Taylor Swift’s “Eras” Wardrobe Gets the Museum Treatment

It’s not until August 15 that Taylor Swift will take over Wembley Stadium, but the V&A’s “Taylor Swift: Songbook Trail” seems poised to set London under siege by Swifties as early as tomorrow. Opening on July 27, the exhibition features 16 archival costumes and related ephemera from performances, music videos, and album covers across Swift’s entire discography. It’s not technically a retrospective; a major draw of Eras is that fans are transported through time as the singer takes to the stage in looks that span her entire career, which requires a considerable archive of its own.

The show sends viewers snaking through its permanent collections, where artifacts like the tulle and taffeta confection of a Reem Acra gown Swift wore on the back cover of her re-released Speak Now album are displayed. The Speak Now dress glows ethereally in the Rococo-inflected music room of the erstwhile Norfolk House, for example. And in a Renaissance painting gallery, the cascading lace ruffles of the Zimmermann number from the “Willow” music video nod to the romance of the pre-Raphaelite period that followed. Other artifacts on view include the drag ensemble Swift wore in her music video for “The Man,” and a snake-encrusted microphone from her Reputation tour (“I’ve never displayed a microphone before,” curator Kate Bailey told The Guardian).

Together with the recently revamped Young V&A, “Taylor Swift: Songbook Trail” seems to be the museum’s latest maneuver to cater to younger audiences. According to Bailey, displaying Swift’s instruments, like her Reputation microphone and a Speak Now guitar, encourages youngsters to keep their sights set on the power of creativity. “I feel very passionate about bringing that in,” she continues. “She’s a songwriter. This is the guitar. This is all it takes: some imagination, some talent, and you can go wherever.”