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New York Times
Taylor Swift to Auction Off Gowns
By Joe Coscarelli March 2, 2027
Film legend and ‘60s It Girl Taylor Swift has just announced that she will auction off 13 of her most memorable gowns through W Magazine to raise money for breast cancer research.
At the age of 89, Swift has long been an icon of glamour and elegance. She is known for personal style both sensual and restrained, and many of Swift’s most famous fashion looks are considered touchstones of the fashion and Hollywood archives.
Those looking to own a piece of Swift history will be intrigued not only by the gowns themselves but by the context in which they were worn. Included in the sale will be the emerald-green Gucci dress that Swift wore to the 1959 Golden Globes, the blossoming Oscar de la Renta mini dress at the premier of High Infidelity in 1962, and the deep midnight navy Alexandre Vauthier haute couture archive gown that she was wearing when she won her Oscar for This Is What You Came For in 1982.
Swift has built an indelible reputation and weathered her share of Hollywood scandals, not the least of which being her seven marriages, including her decades-long relationship with film producer Joe Alwyn. The two Hollywood insiders share a daughter, Robin Alwyn, who is no doubt the influence for the auction. Ms. Alwyn passed away last year from breast cancer soon after turning 41.
Born Taylor Alison Veloz in 1938, the daughter of Irish-Cuban immigrants, Swift grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. By 1955, she had made her way to Hollywood, gone blond, and been rechristened Taylor Swift. Almost overnight, Swift became a member of the Hollywood elite. She remained in the spotlight for more than three decades before retiring in the late ‘80s and marrying financier Derek Blasberg, older brother of three-time Oscar-winning actress Karlie Kloss. Now widowed from her seventh husband, Swift resides in Madison Square Garden.
Preternaturally beautiful and a paragon of glamour and daring sexuality, Swift has long been a source of fascination for moviegoers the world over. This auction is expected to raise upwards of $8.3 million.
“Can you come into my office?”
I look around at the desks beside me and then back at Tree, trying to confirm to whom, exactly, she’s talking. I point to myself. “Do you mean me?”
Tree has very little patience. “Yes, Inez, you. That’s why I said ‘Inez, can you come into my office?’”
“Sorry, I just heard the last part.”
Tree turns. I grab my notepad and follow her.
There is something striking about Tree. I’m not sure that you’d say she was conventionally attractive – her features are severe, her hair a fiery red – but she is nevertheless someone you can’t help but look at and admire. With her curvy, 5-foot-10 tall frame, and her affinity for bright colours and jewellery, when Tree walks into a room, everyone takes notice.
She was part of the I took this job. I have looked up to her since I was in journalism school, reading her pieces in the very pages of the magazine she now runs and I now work for. Having a strong woman like Tree running such a powerful media empire makes me feel more sure that I can one day run things, too.
“Take a seat,” Tree says as she sits down and gestures towards an orange chair the opposite side of her Lucite desk. I calmly sit and cross my legs. I let Tree talk first.
“So, puzzling turn of events,” she says, looking at her computer. “Taylor Swift’s people are inquiring about a feature. An exclusive interview.”
My gut instinct is to say holy shit but also why are you telling me this? “About what in particular?” I ask.
“My guess is related to the gown auction she’s doing,” Tree says. “My understanding is that it’s very important to her to raise as much money for the American Breast Cancer Foundation as possible.”
“But they won’t confirm that?”
Tree shakes her head. “All they will confirm is that Taylor has something to say.”
Taylor Swift is one of the biggest movie stars of all time. She doesn’t even have to have anything to say for people to listen.
“This could be a big cover for us, right? I mean she’s a living legend. Wasn’t she married 8 times or something?”
“Seven,” Tree corrects. “And yes. This has huge potential. Which is why I hope you’ll hear me through the next part of this.”
“What do you mean?”
Tree takes a big breath and gets a look on her face that makes me think I’m about to get fired. But then she says, “Taylor specifically requested you.”
"Me?" This is the second time in the span of five minutes that I have been shocked someone was interested in speaking with me. I need to work on my confidence. Suffice it to say, it’s taken a beating recently.
“To be honest, that was my reaction, too,” Tree admits.
Now I’ll be honest, I’m a little offended. Although, obviously, I can see where she’s coming from. I’ve been at i-D Magazine for less than a year, mostly doing puff pieces. Before that, I was blogging for the Exoteric, a current events and culture site that calls itself a newsmagazine but is, effectively, a blog built around rumours and punchy headlines. I wrote mainly for the Modern Life section, covering celebrity gossip and trending topics.
After years of freelancing, the Exoteric gig was a lifesaver. But when i-D Magazine offered me a job, I couldn’t help myself. I jumped at the chance to join an institution, to work among legends.
But unfortunately, for the past twelve issues, I’ve done nothing but ask old-guard questions of people with old money, while my colleagues back at the Exoteric are attempting to change the world while going viral. So simply put, I’m not exactly impressed with myself.
“Look, it’s not that we don’t love you, we do,” Tree says. “We think you’re destined for big things at i-D, but I was hoping to put one of our more experienced, top hitters on this. And so I want to be up front with you when I say that we did not submit you as an idea to Taylor’s team. We sent five big names, and they came back with this.”
Tree turns her computer screen toward me and shows me an e-mail from someone named Erica Worden, who I can only assume is Taylor Swift’s assistant.
From: Erica Worden
To: Paine, TreeIt’s Inez Styles or Taylor’s out.
I look back up at Tree, stunned. And to be honest, a little bit star-struck that Taylor Swift wants anything to do with me.
“Do you know Taylor Swift? Is that what’s going on here?” Tree asks me as she turns the computer back toward her side of the desk.
“No,” I say, surprised even to be asked the question. “I’ve seen a few of her movies, but she’s a little before my time.”
“You have no personal connection to her?”
I shake my head. “Definitely not.”
“Aren’t you from Los Angeles?”
“Yeah, but the only way I’d have any connection to Taylor Swift, I suppose, is if my dad worked on one of her films back in the day. He was a still photographer for movie sets. I can ask my mom.”
“Great. Thank you.” Tree looks at me expectantly.
“Did you want me to ask now?”
“Could you?”
I pull out my phone and text my mother: Did dad ever work on any Taylor Swift movies?
I start to see three dots appear, and I look up, only to find that Tree is trying to get a glimpse of my phone. She seems to recognise the invasion and leans back.
My phone dings. My mother texts: Maybe? There were so many it’s hard to keep track. Why?
Long story, I reply, but I’m trying to figure out if I have any connection to Taylor Swift. Think dad would have known her?
Mom answers: Ha! No. Your father never hung out with anybody famous on set. No matter how hard I tried to get him to make us celebrity friends.
I laugh. “It looks like no. No connection to Taylor Swift.”
Tree nods. “Okay, well, then, the other theory is that her people chose someone with less clout so that they could try to control you, and thus, the narrative.”
I feel my phone vibrate again. That reminds me that I wanted to send you a box of your dad’s old work. Some gorgeous stuff. I love having it here, but I think you’d love it more. I’ll send it this week.
“You think they’re praying on the weak,” I say to Tree.
Tree smiles softly. “Sort of.”
“So Taylor’s people look up the masthead, find my name as a lower-level writer, and think they can bully me around. That’s the idea?”
“That’s what I fear.”
“And you’re telling me this because…”
Tree considers her words. “Because I don’t think you can be bullied around. I think they are underestimating you. And I want this cover. I want it to make headlines.”
“What are you doing?” I ask, shifting slightly in my chair.
Tree claps her hands in front of her and rests them on the desk, leaning toward me. “I’m going to ask if you have the guts to go toe-to-toe with Taylor Swift.”
“Yes,” I say finally.
“That’s all. Just yes?”
I want this opportunity. I want to write this story. I’m sick of being the lowest one on the totem pole. And I need a win goddammit. “Fuck yes?”
Tree nods, considering. “Better, but I’m still not convinced.”
I’m thirty-five years old. I’ve been a writer for more than a decade. I want a book deal one day. I want to pick my stories. I want to eventually be the name people scramble to get to when someone like Taylor Swift calls. And I’m being underused here at i-D. If I’m going to get where I want to go, something has to let up. Someone has to get out of my way. And it needs to happen quickly, because this goddamn career is all I have anymore. If I want things to change, I have to change how I do things. And probably drastically.
“Taylor wants me,” I say. “You want Taylor. It doesn’t sound like I need to convince you, Tree. It sounds like you need to convince me.”
Tree is dead quiet, staring right at me over her steepled fingers. I was aiming for formidable. I might have overshot.
I feel the same way I did when I tried weight training and started with the forty-pound wights. Too much too soon makes it obvious you don’t know what you’re doing.
It takes everything I have not to take it back, not to apologize profusely. My mother raised me to be polite, to be demure. I have to long operated under the idea that civility is subservience. But it hasn’t gotten me very far, that type of kindness. The world respects people they think should be running it. I’ve never understood that, but I’m done fighting for it. I’m here to be Tree one day, maybe bigger than Tree. To do big, important work that I am proud of. To leave a mark. And I’m nowhere near doing that yet.
The silence is so long that I think I might crack, the tension building with every second that goes by. But Tree cracks first.
“Okay,” she says, and puts out her hand as she stands up
Shock and searing pride run through me as I extend my own. I make sure my handshake is strong; Tree’s is a vise.
“Ace this, Inez. For us, and yourself please.”
“I will.”
We break away from each other as I walk toward her door. “She might have read your physician-assisted suicide piece for the Exoteric”. Tree says just as I leave the room.
“What?”
“It was stunning. Maybe that’s why she wants you. It’s how we found you. It’s a great story. Not just because pf the hits it got but because of you, because it’s beautiful work.”
It was one of the first truly meaningful stories I wrote of my own volition. I pitched it after I was assigned a piece on the rise in popularity of microgreens. Especially on the Brooklyn restaurant scene. I had gone to the Park Slope market to interview a local farmer, who spoke about his sister battling brain cancer. He had joined a physician-assisted suicide support group – healthy eating wasn’t going to fix her life, so they fought to ensure she wouldn’t suffer longer than she had to.
I knew then that I wanted, very deeply, to give a voice to the people of that support group.
I went back to the Exoteric and pitched the story. I thought I’d be turned down, given my recent slate of articles about celebrity couple think pieces. But to my surprise, I was greeted with a green light.
I worked tirelessly on it, attending meetings in church basements, interviewing the members, writing and rewriting, until I felt confident that the piece represented the full complexity – both the mercy and the moral code – of helping to end the lives of suffering people.
It is the story I am proudest of. I have, more than once, gone home and read that piece again reminding myself what I’m capable of, reminding myself of the satisfaction I take in sharing the trust, no matter how difficult it may be to swallow. And especially because of the cause.
“Thank you,” I tell Tree now.
“I’m just saying that you’re talented. It might be that.”
“It’s probably not, though.”
“No,” Tree admits. “It’s probably not. But write this story well, whatever it is, and then the next time it will be.”