Taylor Swift but make it Historical | Tortured Poets Dept costume analysis and dress history
Hello everyone and welcome to a new video!
Technically, I've been thinking about this project since July 2023, when the tickets went on sale for the international dates in the UK of the Eras Tour. It's been a long time coming.
I hope you enjoy this quick dive into 18th century fashion and how it can relate to Taylor Swift's stage costume for the Tortured Poet's Department set on the Eras Tour. As I mentioned in the video, the costume was designed by Vivienne Westwood, and there's a cool post about it on the Vivienne Westwood website (linked below) that shows a couple of behind the scenes photos. As soon as I saw it on a shaky live stream of the Nanterre/Paris shows, I knew this was the costume for me!
Initially, I had been toying with the idea of re-creating one of her folklore dresses, as they appealed to me the most aesthetically - but I held off on the idea, as I was uneasy about the wearability of it (particularly, it's re-wearability) and having to get so much new fabric. Once I saw the TTPD dress, I immediately associated with 18th century style lines and as I've been meaning to dip my toe back into it, it seemed perfect (not to mention I have what can only be called a toxic relationship with stays - I love them, they hate me, I'll keep making them). So stay tuned for a making of costume video!
P.S. I had to remove the audio from my footage of the TTPD set in the Eras tour at the end due to copyright :(
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18th century Stays in a Day • 18th Century Stays in a Day: A Mistake
-- REFERENCES --
Bendall, Sarah A. ‘“Take Measure of Your Wide and Flaunting Garments”: The Farthingale, Gender and the Consumption of Space in Elizabethan and Jacobean England’. Renaissance Studies 33, no. 5 (2019): 712–37.
Benhamou, R. (2001). Who Controls This Private Space?: The Offense and Defense of the Hoop in Early Eighteenth-Century France and England. Dress, 28(1), 13–22.
Carter, Alison. Underwear, the Fashion History. Drama Book Publishers, 1992.
Cunnington, C. Willett, Phillis Cunnington. The History of Underclothes. S.l: Joseph, 1951. (1992 edition available online: https://archive.org/details/historyof...)
Ewing, Elizabeth. Dress and Undress: A History of Women’s Underwear. London: Bibliophile, 1981.
Lynn, Eleri, Richard Davis, and Leonie Davis. Underwear: Fashion in Detail. London: V&A Publishing, 2010.
Serena Dyer, Labour of the Stitch: The Making and Remaking of Fashionable Georgian Dress. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024.
North, Susan, Henrietta Clare, and Richard Davis. 2022. 18th Century : Fashion in Detail. London: Thames & Hudson : V&A Publishing
Waugh, Norah, and Judith Dolan. Corsets and Crinolines. Taylor & Francis Group, 2017.
Westwood, Vivienne. Westwood Heritage: Corsets (2023) https://www.viviennewestwood.com/en-g... and Taylor Swift, The Eras Tour (2024)
https://www.viviennewestwood.com/en-g...
-- IMAGES --
All images retain their original copyright. Eras Tour images sourced from media news outlets and social media and are not the author’s own.
Woman's Hoop Petticoat, England, 1750-1780, LACMA, https://collections.lacma.org/node/21...
Corset, ca.1876, MET https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collect...
Corset (but technically closer to stays or even bodies), 18th century, MET https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collect...
Corset, ca.1885-1887, MET https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collect...
Stays, late 1760s, MET https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collect...
Woman's Dress, ca. 1760s, LACMA https://collections.lacma.org/node/23...
Robe à l'anglaise, ca. 1780, MET https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collect...
Court dress ca.1750, MET, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collect...
Panniers, ca.1750, MET, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collect...
Panniers ca.1750-1770, MET, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collect...
Hoops, 18th century, MET https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collect...
The Bum Shop, 1785, MET https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collect...
00:00 Introduction
01:12 TTPD Costume Breakdown
04:33 18th Century Fashion
05:22 Panniers or Hoops
07:32 Rumps
09:28 Taylor Swift, the 18th Century, and Me!
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Music is from Epidemic Sound.