Autumn is Taylor Swift’s favourite season. It’s not quite autumn yet but we’re getting there and I feel like she was giving autumn with her red carpet outfit at the VMAs last night… only “sad girl autumn”, an expression she’s used before, has given way to happy girl autumn. Because Taylor made a point of shouting during one of her acceptance speeches, a person who’s been injecting so much happiness into her life: “my boyfriend, Travis”. 

 
 

Back in March, I described Travis as “a giant of a man with the personality of a puppy” and that’s pretty much Taylor’s description of him being on the set of “Fortnight”, hooting and hollering after she yelled cut. He’s a human puppy bounding around giving people high fives and licks on the face. It’s a dramatic swing from the perceived truculence of Joe Alwyn and the gaslighting love bombing of Matty Healy to this man of simple joys, Travis Kelce, without the complication that Sad Girl Autumn is usually drawn to. But given how complicated she is herself, maybe what she needs – for now – is someone who carry his own complications with him. 

 

Taylor of course swept into the VMAs off the high of her endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris. Headlines about Taylor officially going Team Kamala were all over the place yesterday as her fans rejoiced in relief and as Trump supporters and Trump media tried to downplay her influence and/or threaten her with consequences with Trump predicting that Taylor would “pay a price for it in the marketplace”. A person who’s declared bankruptcy six times has no f-cking business talking about the marketplace. Almost 350,000 people visited the voter registration website that Taylor linked to on Instagram with her post. That obviously doesn’t mean that 350,000 people registered to vote but if even a fraction of those website visitors were converted into voters, it’s still a surge – which, by the way, is what happened last year when she directed people to Vote.org.

 

Now can we talk about this outfit? The word I’m using to describe is: almost. 

It’s almost good. Not quite but almost. 

This is Christian Dior and I preferred it on the runway. On the runway it was all tartan, corset and shorts. And it worked so much better. You can see the runway version here. I get it that Taylor’s thing is booty shorts but, for me, it takes away from how special the design is. And those boots…I HAAAAAATE the boots. Because the boots belong to a totally different look. Like I’m not saying she needed to go with the wellies the way it was on runway but these over-the-knee stilettos are wrong for the whole vibe, it takes the cool right out of the design and turns it into basic. I’m not saying that combats or rough boots had to be the option. But, like, a platform Vivienne Westwood lace-up could have done the trick. But that’s a style edge that Taylor can’t cross.