Illustration: Millie von Platen for Bloomberg Businessweek
Taylor Swift fans looking to buy T-shirts, bodysuits, friendship bracelets or myriad other tokens of devotion to the pop star might consider going to her official online store. But those who’ve tried recently were out of luck. In the runup to the April 19, 2024 release of The Tortured Poets Department, the shop has offered only preorders of special-edition CDs, cassettes and vinyl of the album. That hasn’t put much of a crimp in the booming Swiftie economy, though, because countless retailers have popped up on Etsy, Amazon.com and print-on-demand sites such as Redbubble with a vast range of merch with Swift’s look or lyrics.
Fans are often inspired to dress like their favorite billionaire, with videos of concert attendees wearing near-exact re-creations of her bedazzled bodysuits from the Eras Tour racking up hundreds of thousands of views on TikTok. In six months of 2023, when Swift’s tour was crisscrossing the US and fans exchanged friendship bracelets to commemorate attendance, Etsy says, its vendors sold $3 million worth of the beaded trinkets.
Lili Sunga, 18, says she waited in line for five hours at an Eras Tour performance in Los Angeles last summer to spend $484 on Taylor Swift tees and sweatshirts. (Photographer: Brittany Murray/MediaNews Group/Long Beach Press-Telegram via Getty Images)
Swift’s economic power is well documented, with her 53 US concerts contributing $4.3 billion to gross domestic product last year, Bloomberg Economics estimates. Gauging the reach of the unsanctioned market is harder, but many fans make little distinction between official and third-party merch. Shirts winkingly supporting “Taylor’s Boyfriend” (Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce) were particularly popular in the weeks before the Super Bowl.
About 95% of Swifties have bought Taylor-related goods between 2023 and 2024, and more than half of them have picked up some unofficial merch, according to a survey by QuestionPro. While 55% said they hesitated to buy unlicensed merchandise because someone else is profiting off of Swift's image, they still shell out an average of $142 per transaction. Those who caught a show spent an average of $242 on Swift-inspired clothing and accessories—licensed or not—for each concert they saw.
Swifties queue up to buy merchandise at an Eras Tour concert in Singapore last month. (Photographer: Roslan Rahman/AFP/Getty Images)
Maddie Bryan, a 26-year-old who works in fashion marketing in Los Angeles, saw five Eras Tour concerts. She’s built an impressive collection of official and unofficial merch, including three cardigans, holiday ornaments and pajamas. When she’s looking for something inspired by a certain lyric or motif, or when she needs something on a fast turnaround, Bryan will go the unofficial route. As a bonus, it’s often cheaper than Swift’s website.
There’s a thriving resale market for licensed products, but vendors charge premiums that can reach 20 times the price at Swift’s official store. “Resellers see it as a chance to make a quick buck off the backs of Swifties, which makes it harder for real fans to get merch,” Bryan says. “When new merch drops and you see something you like, it’s like your fight-or-flight instincts kick in. You just have to check out as quickly as possible before your cart sells out.” Bravado, Universal Music Group’s merchandise wing, declined to comment.
Bryan has also created her own niche in the Taylorconomy. For a concert in Los Angeles, she sewed a version of one of the star’s signature bodysuits. At the show, she recalls, dozens of other fans stopped her to ask where she’d gotten the suit and take selfies with her. “I was met with a wildly kind reception,” she says. “It’s about as close as you can get to feeling like the real Taylor Swift.” That inspired Bryan to start selling bodysuits on Etsy—for $1,150 each. So far, she says, she’s sold three. And she’s got a page on Amazon with links to the materials she uses for her creations, so those into the homemade experience can make their own (and she’ll get a small commission).
Swift fan Molly Swindall with one of the many blankets she keeps in her collection of Taylor Swift memorabilia. (Photographer: Kendrick Brinson/Washington Post/Getty Images)
Etsy declined to comment on any artist merchandise with album art or other unsanctioned graphics. But the company says Swift clearly drives trends on the site: Searches for choker-style necklaces with watch faces spiked 25% in the four days after she wore such a design to the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles. Since the crafty types who sell on Etsy can proceed “directly from idea to production, we quickly see emerging inventory that reflects the sartorial zeitgeist,” says Dayna Isom Johnson, who monitors trends for Etsy.
Legend has it that the first band tees were DIY projects from Elvis Presley fan clubs. Over the years, musicians and managers, beginning to understand the revenue potential in such goods—and wanting to control the artist’s image—brought the work in-house. Now merch serves as an “extension of the brand,” says Paul Hardart, director of the entertainment, media and technology program at New York University’s Stern School of Business.
It’s also a huge business, particularly for artists as big as Swift, meaning entrepreneurial designers wanting a piece of the Taylor machine risk running afoul of trademarks and copyrights. “Fans obviously can express themselves and can make stuff at home,” Hardart says. “But when someone’s trying to make money off of somebody else’s intellectual property, that’s where it runs into trouble.”
Katelinn Humm, a 27-year-old cleaner from Australia, has been going to Swift shows for more than a decade and sews replicas of the star’s outfits. When prices at Swift’s store strike her as too high, she’ll choose an unofficial vendor, sharing recommendations with other fans in a dedicated group chat. But her preference is to go to the official site, even though deliveries can be slow. “Taylor Swift gives us permission to just be girls again, make the friendship bracelets, get crafty with our outfits, scream, cry and sing without feeling embarrassed,” Humm says. “I think that’s pretty worth it.”