TSS April 2024
TSS April 2024
Recapping Taylor's four public appearances, two social media montage videos, and (oh yes) that double album she dropped.
Continuing the monthly recap series is April, the highlight of which is of course the double album of our delusions courtesy of The Tortured Poets Department:The Anthology.
Also accompanying Taylor dropping 31 tracks that made sad girls everywhere celebrate(?) with joy(??) we also had two cute street style moments, two equally cute social media montage videos, two event appearances, and a music video in a pear tree. This is April 2024.
April 1, 2024 / iHeartRadio Awards / Los Angeles, CA: Many of us, myself included given my outfit predictions, had assumed that Taylor would make an in-person appearance at the iHearts based on her leading nominations and that she was noted to be on the west coast during her Eras Tour break for work. To my surprise, Taylor opted for a virtual appearance to accept her awards in a lowkey top by Rumored and jewelry by Tilly Sveaas and Jacquie Aiche. What this outing also should have done was set the standard that this would be a (new) album rollout that would fall closer to reputation in promotional strategy than Midnights (which at least got a cursory rotation on the late night circuit). Of course at this point we now know that TTPD has resulted in Taylor’s largest ever single week with 2.61 million in album equivalent units sold (1.9 million pure) according to final numbers from Billboard released on Monday. The question ultimately is would additional traditional promotion have changed anything? No. (Although I think a 3 million unit week was perfectly within grasp had Anthology vinyls / CDs hit her web store). When Taylor breathes, the world moves around her. And it’s pretty incredible that she can create an album like this and still be in a position to make personal choices about her schedule that protect her peace. That said, sure a magazine spread or a red carpet appearance wouldn’t have had an incremental lift in sales but it sure would have lifted my heart. And doesn’t that count for something? (For legal reasons, this is a joke).
April 12, 2024 / Out to dinner w Travis Kelce / Los Angeles, CA: This outfit, adorable as it is, stuck out to me in a strange way. When I tell people that context matters when considering the potential meaning behind an outfit, this is a great place to start. First, this outing takes place at Sushi Park in West Hollywood. This nondescript sushi restaurant is shrouded in mystery. Its menu is exclusively omakase-style (chefs choice) with a price tag to match. Yet its location is a parking lot strip mall. And somehow, this strange tucked-away spot has become the de facto celebrity breeding ground to “soft launch a relationship or sport a good 'fit” according to Teen Vogue editor-at-large Sara Delgado. By contrast to the unwelcomed long lens photography from Taylor and Travis’ Bahamian vacation, going to a place like this (or Nobu in Malibu as they did last month) is typically interpreted as a premeditated paparazzi moment. Or else an open invitation to the photogs who typically hang out here hoping to get lucky with a celeb sighting. With this in mind, as I noted in my original posting, it raised my eyebrow that Taylor would effectively copy + paste her NFL style on a date night in Los Angeles. Why here? Why now? What is she trying to convey with this choice she knew would be photographed? My original assumption was that she selected this outfit to act as a visual reminder a week out from the release of Tortured Poets that her life since conceptualising the album has changed dramatically. Sure, one could rely on the tight end on her arm to gather that much - but celebrities like Taylor understand the role of underpinning their personal lives with visuals, even grainy ones from paparazzi cameras. Here, pap photos function as visual press releases with her outfit doing the talking instead of Tree Paine. By closely replicating the fashion we’ve familiarised ourselves with from her “Significant Others of Football Players” fashion era, she’s not-so-subtly cueing us to remember that the content of her album is from the past.
When I read Taylor’s Instagram caption once Poets hit streaming, I felt validated that a firm sense of closure was indeed what she was trying to stylishly signal. “This period of the author’s life is now over, the chapter closed and boarded up … Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it.”
