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Thigh-high boots were seen on just seven per cent of the spring 2024 catwalks, but they’ve appeared in almost 100 percent of Taylor Swift paparazzi shots taken over the past three months. Last night, in New York, the musician was photographed in a pair of Jimmy Choo and Jean Paul Gaultier’s tattoo-effect shoes–figured in wailing serpents and gothic lettering–that Swifties are reading as a tacit signal of Reputation’s re-release.
In a $76 crushed velvet mini dress, with Vivienne Westwood’s Sibyl bag at her side and a kitsch love heart medallion necklace, Swift was accompanied by dinner date Blake Lively–who managed to inhabit the unique psyche of a proto-fashion blogger: the French tuck, the coordinating color palette and the spangled Louboutin pumps–which seems to have stirred a morbid fascination in American people. Some have called it “outrageous,” others “deranged.” But, to me, this is just how American people dress. I have seen the street style images that come out of New York Fashion Week and I’m afraid this is an accurate reflection of the American psyche, where the mall meets the Met steps.
So while these two were not necessarily coordinated in their aesthetics–at least not in the obvious, near-strategic ways in which the Swiftian Squad has matched before–they were aligned in soul and spirit. Just two Gossip Girls swapping Pinterest mood boards at Lucali pizzeria. Not photographed here was Zoë Kravitz–draped in an all-consuming camel coat from The Row with a bottle-green Idaho bag–who I assume feels less nostalgia towards the 2010s than her counterparts. Proof that even in 2024, it is always 2009 somewhere.