In authentic Victorian fashion, this black ensemble Taylor wore was actually separates and not a dress. Her waxed denim jacket as previously posted was by Unttld and this ruffled skirt by Elena Valez from her Fall 2024 collection which only debuted this past February.
Elena told Laird Borrelli-Persson for Vogue that her “purest objective as a brand is to really bring a lost Midwestern woman back to the American cultural narrative.” Her desires in this collection were to bring a “more multi-dimensional representation of womanhood, good and bad; one that accepts the difficult, complicated, ugly truth of being a woman as part of the beauty that makes us whole and complete and 360. It’s a character journey that sometimes goes through an antagonist journey, but ultimately resolves itself with meaning and goodwill.” I frankly can’t think of a better ethos to match an album that centers much of its narrative on Taylor exposing wounds many of which she describes as “self-inflicted.”
It’s my suspicion that TTPD is not an album that will be, nor was designed with the intention of, understood or liked by the masses. To my ears (and still overwhelmed brain feeling like I’ve absorbed an encyclopedia of words across these 31 songs) this is an album for ‘Swiftie scholars’ who have the time, space, and devotion to wade through the heaviness of an album this dense and complicated. And that’s okay! When Taylor described this album as one that she needed to make, now that we have it I interpret her meaning as her willfully confronting and hurdling over the elephant in the studio with her. Addressing the “how did it end?” questions that will plague her as soon as possible and structuring it in an album messy, complicated, and strewn with all her most vicious thoughts about the last year of her life in order to get out from under the weighted blanket of those expectations, clearing a path for her next LP to be constructed in clearer air.
the older i get and the closer i am to reaching 30, the more the people around me try to deny me my age. it’s a constant ‘oh you’re just turning 29 again teehee 🤭’ or ‘dont tell your SO that, he’ll leave you for a younger model 😉’ and i just???? hate it?????????
i spent my entire teenaged years fighting for my life. i crawled through the deepest pits of my depression to cling to the promise of a life beyond that pain. i was so convinced that i was going to die young, that i would never see the grace of my age starting with a 2, let alone 3.
so im going to turn 30, and there’s not a damn thing anyone can do to stop me from loving it.
if i had a nickel for every time i thought taylor swift was going to announce a re-recorded album at an award show but got up there and announced a brand new album instead, i would have 2 nickels which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice