I don’t read the tabloids, but I do, sometimes, when I’ve rinsed every other app for dopamine. It’s not the journalism I’m there for, but the brilliant headlines. Such as this morning’s: “Taylor Swift sparks time travel theory as star is ‘spotted’ in 1987 George Michael video.” The piece goes on: “In what would be the singer’s wildest Easter egg yet, a Swift lookalike appears towards the end of Michael’s ‘Father Figure’ music video, two years before the superstar was even born,” before adding: “Though the woman appears blurry, she has long blonde hair with bangs and facial features resembling Swift’s.”
Sounds convincing enough to me. But such is the hysteria that gathers around this Billboard bulldozer: everything Swift does, or seemingly doesn’t do, is treated as a clue into her past and future projects. I wonder, then, what last night’s look was meant to signal: a peacoat (millennial vindication), a pleated miniskirt (the coming-of-age anxieties she still mines as a 35-year-old billionaire), snakeskin knee-highs (the yet-to-be-announced release of Reputation (Taylor’s Version). For some, the message will be as blunt as the right angles of those Stella McCartney squared-toe boots.
Whether the sight of Swift—who was photographed beside Gigi Hadid while en route to New York’s Zero Bond in a coordinating dark velvet coat, leather trousers and polka-dot top—will kick-start a moment for quadrilateral boots is as speculative as the easter-egg theories. Arguably for some they are already there: even a cursory scroll through the fall 2025 shows suggests the once-derided horizontal toe (Balenciaga, Martine Rose, anyone?) is already mid-rehab via Miu Miu, Chloé, Chanel. If Swift can be retro-fitted into the 1980s, then beaming square-toed boots into the future should be light work.