How retailers engineered a Swift mini-boom to get fans to spend big

After securing their tickets to Taylor Swift’s Australian concerts – in some cases, after 60 hours of waiting – the real work started for fans, as they decided what to wear to the show and, more specifically, which era to choose.

For some of the country’s biggest fashion retailers, the puzzle began the moment the tour was announced last June. It was crucial to get every detail right – from the “colour theories” of each Swift album, to the right level of “glisten” in the sequins – or risk missing out on a substantial retail sugar hit, potentially worth millions.

Concert coup ... Amna Tang has rented a dress style made popular by Taylor Swift to wear to the singer’s Sydney show.Credit: Nick Moir

At The Iconic, chief marketing officer Jo Robinson and her team closely watched the US and Central American legs of the tour for clues about which eras were proving most popular with fans and, consequently, which styles would be most worth producing through the company’s private labels, which include Dazie and Atmos&Here.

“We needed to emulate [Swift’s] costumes as much as possible … some styles would only work in gold for the Fearless era; silver wasn’t largely featured, so we went lighter on that,” she says.

Whereas purchases during events such as Black Friday are often driven by shoppers’ needs, Robinson says the “emotion and passion” driving fan behaviour around The Eras Tour is creating a marketing opportunity unlike any she’s seen. “Practicality is not the number-one consideration [driving purchases],” she says.

“This will be one of the most exciting nights in our customers’ lives [so] we have been really curated in our approach. Every colour, sequin, design, cut – even how iridescent the sequins were compared to the ones she wears on stage – was critiqued and surveyed to ensure we were hitting the mark.”

The December 2023 birthday dress that inspired the look.Credit: Getty

Multi-brand retailers are not the only ones that jumped on the Swift bandwagon. A spokeswoman for clothing chain Glassons said sequined styles from its “front row” capsule, released in January, sold out within five minutes. And it seems everyone from craft chain Spotlight to shoe brand Midas is offering styles to feed the demand.

Spotlight’s head of marketing Padma Palani says the company couldn’t miss the opportunities created by the demand for do-it-yourself concert outfits. The most popular project kits have included rhinestone hats, fringed jackets and, of course, anything to do with friendship bracelets.

“Bead kits have been incredibly popular … and we’ve seen searches since the tours were first announced increase by 33.78 per cent,” Palani says.

But how much impact is the “Taylor effect” likely to have on the retail sector, and the economy overall?

Not as much as people may assume, says Paul Crosby, lecturer in economics at Macquarie University. He says the biggest lift will be for so-called “Taylor-oriented businesses”, such as hotels in the tour cities. Estimates for the overall benefit to the local economy range from $140 million to as much as $1.2 billion.

As for the bigger, lasting economic effect, especially on the retail sector? “[It’s] probably a bit overstated,” he says. “When you look at impact studies for events, you are looking at what new spending is being created.”

In the case of The Eras Tour, a lot of the spending by ticket holders is “mostly being reallocated”. So, instead of a person buying, for example, a dress for going out on a Saturday night, they’ve bought one for the concert.

Then there are fans who haven’t bought anything new, though they are still contributing to “Swiftonomics” by making their own outfits or renting them. Sydney-based office worker Amna Tang, 28, is likely to be the envy of many Swifties at the second Sydney show, where she will wear the $3500 Clio Peppiatt dress Swift wore on her 34th birthday in December that she rented for $345 from dress-hire platform The Volte.

“I would rather rent something high end than get something [from a fast-fashion brand] that I would never wear again,” she says.

That said, she’s considering completing her look with some sparkly cowboy boots – another Swift style signature. According to Google, searches for the boots are at an all-time high in Australia, as well as searches for sequins and friendship bracelets.

Bernadette Olivier, co-founder of rental platform The Volte, reports a 300 per cent increase in hires of anything that remotely channels Swift’s aesthetic. “Everything sparkly, sequined, fringed and feathered is flying out as groups of friends and family are going all out for the gigs.”

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