which costs $550. (The TNT bracelet costs $6,360.) Bali said that since the boom, the brand has been communicating a lot with customers.

“Everyone is working on all cylinders,” she said, adding: “We send out updates if our shop is a little crowded because people are making these things by hand. »

Bali said Swift’s boom gave Wove a legitimacy it didn’t have before. He has received inquiries about new partnerships and is planning more celebrity collaborations over the next year.

While sales of Little Lies and Kut the Knit have slowed to more steady levels, their products are just reaching the customers who participated in the initial boom: Kut the Knit’s latest round of hats among its first 200 orders comes to be shipped, while Little Lies has shipped pre-sale orders. After months of patiently waiting, I am now the proud owner of Swift’s green velvet dress.

Cacho said she is already preparing for next year in hopes that the hat business will pick up with the colder weather and the start of the Chiefs season. Meanwhile, Robertson may be expecting another boom from Swift: The night Swift wore the Little Lies dress, she ordered “a whole bunch of other things,” Robertson said. Robertson wonders if Swift might wear these pieces when she arrives in Scotland for the Eras tour in June.

Many of these pieces are sold out and no longer on the site, but Robertson hopes that Swift wearing something could bolster her new collection, which drops this month.

“We kind of know what our narrative would be and how it went the first time and what worked and what didn’t work,” Robertson said. “So at least we have that up our sleeve now.”

Have you bought something Taylor Swift wore or experienced Swift shock at your company? Contact this journalist at jkaplan@businessinsider.com.