Hey fashionistas! Two weeks ago, Taylor Swift blessed Swifties with her newest album “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology”, and since then she’s also released a gorgeous music video for the opening track “Fortnight” featuring Post Malone. I wanted to take a moment to unpack all the looks in the video in the context of both the song and the album, as well as in the grand scheme of Taylor Swift fashion. Read on for more!
The video opens with a 1920’s silent film-inspired title card that reads “Fortnight”, which fades away to a black and white closeup shot of Swift’s face turned away from the camera. As we zoom away, we get to see the first look in its entirety: she is wearing a sharp, strapless bustier gown with a smocked asymmetrical train, loose-fitting finger gloves, and ruffled hosiery. The 20’s style is incorporated into her makeup and hair, which is dark and done up in waves, with bobby pins framing her face. She’s chained by her wrist to a bed frame, which is suspended in the air and impossibly wedged between two walls. It becomes clear that she’s in some sort of dream-like mental institution, as her lyrics reflect her dark periods and even darker thoughts.
Walking through the wall of the hospital room, Swift appears on the other side in the second outfit of the music video. For this look, she’s wearing a Gothic Victorian gown with ruffled shoulders and a delicate pair of lace gloves. Sitting down at a typewriter, she sings and writes of a love that pains her: “I love you, [it’s] ruining my life”, and we get the sense that the dress is in mourning for her own life, having lost herself in the wake of her relationship. The Gothic-author theme is a creative take on the melancholic theme of “The Tortured Poets Department” as a whole. We can only imagine that if she were born in the 1840’s, she’d be the same star of a writer that she is today.
The scene flashes as we’re transported to the other side, where we find Swift and Post Malone lying face to face on a floor blanketed with blank pages (perhaps a callback to the last scene, or to her older song Blank Space). They’re wearing the exact same outfit, which consists of a trench coat with trousers, a sweater, and loafers to mirror their experiences together. Something about their story has been unwritten: they stare at each other with familiarity, but also newness — as if they had known each other in a past life, and were meeting again in the next one. Swift’s expression changes from awe to distrust, and we realize that there’s something different this time around: the visible one being that Posty’s face tattoos are gone, whereas in the scene prior, his signature ink was present.
We’re brought into a dystopian lab where Swift is strapped down as the test subject, surrounded by men in white lab coats. She’s wearing a white ruffled shirt dress and no shoes, and her hair is down in its natural curls. She is closely monitored, poked at, and critiqued, despite the power and authority that her own lab coat-adjacent dress holds. The electrodes attached to our queen’s head even resemble a crown. This is everything we expect and love to see when it comes to messaging and Taylor Swift fashion.
For the final look, we see her sitting on top of a phone booth in a shiny chainmail dress. This outfit serves the visual storytelling of the music video, matching the sparkling downpour of rain coming down on her and Post Malone, who stands inside the booth. At the end, he steps out, looks up at her, and reaches out for her hand.
Over the years, music videos have become more and more cinematic, thoughtful, and stylish — and “Fortnight” is a prime example. Sticking to the dystopian, monochromatic theme, the outfits exist in a world outside of what we know to be typical Taylor Swift fashion: it’s a moment of its own, and we are so excited to see what comes next.
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