Inside 24 hours of Taylor Swift’s shock look at a Kansas Metropolis soccer recreation in September, Ashlee Hartley and her husband, Charlie Tighe, started gathering supplies for his or her Halloween costumes.
A crimson jacket. A blond wig. A bottle of blue Gatorade.
Ms. Hartley, 31, and Mr. Tighe, 35, who dwell in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., hand-painted a white jacket and denims to resemble the denim set worn by Travis Kelce, a decent finish for the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs who’s rumored to be courting Ms. Swift.
Ms. Hartley expects Halloween events to be filled with doppelgängers of the couple. “I feel it could be so hilarious to see 10 Taylor Swifts and 10 Travis Kelces in a room,” she stated.
On the peak of Barbiemania this summer time, it appeared that Barbie and Ken could be the dominant {couples}’ costume of Halloween. This week, SAG-AFTRA discouraged its members from dressing up as characters from main film studios in solidarity with the persevering with actors’ strike.
And now an October shock might have arrived within the type of Ms. Swift and Mr. Kelce. Social media is dotted with {couples} posing in crimson No. 87 jerseys and sequined leotards greater than per week earlier than Halloween.
“Thanks, Travis and Taylor, for giving boring straight white {couples} a 2nd Halloween costume,” Lucas Johnson wrote on X, previously Twitter. (Ms. Hartley stated she thinks any couple might pull off the look.)
Small on-line retailers say that requests for the costumes — with supply by Oct. 31 — are surging.
“I’m up till 3 or 4 within the morning each night time, customizing bodysuits,” stated Angela George, 40, who lives in Portland, Ore., and sells clothes on Etsy. Already this month, she stated, she has bought greater than 300 items impressed by Ms. Swift, a number of to clients who stated they meant to put on them for {couples}’ Halloween costume contests.
Enthusiasm isn’t at all times so sturdy for {couples}’ costumes, which an article in The New York Every day Information as soon as proclaimed “the worst a part of Halloween.”
However Ms. Swift and Mr. Kelce have broad enchantment, and handy timing, working of their favor. The pairing represents a second of alignment between two of the nation’s “largest media leisure entities,” Nora Princiotti, a soccer author for The Ringer, informed The New York Instances in an article earlier in October.
Many Swifties have leftover apparel from dressing as much as see the Eras Tour or its current live performance movie, Ms. Hartley stated. And reddish soccer jerseys usually are not precisely onerous to return by. “It attracts sports activities folks, it attracts non-sports folks, it attracts Taylor Swift followers,” Ms. Hartley stated.
Even Mr. Kelce has discovered the N.F.L.’s prime-time protection of the couple to be just a little bit overkill. However the pair’s publicity was a plus for Richelle Terry, 31, an elementary faculty trainer in Houston who was in search of a recognizable costume.
Every year she and her husband costume up as whichever movie star couple “is the taking place hashtag at that second,” she stated. Final 12 months her husband, Chase Terry, 37, shaved his head to be the Travis Barker to her Kourtney Kardashian. This 12 months, he grew a mustache to evoke a distinct Travis.
Halloween costumes have advanced from a typical inventory of characters (witches, ghosts) to seems to be that replicate the zeitgeist. Costumes based mostly on TV exhibits, comedian books and films took off within the second half of the twentieth century, thanks partially to costume firms that licensed characters like Spider-Man and Snow White.
Some customers now need costumes that make references to social media traits from the weeks main as much as Halloween. And since such seems to be are much less more likely to be obtainable at massive retailers like Spirit Halloween and Celebration Metropolis, some smaller sellers have sensed a possibility.
Stormy Kelly, 33, who lives in Miami, sells made-to-order costumes based mostly on celebrities like Ms. Swift and Kylie Jenner by means of TikTok and Instagram. “I can see a paparazzi picture and have the pattern made by the following morning,” she stated. Her most intricate costumes can value as much as $2,000, however most promote for $200 to $300.
About half of her gross sales for the reason that Eras Tour started in March have been impressed by Taylor Swift. “I’ve ditched the $50 bikinis I used to promote as a result of these initiatives are a lot extra worthwhile,” she stated.
When Kayla Highley, 29, who lives in Fishers, Ind., added a crimson jersey that claims “Taylor’s Boyfriend” on the again to her Etsy store in September, it shortly grew to become her top-selling merchandise. She stated she had gotten about 15 inquiries prior to now week asking if orders may very well be delivered earlier than Halloween.
Ms. Swift and Mr. Kelce have additionally made appearances in Halloween décor. In a single setup that was broadly shared on TikTok, a skeleton carrying a Kelce jersey proposes to a skeleton in a blond wig. The scene takes place within the entrance yard of a home, the place the skeletons are surrounded by gravestones with the names of Ms. Swift’s exes.
