RIP to Taylor Swift The Fashion Darling
May God rest her Rick Owens-loving soul.
Taylor Swift is a darling of many scenes — country music, feline aficionados, the bangs community — but she is decidedly not a darling of the fashion world.
Rather, after every awards show, I see a dozen or so posts of Taylor on the red carpet with the same caption: “She’s allergic to serving.” I have gathered you here today to remind you that this allergy has been developed (and is certainly curable), because for one shining moment, Taylor Swift was indeed a fashion darling — and she has the Rick Owens jacket to prove it.
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When A$AP Rocky rapped the praises of Rick Owens in 2011 (“Rick Owens usually what I’m dressed in”) he may as well have given the line to Taylor. However unexpectedly, the blonde pop country star was also rocking the cult favorite gothic fashion label in the early 2010s.
“She wears short skirts, I wear thigh high leather boots” might have made the You Belong With Me music video more intriguing.
Taylor’s street style at the time leaned twee more than anything else, but despite clear aesthetic differences, Taylor and her Rick Owens leather jacket were once inseparable. She was papped matching the jacket to cat-printed mini skirts, slouchy beanies, and, for some reason, the same brown messenger bag over and over:
Meanwhile, the leather biker jackets on the runway were getting a different styling treatment:
Taylor wasn’t the only one whose uniform at the time included this piece; in a 2015 interview, The New York Times dubbed it “the leather jacket that changed [Rick Owens’] career.” Owens himself called the leather biker jacket “the DNA and starting point of [his] collection.” It also wasn’t the first time Taylor dipped her toes into Rick’s world.
A few years earlier, in head-to-toe Rick Owens, a decidedly pre-Serving Allergy Swift graced the pages of T Magazine’s holiday 2009 issue. She played the role of a glitzy doll, hair in overly teased pigtails tied up with ribbon, legs miles long in Givenchy wedges.
We get an early look at her soon-to-be signature red lip, which was first iterated by makeup artist and founder of Westman Atelier, Gucci Westman, a few months prior during an Allure shoot. Here, it’s a glossy cherry against matte porcelain skin and baby blue shadow.
She reclines on a pool chair in Prada; she towers in Mercura sunglasses and Rick Owens wrist cuffs; she sits propped against a chair, staring blankly into the distance like a Barbie waiting to be played with, in a straight-off-the-runway Rick Owens look.
She was 19 at the time, and at 5’11, could have been walking the runway in Milan. Her preferred career aspirations, however, had less to do with fashion and more to do with becoming the youngest winner of Album of the Year at the Grammys (mission accomplished1 a few months after the spread went to print).
This brief love affair with Rick Owens was just that, brief. As mainstream pop hits exploded her career and media commentary on her life reached new heights, the memorable fashion moments became few and far between.
In 2012, Taylor let a hairstylist on a Vogue set cut bangs — an iconic style she has maintained ever since. Some say we may never see her forehead again. Recalling the moment that gave many an America’s Next Top Model contestant a nervous breakdown, she said, “You know what, just cut it. This is Vogue.”
She performed at both the 2013 and 2014 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Shows, giving a glimpse into what her life as a model may have looked like. It was here she formed a (controversial) group of model friends backstage that became a magnet for public criticism and eventually led to her distancing herself from the modeling world.
She donned the cover of Vogue in May of 2016 with a fresh platinum bob and took that bob all the way to Coachella, which has since been dubbed “Bleachella” by her fans.
But in more recent years, fashion risk-taking feels entirely forgotten. Now, she’s better known for confusing street style, polarizing award show looks, and custom Chiefs gear. That 2019 Lover promotional collection with Stella McCartney makes me shiver just to think about.
Instead of wielding her megastar status for custom couture and archival access, Taylor somehow manages to procure a Schiaparelli look that had me questioning what Daniel Roseberry was thinking — not something I am one to do!
With all the money in the world, the face, the body, the access, the opportunity, why doesn’t Taylor Swift choose to serve?