Taylor Swift, you really got us good.
Before the pop star’s Grammys announcement that she’d be releasing a brand-new album in April, Swifties and journalists were scouring her fall wardrobe for evidence that the Reputation (Taylor’s Version) re-recording was next on her list. This was definitely understandable, considering Swift’s ~reputation~ for hiding clues within everything from her social media captions to her red carpet looks, but it turns out that we were all focused on the wrong things.
While many publications noted Swift’s turn toward a preppy, collegiate aesthetic, she was also sneaking multiple clues about the double-album’s track list within her street style, beginning as early as October 2023. Since the release of The Tortured Poets Department on April 19, Swift style commentator Sarah Chapelle (@taylorswiftstyled) has been digging through her archives and pulling out references to The Tortured Poets Department that were hiding in plain sight before Swift even wore “The Albatross” dress to the Grammys in March.
For starters, Chapelle somehow clocked that Swift was wearing a hair clip from Anthropologie’s “Aimee” claw hair clip set for a girls’ night out with Selena Gomez all the way back in October 2023. In fact, the sushi outing took place October 19, 2024, exactly six months before the release of Tortured Poets on April 19.
By now, we’ve all heard the song “thanK you aIMee,” which is widely believed to be about her longtime feud with Kim Kardashian. Swift also wore one of the clips from the $24 set in her recent “Fortnight” recap video.
Next up is the $2,850 “Cassandra” shoulder bag from Saint Laurent, which is reportedly named after the man who designed the “YSL” logo, Adolphe Mouron Cassandre. When Swift wore the bag during a November outing with Gracie Abrams, Chapelle thought the purse was a Reputation easter egg—and you’re not going to believe how close she was to the truth.
“A part of me can’t help but wonder if Taylor felt kinship to a bag that also shared a name with Cassandra of Greek myth fame who was doomed to utter prophecies that no one would believe,” Chapelle wrote at the time. “The poetry of that possibility really strikes me as it feels almost assured that the next (Taylor’s Version) re-record release will be ‘reputation’—an album that of course has roots in a famed phone call gone wrong where Taylor told the truth and no one believed her.”
