"Dresses are my weakness, seriously"

[koganbot]

In preparation for my latest column, which has developed an ever-expanding flexible deadline now that it's back to online only (otherwise it would have been due five hours ago) I have been posing the all-important question "Why does Taylor Swift only wear dresses? No skirts, no pants, just dresses. And why these particular dresses?" (In a short CMT interview Taylor said, "Dresses are my weakness, seriously," and mentioned that she loves Forever 21 and BCBG, but doesn't go into why.)



I posed this question on Rolling Country, if you want to see what I said (scroll down near the bottom), but actually, the only good analytical Taylor Swift sartorial commentary I found was from a mom of four in Ohio who blogs about raising the kids, one of her little girls having recently become obsessed with Taylor:

Taylor Swift is everything a little girl would appreciate. She's cute, has long blonde hair, wears cool cowgirl boots and has the girliest dresses going.

Dad apparently holds Taylor Swift responsible for creating the mold for little-girl taste such as his daughter's, while mom says that Taylor "can't be blamed for little girls' attraction to frilly dresses, sing songy melodies and all things pretty."

Taylor's most recent object of girl envy is a sparkling guitar. Covered with Swarovski crystals, it was first seen in her most recent video for "Our Song" and made an appearance at the recent Country Music Awards. You can't see it and not notice it.

So, anyway, little girl asks Santa for a Taylor Swift guitar and a Taylor Swift dress, and Santa not only comes through - with little black dress comes a black headband and black gloves like Taylor's - but also a pair of black cowboy boots like Taylor's that the little girl "didn't order." "It took her a minute or two to grasp the concept that they were hers even though she hadn't included them in her list of what her dad has dubbed the Taylor Swift starter stalker kit."

OK, obviously Taylor looks really good in the dresses she chooses, which vary from sundresses to prom dresses, but she also looks good in the one photo I found of her in jeans, and lots of country performers who don't shun the feminine and don't shun dresses (Faith Hill, LeAnn Rimes, Miranda Lambert, Carrie Underwood, Deana Carter, Martina McBride, Kellie Pickler) will sometimes wear jeans or pants and unlike Taylor haven't turned dresses into almost a signature. And Gretchen Wilson, who never wears dresses, looks plenty hot. Gretchen goes more for the working-class sassy broad look, the big-bosomed tough-girl, w/ low-necked blouses and bouncing tits.



Obviously, Gretchen's not going for an upmarket look, but it seems to me that it's too quick and easy to say that Taylor is, or to identify Taylor as a prep. There's something too idiosyncratic about Taylor's look, for one thing. Also, she's accessibly dressy, her style of clothes available at relatively inexpensive knockoff joints like Forever 21. She's not going to be wowing the sk8ers and the emos, but the rednecks and the grits won't necessarily be averse. That's my guess.

Comments

[koganbot]

Another question would be, who is in Taylor Swift's audience? I've read that the audience for country has more women than men, and tends to be adults more than teens or younger, but I haven't seen any of the studies that would show this. I'm wondering if Taylor's audience tends to be younger and even more feminine.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Taylor Swift is one of only a select few non-Disney-product country artists that gets airplay lately -- Carrie Underwood gets some airplay, but (IIRC) for a Disney film soundtrack, ditto Rascal Flatts, and in another sorta way ditto Billy Ray Cyrus (hard to believe they'd play his single if not for Miley). So that's a whole demographic group that doesn't seem to apply to any other artist, although it might be that kids who listen to Disney-pop listen to country radio outside of Disney (I imagine there's similar Christian subculture crossover with Disney listeners).

[koganbot]

You mean gets airplay on Radio Disney.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Haha, woops, looks like the world imploded...I guess I've fallen into the parallel universe for good.

But yeah, I know exactly zilch about country radio's demographic. Someone 'round here Nashville or otherwise countrily-oriented might have some info, right?

[koganbot]

But I'm wondering most about who in the country audience listens to her. Obviously she got quite a lot, since she was already scoring big on the country charts well before Top 40 started playing her.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I wonder if she just had a phase of wearing dresses for a few months, happened to get super-famous then and was stuck with the perma-dress look as her recognisable image?

