Taylor Swift fans eager to decode the various so-called “Easter eggs” in her lyrics, Instagram posts, and apparel have a new mystery to unravel today. When the billionaire singer swanned into Kansas City, Missouri’s GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium on Sunday to watch boyfriend Travis Kelce’s Kansas City Chiefs play the Denver Broncos, she wasn’t wearing the cozy, casual, logo-ed duds she favored during the 2023-2024 season. Instead, she was dressed like the fearless leader/alpha type she muses about in her Eras Tour favorite, “The Man,”—but with an allusion to the snake motif that also winds its way through the show.
Taylor Swift arrived at the Chiefs’ home stadium well before kickoff Sunday, an expected move given the increased level of security the singer is under following this summer’s thwarted terror plot at one of her since-canceled shows in Vienna, as well as the implied threats made against her by now President-elect Donald Trump. The fear of radicalized fans, perhaps emboldened by the current political climate, has apparently kept her from the Chiefs’ away games—but has made every Swift appearance at a home game feel like more of an event than ever.
That certainly felt like the case today, when Swift strode into the arena in what Page Six identifies as a getup dominated by goods from the Versace design house: the company’s red and black-patterned wool miniskirt and matching jacket, as well as the designer’s “Medusa ’95” boots and “Medusa ’95” tote bag.
As you, of course, know, the Medusa head has long been the defining logo of the 46-year-old company, which was founded by Gianni Versace in 1978. Why would a designer of luxury goods choose, as his icon, a powerful protectress with snakes for hair who—with one look—can turn a man to stone? For years, design fans have attempted to answer that question, to no avail.
Perhaps easier is to unravel is why Swift might have chosen this buttoned-up, dressed-for-boardroom battle outfit this week. The artist has long responded to critics who referred to her as a snake by embracing that flaccid insult, turning the reptile into one of the most memorable themes in her current tour.
In a week when intelligent, powerful women everywhere are swinging from revulsion to stupefaction to fear, one can either curl up in a ball on the couch—or one can put on their (metaphorical) armor and prepare for the next fight. We can be handmaidens or gorgons. It is heartening to think that Taylor has chosen the latter and, in her game-day outfit, is perhaps encouraging us all to join in the fight.