In her latest music video, “Fortnight,” Taylor Swift donned a Victorian-gothic-style outfit that was designed by emerging Milwaukee artist Elena Velez.
The video, which was released Friday, had nearly 18 million views by Saturday night on YouTube and is the No. 1 trending video for music.
The ensemble designed by Velez and worn by Swift makes its appearance at a little more than one minute into the video just before the music artist Post Malone makes an appearance and the two performers start using early 1900s typewriters.
The all-black outfit is actually separates and is not a dress, according to the Taylor Swift fashion blog Taylorswiftstyle.com.
The pieces are from Velez’s Fall 2024 collection, which debuted in February.
Velez told Vogue magazine that her intentions with this collection included bringing a “more multi-dimensional representation of womanhood, good and bad; one that accepts the difficult, complicated, ugly truth of being a woman as part of the beauty that makes us whole…”
The dark and gloomy outfit fits the overall mood of Swift’s new album, “The Tortured Poets Department.”
It is reminiscent of the dresses worn by high-class women of the late 1800s and early 1900s in Europe and the U.S.
The look was popularized by Queen Victoria of England, who wore elegant and elaborate funeral garb in public mourning of her husband Albert, who died in 1861, until her own death in 1901.
Velez posted a picture of Swift wearing the ensemble on her Instagram page, but she has not made public comments about the exposure, yet.
Velez is of Puerto Rican heritage but was raised in Milwaukee by a single mother who was a ship captain on the Great Lakes. Velez told Journal Sentinel reporter Hannah Kirby in March that influenced her artistic identity.
Educated in fashion design in Paris and London with degrees in 2018 and 2020, she was quickly noticed in the fashion world. Velez was the 2022 Council of Fashion Designers of America’s “Emerging Designer of the Year” award winner and the 2022 Vogue Fashion Fund winner.
Velez says on her website that some of her proudest work so far has been with Midwestern makers to help democratize resources and recognition for artists outside of traditional creative capitals.
She is now based in New York.
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