Another example is our Lily, who has pretty much trademarked the whole ballgown + trainers look. Her reasoning is a little more practical though (paraphrasing as I can't find the interview anywhere): "I don't like my thighs, ballgowns are good for hiding them. And trainers are comfy."

[koganbot]

Good thought, and I don't know the answer; I also can't say for sure if perma-dress has become the recognizable image of Taylor - that is, how many people have noticed, or would notice if she abandoned it - though I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people have noticed. E.g.,

Results 1 - 10 of about 1,260 from answers.yahoo.com for "taylor swift" dress. (0.10 seconds)

Results 1 - 10 of about 84 from answers.yahoo.com for "LeAnn Rimes" dress. (0.14 seconds)

Results 1 - 10 of about 222 from answers.yahoo.com for "Faith Hill" dress. (0.18 seconds)

Results 1 - 10 of about 557 from answers.yahoo.com for "Carrie Underwood" dress. (0.19 seconds)

Results 1 - 10 of about 152 from answers.yahoo.com for "Martina McBride" dress. (0.28 seconds)

That seems pretty definitive, actually, especially given that those other singers have all been around longer than Taylor and have therefore more opportunities for dress questions to arise and for the word "dress" to appear in song lyrics, etc. (I searched "answers.yahoo.com" because when I did a Google search for "Taylor Swift" "dresses" I got scads of hits from answers.yahoo.com with such questions as "anyone know where i can find sundresses like Taylor Swift wears with her cowboy boots?" Helpful answer to that one was "i would try any place that has sundresses. maybe forever21, charlotte russe, macys. you should look online at different stores, too. i would look at target first, though." This isn't remotely my area of expertise, but my impression is that Target and Forever 21 are known for giving you brand-name elegance without the brand name; a New York Times piece gave an example of Forever 21 selling its copy of a $400 dress for $40.)

Taylor Swift does wear jeans in a few of the shots in the "Tim McGraw" video, and there's the very occasional photo of her in pants. On YouTube I had to go back to a performance recorded three years ago at a trade show (when she'd just turned fifteen, about twenty-one months before her album came out) to find her wearing pants onstage.

One reason she might go for dresses is that she's tall for a woman - five feet eleven - but the way she's proportioned you don't particularly notice her height in photos unless she's standing next to someone, and maybe (this is entirely speculation on my part) she thinks that pants make her look too leggy.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Ahhhhh she's tall? Well that explains it, dude. I dunno about America, but British girls over 5"10 with long legs generally have to go to specialist clothes shops to buy posh trousers that fit. Long-leg jeans are easier to acquire but you're stuck if you want something 'pretty'.

I am 5'8" and have long legs. Pairs of jeans I own: 5. Pairs of trousers I own: 1, as part of awful trouser suit. Dresses I would actually wear somewhere that wasn't like, meeting the Queen at the opera or something: 0. My dress choices really are limited as I have very broad shoulders and a tiny waist (swimming there, marvellous), so finding something that fits and looks good is a nightmare. And I'm THIN and a reasonable height! So I don't really blame Tyler for sticking to something that makes her look good.

Bella as Taylor Swift

[koganbot]

Bella as Taylor Swift

[koganbot]

Also, she's got the same combination of vulnerability and exhilaration in going from kid to adult that you get on the first Ashlee album (it was Jimmy Draper telling me that he was getting Ashlee feelings from Taylor that made me really start paying attention to Taylor), and the same combo of enjoying and struggling through romance, yet Ashlee made the opposite fashion choice. In her reality show you see Ashlee being terrified that the record company and the publicists are going to force her into a girly image, and as she's going on her first photo shoot she's saying to her sister and mom that she thinks she should be dressed more boyish, and Jessica tells her that she's not a boy, and her mom cautions her against getting a reputation for being difficult.

(The Taylor alb isn't as rich as the Ashlee, but little is, and Taylor was only sixteen when her album was released. Wrote or co-wrote everything on it.)