Dresses
Dresses as a recurring image of feminine self-fashioning and the relationship-marked garment - the dress worn at a specific moment that the song returns to, the white dress whose register is unsettled by what the song knows, the dress that can no longer be worn. In Taylor's writing dresses appear across the catalogue marking transitions: bride at the altar, the prom dress, the wine-stained dress that cannot be returned to, the bejewelled costume worn back into public life, and the schoolyard dress of the speaker's younger self.
Dresses carry the charge of the speaker's body as it was seen at a specific moment (by herself, by a partner, by the public) with the garment standing in for the version of self that the moment required. The image's force often comes from what state the dress is in when the song revisits it: ruined, kept, given away, or still being put on. A dress is rarely incidental in Taylor's writing; it marks the version of the speaker the song asks the listener to see.
Appears in 24 songs
“And when I felt like I was an old cardigan Under someone's bed You put me on and said I was your favorite”
The cardigan as the central symbol of the poem operating across multiple registers, comfort, nostalgia, quiet authority, feminist intellectualism, and then as a cast-off garment retrieved and declared favorite. The shift from title to refrain transforms the cardigan from a symbol of warmth and wisdom to one of being discarded and reclaimed.
“Now I'm running with my dress unbuttoned, screaming, "But, daddy, I love him”
“Now I'm dancing in my dress in the sun and even my daddy just loves him”
“Now I'm runnin' with my dress unbuttoned”
The unbuttoned dress represents brazenness, sexual liberation, and rejection of propriety. Uncle Jerry reads it as 'she's brazen, she's embarrassing, she is eliciting a loose image, she doesn't care.' In the final chorus, dancing in her dress in the sun transforms the same garment from scandal to joy.
“See the lights, see the party, the ball gowns”
“I talked to your dad, go pick out a white dress”
The dress as bridal garment, the culmination of the fairy-tale narrative where the speaker's identity is marked by the wedding dress she is told to select, with the garment chosen for her by the male figure's instruction.
“You're still all over me like a wine-stained dress I can't wear anymore”
The wine-stained dress represents the ruined relationship, something once beautiful and wearable that has been permanently marked and can no longer be worn. The stain is the lasting damage the partner left.
“The girl in the dress cried the whole way home”
“The girl in the dress wrote you a song”
The white dress worn by the Ophelia figure in the music video connects to the Millais painting where the model wore a specific white antique dress. The dress marks the speaker as an Ophelia figure, beautiful, vulnerable, ceremonial.
“Blue dress on a boat, your new girl is my clone”
“I looked around in a blood-soaked gown and I saw something they can't take away”
“The burgundy on my t-shirt When you splashed your wine into me”
The wine-stained t-shirt connects to the wine-stain dress imagery in Taylor's catalogue, a garment ruined by the relationship that cannot be returned to its original state.
“I wore a dress, you wore a dark grey T-shirt”
“Dappled with the flickers of light from the dress I wore at midnight, leave it all behind”
“Standing in your cardigan Kissin' in my car again”
James imagines Betty wearing her cardigan in his reunion fantasy, the garment that will become the central symbol of cardigan (the third song in the trilogy) is named first here in betty's outro, as the thing he pictures her in when he imagines making it back. The garment carries Betty's identity in James's imagination: the cardigan he sees her in is who she is to him. The image seeds the title symbol of cardigan, where Betty herself will become the cardigan ('an old cardigan under someone's bed').
“Now I'm feeling hopeless, ripped up my prom dress”
“Like, can you just not step on my gown?”
“Girls carryin' their shoes down in the lobby”
The shoes carried rather than worn mark the transition from performance (the party, the dancing, the dressed-up evening) to the exhausted, informal aftermath. The girls are leaving the celebration.
“Only bought this dress so you could take it off”
“Say you'll remember me standing in a nice dress staring at the sunset, babe”
“Spinning like a girl in a brand new dress”
“And it was like slow motion standing there in my party dress”
“Somewhere back inside a room wearing a gown shaped like a pastry”
“That no amount of vintage dresses gives you dignity”
“After everything and that little black dress”
“And I don't know why but with you I'd dance in a storm in my best dress, fearless”
“When you think happiness, I hope you think that little black dress”