April 13, 2024 / Attending Coachella / Indio, CA: By contrast, when we consider ‘style media literacy’ and likely intent I see the outfit Taylor wore to Coachella - which included a high/low mix of one of her favourite brands Stella McCartney and an amusing TikTok Shop click-bait brand Halara - I see these choices as an accurate reflection of Taylor’s style preferences with the main objective of cute and a little sexy comfort for a night out of enjoying a music festival with her BF. And boy did she!
April 19, 2024 / The Tortured Poets Department and “Fortnight” music video: I wrote an essay for Marie Claire in April discussing my thoughts about the stunning visuals for both this album’s photoshoot as well as its first music video. When it comes to establishing an era’s coordinating fashion, street style excels at being able to establish patterns and motifs in a controlled, repeatable setting. It means not every single outfit has to be consistent or the same and provides variability and to develop a feeling of cohesion without having to be the exact same and while also providing fans with a purchasable entrypoint to replicate Taylor’s style. In contrast, I consider album photoshoots and music videos to be the ‘canonical’ style take of the album that’s more artistic and editorial (so perhaps less inherently wearable) but that still distills the ‘heart’ of the art’s intent.
In my essay, I described Poets’ album fashion as “the most raw and undone portrait fans have seen so far”. The visuals “[play] with light and shadow, shades of tea-soaked sepia, and selective slices of skin in bedroom settings.” My main takeaway was that these were all to tie into “the most sensuous and sexual lyricism on a Swift album yet.” I truly feel that Taylor continues to nail it and give us more compelling and beautiful album visuals with each passing LP. While I thought there was a really interesting throughline from the visuals to the sound of Midnights and what Taylor’s artistic intent might have been there, I think that messaging was a lot clearer on Poets and in “Fortnight”. Your thoughts?
April 19 + April 25, 2024 / #FortnightChallenge: In conjunction with the release of Tortured Poets, Taylor also published a few YouTube Shorts-exclusive videos under the heading of the “#FortnightChallenge” to montage the last two weeks of your life currently. However, given that many of the clips seen from her tour rehearsals video are from moments I believe to be from March 2023 for the tour’s original kickoff I’d say Taylor got a little lax with the whole “fortnight” concept. But the videos are so cute and do their job well that I suppose I’ll let it slide. Much like her release week pap walk with Travis at Sushi Park, it’s my read that this video series was meant to ground fans in Taylor’s current reality which is markedly different from the world she depicts on the album. It’s a great bit of strategy work that reminds me a bit of the Lover diary entries included in the deluxe issues of that album. It’s a classic Taylor thing to expose the innermost parts of her life to show pieces of her life that are literally ripped from her diary pages. But it also betrays the careful strategy that went into choosing what was included as much as what was probably omitted. For this challenge, I can imagine all of the clips were also selected very intentionally. We see Taylor making dinner in her Rumored top, letting us know that the reason for her absence at the awards show was that she was making a conscious choice to prioritise her downtime - spending the evening with a date night in instead of an award night out. In this video there is a centering of both how hard she works and also the private life she’s managed to quietly cultivate despite being one of the most tracked and watched stars on the planet. She signs Poets vinyls (cat at her side) but also makes time for at-home sewing projects. She trains at the gym (presumably getting into Eras Tour shape) but also plays pickleball with a KU paddle. She’s on the set of her latest music video and makes cinnamon rolls when she gets home. All while also giving fans a way to engage and ‘promote’ her latest single on social media. It’s fascinating and fun and so well done.
April 27, 2024 / 15 and the Mahomies Foundation Charity Dinner / Las Vegas, NV: It’s truly a shame that (as of yet) we don’t have any high quality, posed photos in front of a step-and-repeat of Taylor at this event. The peridot shade of this gown reminds me vividly of course of her Gucci gown at this year’s Golden Globes while its Grecian-esque drape hits closer to her Julien Macdonald from the 2019 AMAs. I have to say I also love that we have a relatively new sub-genre of Taylor’s fashion that’s only been briefly explored in the past which is as glamorous work event +1. We’ve seen her excel at this in Stella McCartney and Amen and I so look forward to potentially more, similar outings.
What were your favourite outings from April?