Don’t expect an in-depth exhibition or fresh insight into the evolution of her style – but these treasures will delight young Swifties
The V&A’s advert for a Taylor Swift adviser must be the most widely shared job posting of this year. Every superfan, bemused parent and media outlet seemed to animatedly discuss the museum’s search for an expert on fan culture and memorabilia (they also appointed experts on emojis, Crocs and drag).
A PR exercise to appear relevant and contemporary or a sign that yet another major institution – it joins Harvard and several other universities worldwide that offer courses studying her songwriting – are taking Swift’s cultural contribution seriously? Then, earlier this month, the museum announced Taylor Swift: Songbook Trail, a free display – not exhibition, an important distinction here – of Swift’s real costumes and archive artefacts that will run for six weeks through the summer.
The timing of Songbook Trail, which spans her 18-year recording career, is a no-brainer. Swift is the most famous person in the world, and is currently deep into the European leg of her Eras Tour, which is itself a time-travelling journey through her music and personas – a chronicle of her own growing up.
In August, it will return to London for five nights at Wembley Stadium. During the first three in June, the city felt like the centre of the universe. Prince William and his two eldest children were there; Keir Starmer was there; Paul McCartney and Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Andrew Scott and Greta Gerwig and Hugh Grant and Tom Cruise were there and did you hear her boyfriend Travis Kelce got on stage?
Fans flew in from across the world, swarming the Tube – the map was redesigned in her honour – in their costumes (ballgowns, Kansas City Chiefs jerseys, giant emerald snakes) leaving trails of glitter and friendship bracelets everywhere they went. It was feverish, silly, spirited and for those lucky enough to get tickets or who were just swept up in the excitement, it was an uncynical, festive joy. London loves Taylor Swift. Why not capitalise on that?
Still, the V&A’s plan was a surprise. Though her style has evolved, Swift’s great cultural impact has not been in the world of fashion. Unlike some other musicians – David Bowie or Madonna or Björk or even Lady Gaga – she is not known for having a bold, adventurous style that is central to her identity. What might a V&A show really tell us?
Put together by Kate Bailey, the museum’s senior curator of theatre and performance (not the experts appointed this month), Songbook Trail brings together 16 looks on 13 stops through the museum’s permanent collection. In one of many neat details intended to delight fans and demonstrate the care taken to indulge them, you are led by a golden-lit “invisible string” between each.
Nestled into romantic corners and grand galleries are ensembles that span the artist’s career right from a pair of personalised painted cowboy boots worn in 2007 when a teenage Swift was performing her self-titled debut to the black, faux leather blouse and skirt from the “Fortnight” music video released earlier this year.
There’s a sparkly catsuit from The 1989 Tour, the red dress she wore performing “Love Story” – her breakout song and the first one most British fans heard – on her first headline tour, Fearless; there are treasures like the fisherman’s cap from the cover of Red (Taylor’s Version) (2021), the cardigan from “Cardigan” (2020), the ukulele she played on The Speak Now Tour (2010). Being up close to these is a young fan’s dream.
However it is not an exhibition – so don’t expect the kind of breathtaking scope and insight offered by the museum’s past blockbuster shows on Chanel, Dior or Frida Kahlo – nor does it reveal much new about her. There is much to be explored about Swift’s image, which has always been tightly controlled, and how her aesthetic decisions have changed as she has grown up from girlish, sundress-wearing lovelorn teenager to the bold, red-lipped sometime-goth beauty who has taken over the world.
But it would take a great feat of forensic research and unsettling obsession to be able to do a better job of illuminating Swifties than they can for themselves, who study every single detail of Swift’s output and image in search for clues about her and her personal life (often, she intentionally leaves them). It would also take extraordinary access to archive material, something I expect Swift would only grant if she was curating a show herself.
Instead, there is a sense that the curators have worked very well and imaginatively with the looks they’ve been given – the most striking and interesting of which are the big, extravagant dresses: a beautiful golden silk and satin beaded gown by Euro Co worn in the “Bejeweled” video; a sky blue Oscar de la Renta dress with floral cutwork worn to The Eras Tour film premiere; an off-white laceand velvet Zimmerman dress from the “Willow” music video.
Seeing the ornate details on pieces like this so close has always been the magic of a trip to the V&A and I found myself more thrilled by this than those instantly recognisable objects of Swiftie lore. I would have loved more information on each – more nerdy detail analysing the significance of each installation, drawing connections to Swift’s other looks, or to her music, or to the art or fashion that inspired it.
Because incredible consideration has been given to the placing of each installation. The first stop, displaying the sequinned jacket Swift wears in the video from her punchy feminist screed “The Man” (2019), is placed between statues of Venus and Diana, with paintings of men glaring down on it. The second, a black and gold sequinned Jessica Jones dress (and Christian Louboutin serpent boots) from The Reputation Tour (2018) takes over a private sculpture gallery that is usually held for muses – not creators. The lilac Reem Acra dress worn on the cover of Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) (2023) is displayed in a white room whose walls and ceiling glimmer with gilt carved panelling.
Swift’s teenage country girl guitar, boots and dress stand in front of a rural fresco; that “Willow” dress is in a painting gallery, Francis Danby’s Disappointed Love (1821) to the side. Birdsong plays from speakers in the Folklore era, as that cardigan is draped across a piano stool – “as if she’d just left the room”, says Bailey – the floor covered in real moss, with Turners and Constables on the surrounding walls.
The red, fairy tale “Love Story” dress peers from a Juliet balcony down into the cavernous Raphael gallery, in which the two 1989 looks are presented at one far end, as if on a giant stage. 1989, released in 2014, marked the moment Swift went pop and her fame was truly stratospheric. The Red era, when she really left her adolescence behind, is displayed by a grand four-poster bed (the teenage Swift had one herself). The Tortured Poets Department section stands under the national art library and atop a pile of poetry books. The Midnights section takes over the textile archive, usually closed to the public, in which half-open drawers reach up to the ceilings and her music videos are projected onto gentle, swaying gauze. You can imagine her locked down there, writing lyrics in a ferocious fit of emotion.
These details, in the absence of a wealth of material on Swift, mean every stop on the trail is in close commune with the collection and allows us to draw those links between her work, style and art history. I hope that they are made obvious to passing visitors, forcing them to stop and think and that the trail does not just become a crowded photo opportunity as people rush from one stop to the next.
Because – it became clear to me – Songbook Trail is not a deep study of Swift or a comprehensive fan service but a way of getting feet through the door and making sure they wend their way through the whole museum and hopefully stop to take in some of the riches that do not concern Taylor Swift.
Is that such a bad thing? It will not have escaped your notice that most schools across the country have now broken up for the summer holidays and six long weeks of time and tedium stretch ahead. And unless things have changed in the past 20 years, getting children enthusiastic about visiting an art gallery can be a challenge.
I am certain my sister and I were dragged (sometimes physically) against our will and though once we got there we would usually at least briefly submit, appreciate and discuss what was in front of us (mostly aided by bright colours, some interactive activity or a treasure hunt of some kind) it was not exactly top of our list. And that was before Netflix, smartphones and social media competed for our attention.