Tour Travel Diary

Some personal anecdotes and "street style" outfits while traveling

For the moments in between official Taylor Swift Style signing events. There was more outfit-ing to be had!

I knew when packing for tour that there would not just be the tourdrobe of it all (though that was fun to plan for) but there would be moments in between. Grabbing a meal with a friend (I’m so lucky that many of the cities I visited have people I know and love in them), exploring a new neighbourhood, popping into bookstores to surprise and sign copies.

These fashion moments are closer to my “everyday” dressing. They are the items and silhouettes I typically gravitate towards. But, of course, edited a bit to be a “travel capsule” that I could mix/match while on the go, was adaptable to the temperature of the locale I was traveling to, and was comfortable enough for long days of walking either through unfamiliar cities or the eternally long trudges between security and your flight’s gate. Hence the sneakers. You’ll note a mix of denim and trousers, a sprinkling of stripes, and of course some TSS Green. (And if you’re just after the links, I’ve rounded all of them here).

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‍✈️ Airport Style: I had even *more* outfit pics that are a bit more on-the-fly (pun intended) on my phone to share. These ones are your more unrefined, candid mirror snaps from a wide array of hotel rooms over the course of touring. I truly have my airport uniform down pat at this point. x

But first, it feels like it’s been awhile since I’ve been able to stretch out in the backseat. That is, to actually write. To stare at a document and fill it with words that bubble up to my consciousness that have no ulterior motive or objective other than a bare bones desire for human connection and a love of language and emotions.

Life lately has mostly been, “Hey you! Buy this book!”

Which, of course, is an exciting way to be able to characterize my life.

But physically, that kind of life feels like being rammed into a cockpit of a rocket with an unknowable amount of fuel in your tank. You’re responsible for aiming this thing towards the stars, but you have no idea how close you’ll get. Your field of vision narrows into a very single-minded path lined in getting people to buy a single product.

I love a good product roundup as much as anyone. And I promise that levity in the form of fashion inspo and beauty rec (*hint hint* Sephora sale) content is incoming. But I also want this space, like any space I oversee, to be just a little bit *more*. I like to picture my readers in the same fashion I do myself as someone who loves a juicy newsletter full of the minutiae that makes up a human life. I hope you have a beverage of choice and a languishing day before you full of the little glimmers that make life sparkly and remind you that you’re not alone and this world is a good place.

Thus the meandering, wandering personal anecdote.

I’ve become very good at sleeping upright.

As someone who loves a routine and has impeccable sleep hygiene (adult bedtimes are sacred, as are the 8-9 hours I usually net a night), the days since October 8, 2024 have handily taken me off that routine and thrown my sleep cycle into a machine on tumble dry high. Most often, I feel shakily taped together with naps taken leaned against a window with a view of 40,000 feet and Summer Fridays lip balm (Sweet Mint flavour, natch). But would I have traded this experience for anything? Absolutely not.

I’m luckily someone who thrives at an airport and loves to fly. I get a thrill from impeccably Tetris-ing a week and a half’s worth of outfits into a carryon bag. I delight in going through security lines with ease. I do happy chair wiggle dances at my gate, hot spotting my laptop off my phone with an iced Americano in hand in order to answer emails or sporadically draft newsletters such as this. I think my overachieving nature views traveling and pulling things off with seeming ease as an ultimate challenge in extreme perfectionism and control. The chance to make something oft-griped about seem easy and natural? An opportunity to “perform perfectionism”? I am seated.

I’ll ask my therapist about that later.

But it’s true - I’ve gotten very good at sleeping in the upright position, especially when I can (and often do) grab a window seat on a plane. Although truthfully, that’s a lot of audacity coming from someone who drinks more water than my bladder size has a right to. Why does hydration have to come at such a high cost? (The cost is peeing every 35-40 minutes.)

I’m an introvert by nature.

I feel most at home under a fleece blanket, cat at my fingertips, candle lit, and a comfort show on. I enter a tranquil state in the blue hours. The safety net of easy silence with someone you love - those moments when you feel the steadiness of their presence, the security in the mutual way you lean into soundless company, the gentle nudges with a wandering foot to remind them you’re here and you feel them. A wise poet once described it as “the silence that comes when two people understand each other.”

Being on this book tour has necessitated a certain level of “on”-ness for more hours in my day than I’m used to. It’s ultimately meant that a greater percentage of my time is spent vocalizing.

Not just in the intimate conversations I have in signing lines which gently open up just enough space in an event to allow someone who may be as shy as I am to say the words or ask the questions they weren’t able to in a larger setting. But in those wider moments in front of audiences of people like you where I have a candid conversation with moderators whose interests beautifully converge into mine (an opportunity to once again thank Kate, Melody, Elana, Olivia, Elizabeth, and Bryan for the generosity of their time and experience) or where I have to orate a presentation solo (it’s a deck that intimately traces a little girl’s path from reading novels under blanket forts by flashlight to becoming a bestselling author).

These are moments when, even armed with a microphone, I find it exceedingly difficult to be loud.

It’s difficult for me to …
Be vulnerable.
Take up space.
Have earned this moment.
Feel the right to tell a story.
Believe my story is worth telling at all.

Extroverting is not my natural state.

And yet I know, deep within my soul, that it’s worth doing. It’s something of import I feel called to do. How many years at this point have I known that vulnerability breeds community? For over half my life, I’ve knelt at a musical altar built on personal details meant to bridge millions together into a communally shared lived experience of girlhood. The osmosis of Taylor’s discography has taught me that specifics mined from an authentic truth is the drawbridge to connecting with other people.

Never in my life have I felt more respect for people in the creative space. Who boldly create art because there is simply no other way to express their truth. And who want, more than anything, to feel understood and seen and heard and validated. It’s mentally debilitating to have worked so hard on something for so long and to at last come to the precipice of that cliff and, in staring into those cavernous depths, finally come face to face with your most intimate truths being read by others to form their own opinions on. There is so much about a book that is a heads down, isolated process. Build an island. Fortify the ground. Blossom in the space you’ve made your own. Reaching publication is like having the veil of security netted around you pierced from all angles by an onslaught of strangers’ eyes. In that moment all you can pray for is that they land gently in the space you’ve carefully cultivated.

This tour has proven to me, beyond all measure, that it has. And I’m so so so grateful for that.

Shall we transition into fashun now?