The business of Taylor Swift

Sign up to receive the Vogue Business newsletter for the latest luxury news and insights, plus exclusive membership discounts. Taylor Swift has become a global socioeconomic phenomenon. Last March, the singer debuted her Eras tour, a densely packed, career-spanning, three-and-a-half-hour spectacle, with two (or more) night runs in stadiums across the world. It has since taken over social media, where fans discuss, analyse and plan each step of the concert experience. The #ErasTour hashtag is regularly trending on TikTok, with over 30.2 million posts to date. The show has had a major impact on businesses across local and national economies. Touching down in the UK at the start of June, Swift’s three sold-out Edinburgh shows brought in a total audience of over 220,000, breaking attendance records and boosting the local economy with an estimated £77 million. Witnessing local and national businesses rebranding and offering Taylor Swift-inspired fashion, both high street and luxury fashion brands have aimed to embrace the moment. Now, as The Eras Tour hits London’s Wembley this weekend, the star is expected to continue her run of launching fashion trends, boosting economies and dominating socials. During the tour’s first leg, which ran from mid-March to August 2023, it was reported that Swift healthily boosted the US economy with an impact exceeding $10 billion. The European leg, which kicked off on 9 May in Paris, is set to exceed this figure, according to Fortune. Search has surged for tour destinations. “Warsaw”, for example, has seen a search uptick of 1000 per cent since the star announced her three-night stint there in August. As the show makes its way through the UK, #TaylorSwift and #TheErasTour have become top-trending hashtags. Videos using the tags on TikTok have garnered 292 million views within the very first week of her Edinburgh shows, while Barclays Bank estimates that the tour will boost the British economy by £1 billion overall between her 15 sold-out shows. The impact of an Era Swift’s stage outfits include custom looks from Versace, Alberta Ferretti, Roberto Cavalli, Christian Louboutin and Vivienne Westwood, sometimes in various colourways, which Swift swaps in and out each show (diligently monitored by fans on TikTok). Versace, the maker of Swift’s crystal bodysuit for the opening ‘Lover’ era, has garnered nearly $3.1 million in media impact value (MIV) across the 35 days that The Eras Tour has been in Europe, according to Launchmetrics. While a single Instagram post of Swift by Donatella Versace garnered 2.5 million likes — a tenfold increase in engagement compared to Versace’s other posts. “This kind of project always has a significant impact on the general public. In the case of Taylor Swift, this is even more evident given her international impact,” shares Italian designer Alberta Ferretti, who made several flowing gowns for the ‘Folklore’/‘Evermore’ era. “Creating the outfits for The Eras Tour has brought us concrete results, both in terms of engagement on social media — the posts related to this project have been the most successful this year — and in terms of traffic to the brand’s e-commerce from users in the United States. The US market has gradually become our top market in terms of revenue, recording a growth of 34 per cent year-on-year, surpassing the Italian market.” The power of relatability And it’s not just Swift’s on-stage moments driving brand heat. Alongside the tour, over the last year she’s released an album, re-released previous albums (‘1989’ and ‘Speak Now’), and entered into a high-profile romance with Super Bowl champion Travis Kelce. Unlike pop contemporaries such as Charli XCX or Dua Lipa, who lean into fashion and a specific aesthetic, working regularly with cool, young designers or attending fashion weeks, Swift isn’t necessarily known as a ‘fashion girl’. Though, Swift is, arguably, seen as more relatable and approachable because of this, and her dedicated fan base still propels any label she touches. And within the numerous discussions and deep dives of Swifties (the name given for her fans) across TikTok, X and Instagram, breaking away from the expertly defined (and oftentimes controlled) fashion and beauty brand deals have made her stand out in a playing field where celebrities aim to sell big. “Taylor Swift is single-minded — her music and the tour are her signature, and her entire focus,” says Perfect Magazine founder and stylist Katie Grand. “While other artists are endorsing products and their brands, Swift is banking on the razor-sharp nucleus of music being first and foremost.” According to Launchmetrics, Swift’s red carpet attendance across the awards season earlier this year generated a record-breaking MIV of $319.2 million, making her the most-mentioned celebrity figure across all six major ceremonies in 2024 (in reference to the Golden Globes, the Critics’ Choice, the Emmys, the Grammys, SAGs and the Oscars). At the 2024 Grammys alone, Swift’s custom red carpet all-white Schiaparelli gown generated $6.8 million for the brand (the highest earned across the night). After 2023’s edition, her all-blue sparkling Roberto Cavalli look generated close to $3 million. During her appearance at this year’s Las Vegas Super Bowl, she triggered a social buzz worth over $180 million in MIV — a whopping 23 per cent share of the overall event value. Swift was on screen for less than a minute over the entirety of the event. The Swift mastermind Part of the reason for Swift’s impact has been in the way it is incorporated into her artistic persona. The singer is notoriously famous for utilising fashion as a smart way of interacting with her fans about her next moves. Dubbed ‘Easter eggs’, each outfit, accessory or visual cue has a meaning that links to the future of her upcoming projects and music, urging fans to engage on microscopic levels of analysis, while keeping her fan base on their toes. “I love to communicate through Easter eggs,” Swift told Entertainment Weekly. “I think the best messages are cryptic ones.” Swift has managed to hint at her fans about the release of her next albums, more specifically the rerecorded ‘1989 (Taylor’s Version)’ when she played into the album’s signature blue colour with a Roberto Cavalli beaded fringe crop top and skirt — the announcement dropped just hours after and key words like “Taylor Swift Roberto Cavalli Eras Tour” quickly became among the highest-searched TikTok terms. Currently, the search term’s videos have received a combined 28.9 million views, placing Roberto Cavalli in amongst the frenzied content of thousands of fans. In December, Jimmy Choo’s London/Paris Plexi heels (featuring landmarks Big Ben and the Eiffel Tower, in respective plexiglass heels) went viral when Swift wore them out in London, as fans began to speculate that the shoes were a hint that something special would happen at the London and Paris shows. For Jimmy Choo, it boosted brand awareness. “Establishing a long-standing relationship with a leading performer like Taylor Swift not only reinforces our design expertise, but also provides us with global visibility of our craft,” says Jimmy Choo’s creative director Sandra Choi. In addition to the ever-growing social media discussion of the tour’s looks, a fan-made app called Swiftie Alert has created a mobile quiz game where fans can interact and play by guessing the colourways of each outfit along with the fashion element of each show before Swift steps out on stage — it’s gathered 160,000 user entries to date. This level of organic exposure comes as lightning in a bottle for both brands and fashion executives, who aim to grow the predominantly Italian brands supporting Swift’s Eras tour into global markets like North America that have proven especially tricky in 2024. With Swift’s example, the evidence comes tightly packed into the message: fashion and celebrity go hand in hand and its impact is no longer contained to a single statutory audience. Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com. More on this topic: The business of Bella Hadid What 2023’s great concert ‘Renaissance’ meant for the brands onstage Is cowboy fashion bigger than Beyoncé?

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