She’s a poet and she knows it.
As Taylor Swift’s music has evolved, so has her style — from cowboy-booted, curly-haired country sweetheart to crop-top-wearing pop phenomenon.
But if she has previously been inspired by fairy tales (for “Speak Now” from 2010), 1950s housewives (“Red” from 2012) and wood nymphs (“Folklore” from 2020), for to name a few, Swift sought a more literary home for her statement outfits. until the release of her new album, “The Tortured Poets Department” – the wardrobes of the great wordsmiths who came before her.
“There’s definitely a ‘literary academic’ style that’s growing,” says Sarah Chapelle, the mastermind behind the popular Instagram and blog Taylor Swift Style; her book about the singer’s evolving style, “Taylor Swift Style: Fashion Through the Eras,” will be released in October.
“While we don’t have as many visuals as in past eras,” she tells Page Six Style, “the ones we do have tell a very cohesive story, one that makes it clear that it’s inspired by female poets. the past.”
The 14-time Grammy winner began giving hints about the direction of her next musical era late last year, sporting a series of preppy street style looks built around plaid coats, pleated skirts, layered loafers and cashmere sweaters that could have been torn. from Sylvia Plath’s closet.
“I think Taylor is someone who is a bit of a history buff,” Chapelle says. “She’s obviously referencing her inspiration from other literary works of the past, so I feel like there’s a baseline here… as she enters the world of an album that I guess, is a little more cerebral. She is already advising fans to take out our dictionaries!
Plath shared more in common with Swift than a sense of prose and plaid; the late “Bell Jar” scribe also loved scarlet lipstick, with her husband Ted Hughes once recalling in a poem: “Red was your color…Your lips were a deep, drenched purple. » She also shared the singer’s appetite for era-by-era experimentation, writing in her diary: “Why can’t I try on different lives, like dresses, to see which one suits me best and is most becoming ?”
But Plath isn’t the only Swift poet who seems to be pinned on her style mood board lately. It can’t be a coincidence that, to announce the impending arrival of her new album at February’s Grammys, she chose to wear a Schiaparelli Haute Couture corseted gown in a color synonymous with Emily Dickinson (her sixth cousin at three times, as recently revealed by the geneology company Ancestry).
The Amherst author was known for dressing “all in white,” and her only surviving item of clothing—an ivory shirtdress with lace trim and mother-of-pearl buttons—suggests as much. Swift wears an equally puffy white button-up on the cover of one of the vinyl releases of “The Tortured Poets Department,” striking a pensive pose on a seaside cliff in the stark black-and-white shot.
Given that she once dedicated an entire poem to a stopped clock, Dickinson would surely also have appreciated Swift’s choice of jewelry for the Grammys: a Lorraine Schwartz choker made from an antique wristwatch set to midnight, a nod to the title of his 2022 studio album.
“She wears this vintage accessory to mark the end of her previous era, in order to usher in the new one,” Chapelle hypothesizes.
However, this dazzling diamond watch isn’t the only watch accessory Swift has been looking for recently.
She was also spotted wearing a Tilly Sveaas gold necklace inspired by the classic watch chain — a piece “inspired by the past and created for the present,” as the jeweler told Page Six Style.
Traditionally worn to secure the wearer’s pocket watch, these chains were particularly popular in the Victorian era; 19th-century portraits of the poetic couple Elizabeth Barrett Browning and her husband Robert Browning (the Taylor Swifts and Travis Kelce of their era, one might say) show the couple with the telltale chains protruding from their vests.
Swift even made corsets her sartorial signature in the months leading up to the release of her latest album – sporting boned bustier tops everywhere from the streets of New York to football stadiums.
But while poets of the last century, like Browning and Dickinson, were forced to wear traditional tight-laced styles to conform to their era’s wasp-waisted beauty ideals, Swift’s decision to don modern versions of the corset removes this long controversial garment. context.
For more Page Six style…
“It used to be that corsetry was something that was only worn under clothing – it was an intimate garment,” Chapelle explains.
“Taylor’s work is nothing short of intimate, and she has performed her entire career with her heart on her sleeve. It just seems like a more sensual and feminine example of wearing something that’s meant to be on the inside and out – showing that kind of vulnerability.
New York Post
