Oscar de la Renta. Versace. Alberta
Ferretti. Roberto Cavalli. Elie Saab. Christian Louboutin. Zuhair Murad.
Ashish. The list of the designers who have made looks for Taylor Swift’s Eras
Tour, which began in Arizona in March and ends in California in August before
heading overseas, is like a minitour of fashion weeks, replete with sparkles,
chiffon, and a message tee.
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The resulting dress-up extravaganza
has been greeted, not surprisingly, with heart-thumping enthusiasm. So many
clothes! So much glitter! So fun! There are pages of stories online
breathlessly documenting “Every Outfit Taylor Swift Has Worn on Her Eras World
Tour” (as Elle Australia put it). And new styles keep emerging, enabling new
coverage. As if sheer wardrobe abundance is an achievement unto itself.
It is possible it is. The logistics
alone are daunting: How do you change that much, and that fast, while in the
middle of a performance?
Certainly it has raised the bar for
the artists who are touring next, as we enter the Summer of the Diva: Madonna,
who is embarking on a retrospective tour (just imagine the looks that one could
involve), and Beyoncé, who set the bar sky-high in August when she dropped a
teaser of sorts via the “I’m That Girl” trailer, which involved at least seven
looks compressed into a few minutes, from cyborg goddess to cowboy dominatrix
to killer Audrey Hepburn.
But it is also possible to see in
all these Swiftian clothes, all the wardrobe switcheroos, something else. It is
possible that they are actually not just a tour down memory lane but a more
pointed piece of meta-commentary on the expectation that female pop stars
unveil new versions of themselves for our viewing pleasure, one-upping their
old image with new wardrobes ad infinitum. And a message that Swift is,
perhaps, calling time on the whole thing.
The promise of reinvention is a core
American value: the belief that everyone has the right to a fresh start, that
you are limited only by your imagination and abilities. It’s intrinsically
linked to the promise of fashion, which likewise dangles the lure of a new you;
of allowing you to try on different selves until you settle into one that feels
right.
Yet it is also its own kind of
prison, as Swift, who has made a habit of embedding meaning into her wardrobe
choices, said in her 2020 documentary, “Miss Americana.”
“The female artists that I know of
have reinvented themselves 20 times more than the male artists,” she says in a
voice-over toward the end of the film, as various versions of her public
personas flash by: teenage Taylor, with her gold ringlets, sparkly blue eye
shadow and princess dresses; “1989” Taylor, with her ironed bob and glittery
bodysuits; “Reputation” angry Taylor, with snakes crawling up her limbs.
This is necessary, Swift continues,
because otherwise “you’re out of a job.”
At the time she was talking about
her newfound political voice as well as her new album, “Lover” (now three
albums and at least two Taylors ago: the earth nymph Taylor of “Folklore” and
“Evermore,” and the dreamer Taylor of “Midnights”). But in many ways, what she
meant is laid bare (so to speak) in her Eras Tour.
Each musical era revisited in the
show had — and has — its own look, all 10 or so of them. To watch her go
through them in succession is to see not just fabulous clothes worn with
purpose but also the hamster wheel of constant reinvention that has been the
model for contemporary female pop stars since Madonna set the tone in the
1980s.
It’s particularly stark in
comparison with another musical act now touring to similar response and
acclaim: Bruce Springsteen. Springsteen is 73, and his style hasn’t changed
much in 50 years. He’s still in beat-up jeans and a denim shirt, bracelets
around his wrist, boots on his feet.
To be fair, there are male rock
stars who have made a game out of reinvention: most notably David Bowie but
also, to a certain extent, Harry Styles (though he generally dons one statement
outfit per night). And there are women — Lucinda Williams, Patti Smith — who
bucked the trend.
But it is also true, said Kathy
Iandoli, an adjunct professor at the New York University Steinhardt School and
the author of “God Save the Queens: The Essential History of Women in Hip-Hop,”
that the pressure to dress up and change up falls exponentially on women —
“1,000%,” Iandoli said. “There’s a level of costuming that comes with being a
female pop star, a way for labels to market creativity. And if you are known as
an evolutionary artist you are always held to the standard of ‘what’s the next
version of you?’ ”
Fernando Garcia, a creative director
of Oscar de la Renta, which made a lavender faux-fur coat with matching
crystal-embroidered T-shirt dress and a midnight-blue, crystal-embroidered
jumpsuit for the current tour, said working with Swift on Eras felt “very much
like a full-circle moment.” If so, perhaps it’s also a sign that another era is
coming to an end.
At one point in the Eras show, when
Swift is singing “Look What You Made Me Do,” all of the old Taylors are
embodied by different backup dancers in different outfits in different little
glass boxes — all those mini-mes of the past, trapped in their own limited
spaces, in their old wardrobes, only to finally break free.
As fashion metaphors go, it is hard
to miss.
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