How I chose my Eras outfits

There are two wolves inside me

Welcome to Swiftian Theory, the Taylor Swift substack. It’s Satu here today.

I went to see the Eras tour in Edinburgh in June, with two other members of Swiftian Theory. When I say “we were hyped”, imagine three mini cans of Coke shaken hard and left to seethe. The night before we took the train from London to Scotland, I was so frazzled from anticipation I said I didn’t even want to go anymore. To calm myself down I sat and sewed a few more last-minute sequins onto the lilac gown I was planning to wear. Coming up with my costume was important to me because it gave me a place to pour all my emotions and anxieties about the trip. The overwhelming size and noise of the crowd, your favourite merch item selling out, and the possibility that she’ll do surprise songs you don’t recognise; these are all things beyond your control. Just like going on an important date, the clothes are the one thing you can take control over. I’ve seen people with incredible, accurate copies of Taylor’s stage costumes. I’ve also seen people strewn with fake ivy, wearing a fluffy feather boa over a t-shirt and jeans, and even some slightly defensive “not a Swiftie” T-shirts (we get it, you’re a man here under duress). What to wear to Eras is a deeply individual choice. So how do we pick our outfits?

I knew I wanted to make like the TikTok girlies and wear an album-based outfit. But when you love all her albums, where do you start? When we arrived at the Airbnb in Edinburgh and my friends started unpacking and showing off their outfits, I realised that by chance we’d all picked different eras. There was something in each one that spoke to us beyond just loving the songs. I like Lover and adore TTPD, but unlike my friends (Arielle and Tash respectively), I never really considered these albums as inspiration for my outfit. It had to be something that communed me perfectly with my argumentative antithetical dreamgirl, the Blonde on high. Ever since I saw this gown on a livestream, there could only be one:

Maybe you’re the kind of Swiftie who is simply able to enjoy things and not worry about what they mean, but that could never be me. During the months that I sourced a secondhand lilac bridesmaid’s dress, added layers of tulle, and hand-sequinned it with the exact right colour of purple paillette, I brooded over why I would choose this outfit. It’s the most Barbie-coded of anything she wears onstage. It’s so big and pouffy and sparkly and lilac. It’s basically girliness on a stick. So why would I, someone who mostly dresses like I’m about to head out to the woods for a long day of forestry management, choose this?

Probably for the same reason I cried when I first heard ‘seven’. If there’s one thing we know about Blondie, it’s that she remains very connected to the little kid in us all. Speak Now is the album where she leans the hardest into a girlhood that is basically already gone, and I think that’s why ‘Enchanted’, in all its sweetness, is the lone album survivor on the Eras setlist. Yes there’s darkness on Speak Now, but there’s plenty of that to come in Taylor’s life. I think she wanted instead to give us that one last hurrah of innocence for its slot in the Eras setlist. The dress tells the story of how Taylor sees that girlishness now, in the rear-view. It’s a mega-voluminous, campy version of what she actually wore during the Speak Now era. I love how it’s about youth without emphasising smallness. To Taylor, girlhood is big. From ‘Mary’s Song’ to ‘So High School’ she’s looked back at her younger self under a microscope and expanded her life into folklore. Compare and contrast the look she’s riffing off and the Eras version:

What appeals to me in this transformation is partly the way it honours girlhood as something majestic. That’s not how the world at large treats it, no matter what people say about this being “the year of girlhood”. It also shows that Taylor knows uber-femininity is a kind of costume she wears. Femininity has invented some of the best things in the world: I will die on the hill that the sparkly leotard is one of humanity’s most perfect inventions. It’s also impossible to separate from other people’s expectations of us. When the pandemic arrived, I was living alone. As the weeks went on and I didn’t have to wear appropriate clothes for the office or the bar, I started to be drawn to outfits I had bought and left lurking at the back of my wardrobe. Because no one looked at me, and people were scared to talk to me outside, I felt like I could wear absolutely anything I wanted without it sending a message that other people could read and tell me their views on. Long story short [Harry Styles obsession], I wanted to wear ONLY sparkly clothes, ranging from gowns to tailored suits. I wanted everything to be delicate and enchanted. And under the clothes was a new sense of seeing myself as I am, not as I am through other people’s eyes. I re-connected with the person I was as a teenager, who was caught between wanting to stay a little princess forever, and was also strapped into the passenger seat of a car driving fast into the future. To me, this specific multi-layered lilac gown encapsulates the Taylor Swift girlhood project, its beauty and its tragedy.

I lugged all this Freudian baggage with me to Edinburgh and wore my Enchanted gown to Murrayfield Stadium and was very happy and had no further thoughts. Nothing like going to Eras tour and screaming your lungs out in the presence of your idol to douse your overthinking with cold, fresh water! 

Video courtesy of Ellie Bird.

If you’re still waiting to go to Eras, here is my take on the event as a sound-sensitive person who is not the happiest in crowds. It’s looooong: hydrate, take earplugs, and wear sunscreen. At the same time, the show whips by in no time. You forget how many bangers this woman has under her belt, especially now that the folkmore section has been edited down to accommodate TTPD. Although the show is incredibly slick, it’s amazing watching the real Taylor sing these songs right in front of you. I didn’t think I could access new depths of emotion during All Too Well, after this many hundreds of listens. But I cried like a baby. It was cool to witness her be a little bit nervous as she tried a risky mashup of ‘It’s Nice to Have a Friend’ and ‘Dorothea’. Hearing the songs as part of a show can change how you feel about them. ‘Shake It Off’ always makes more sense live, while ‘Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?’ was my surprise new favourite. You can feel her rage when she sings:

So tell me everything is not about me

But what if it is?

Then say they didn't do it to hurt me

But what if they did?

I wanna snarl and show you just how disturbed this has made me

You wouldn't last an hour in the asylum where they raised me

The vengeful side of Taylor brings me to my next outfit. My Eras adventure is not over! I somehow got really lucky in the great war and scored tickets to Wembley in August. For this show I’m going to let my other wolf out. reputation was a time of profound confusion and uncertainty, her only “flop era”, and her hair looked slightly a mess. That’s that me espresso. I’ve got my black catsuit and my red snake necklace ready to go. One thing I’ll do differently this time around is think about re-wearability. I’ll have to go as a Disney princess to Hallowe’en this year and possibly every year to justify the existence of the Enchanted gown in my wardrobe. I just can’t inflict those sequins on the world’s turtles by throwing it away or “donating” it. But then, why would I want to part with it? I loved making it and dancing in it, and I will keep it forever in my personal Taylor Swift Education Centre (Ikea wardrobe) as a glittering memento of Eras.

I’d love to hear what you wore, or plan to wear, or wish you could wear to the Eras tour. It can be a deep reason – it was the album that saved you – or just because you think pink suits you.