How Taylor Swift Became a Victoria’s Secret Model During ‘1989’

To honor Taylor Swift’s latest rerecording, we’re celebrating 1989 (Taylor’s Version) Week at The Daily Beast’s Obsessed. That means we’re throwing it back to 2014, to re-live everything that Taylor—and the rest of pop culture—was up to.

The year was 2014. Many things were then taken for granted that are not so today—chief among them (for the purposes of this article) the annual Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, a glitzy parade of supermodel bodies clad in barely-there lingerie that was so exclusive it created a mist of deep lore around itself.

Although the show made a milquetoast return in 2023 on Prime Video, the in-person spectacular was canceled in 2019 after it was made clear just how entrenched billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein was in the Victoria’s Secret brand. Of course, VS said the cancellation was due to the brand’s desire to “evolve the marketing.” But in 2014, this sparkling marketing machine was at its height, due in no small part to the musical contributions of Taylor Swift, a pop star who was then on top of the world and who is now on top of the known universe.

Swift made her first appearance on behalf of the brand just one year prior, during the 2013 VS Fashion Show. To set the scene: That year, at first, she shared the stage with pop-punk mainstays Fall Out Boy; an odd choice for a Victoria’s Secret musical guest, but that year the theme of the show was evidently stadium rock, as evidenced by model Cara Delevingne carrying a soccer ball down the runway.

The boys begin yelling out their hit “My Songs Know What You Did In the Dark (Light ’Em Up)” as the first model, South African stunner Candice Swanepoel, strutted down the runway in red panties, a bejeweled bra, and long, white gloves.

First, at the 2013 show, watch as Swift struts down the runway dressed in the wildest thing you’ve ever seen: a one-sleeved minidress with keyhole collar and mega-long train, splashed with the U.K. flag, and a miniature top hat to match. She doesn’t even sing her own song! She just does one of the verses in the Fall Out Boy song! What universe was this?

Later in the 2013 show, the seeds for later success were planted when Swift made a solo performance jaunt down the runway in a glittery dress. Model Karlie Kloss flounces by her, and the two share a cute moment.

Kloss was something like the archetypal Victoria’s Secret girl: beautiful in a rarified, angular way, but never alien. Kloss is also, improbably, rumored to be one of Taylor Swift’s former lovers. There is an entire sub-category of Swift fans, called Klossies (themselves a subset of Gaylors) who are convinced that substantial evidence points to the pop star and the model having shared a whirlwind romance, supposedly on display during the 2014 VS show, that was perhaps cannily disguised as a high-profile friendship.

In 2014, Swift had leveled up considerably. By the time of that year’s Fashion Show, 1989, with its stacked roster of pure pop bangers, has more than earned her solo artist status on the Victoria’s Secret stage, and rather than sticking out like a sore thumb amongst the models in a Union Jack costume, Swift is notably blending in during this performance.

In fact, she’s doing more than just blending in. Swift, wearing sensual pink lipstick rather than her signature red shade, emerges hand-in-hand with Kloss as the opening, thumping beats of “Style” ring out. Clad in lingerie mirroring Kloss’s, she doesn’t just look like one of the models; she is one of the models, she just happens to be holding a microphone. She just happens to be Taylor Swift.

How, in just one year, did Swift transition from a Fall Out Boy guest star in a goofy costume to a lissome, fully-embodied pop princess who’s giving you a hint of boudoir? By the time 1989 dropped in October 2014, Swift had already been spending her whole summer cutting it up with a coterie of new best friends, almost all of whom were models and who had seemingly come out of nowhere: Gigi Hadid, Martha Hunt, Jaime King, Jessica Stam, and, crucially, Kloss.

By surrounding herself with gorgeous models, Swift seemed to be telegraphing that she was qualified to be counted as one of their number, and the obviousness of this play memorably ground the gears of many during Swift’s “Squad Era.”

Karwai Tang / Getty

One big sticking point was that the gorgeousness of Swift’s crew seemingly made other women feel bad.

“Swift herself should retire that obnoxious Nazi Barbie routine of wheeling out friends and celebrities as performance props,” the critic Camille Paglia wrote memorably in 2015; this was essentially the general consensus of the time. “Young women performers are now at the mercy of a swarming, intrusive paparazzi culture, intensified by the hypersexualisation of our flesh-baring fashions. The girl squad phenomenon has certainly been magnified by how isolated and exposed young women feel in negotiating the piranha shoals of the industry.”

But everyone could be butthurt all they wanted. By December 2014, when it was time to host that year’s edition of the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, Swift had spent so much time gallivanting with Kloss in Big Sur and at basketball games (the two look like sisters, and are basically the same height) that, by then, seeing the two onstage together seemed as natural as breathing.

In order to make her coronation as Pop Princess of the World complete, Swift knew in 2014 that she couldn’t just drop an immaculate album and let the songs speak for themselves; she had to transition her public-facing identity away from Lovelorn Dork (the type who’d noodle over many different genres to spell out heartbreak, as she did on her previous album, Red) and towards Model-Gorgeous Single Girl, a Pop Princess archetype if ever there was one.

Randy Brooke / Getty

The 2014 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show was a blazing example that Swift had more than pulled off her image-shift, even if it made some people cranky.

“This year’s Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show featured 47 models, but the star of the show was Taylor Swift,” Business Insider wrote at the time. “This kind of attention on a performer during the show was unprecedented…Victoria’s Secret is the first big clothing brand to harness Swift’s power for good. By hiring Swift to perform and treating her with utmost respect, the brand won the approval of the so-called Swifties.”

What if I told you she’s a mastermind?