Here's your perfect perfume, according to your Taylor Swift era (2024)

Taylor Swift's record-breaking, economy-boosting, stratospheric Eras Tour is doing its final lap in Europe this week. From 15-20 August, she's closing out her return shows in London before heading to North America where she'll wrap up her 21 month-long tour in Canada in November and December. But while much has been made of how to co-ordinate your outfit to your favourite Swiftie era, we started thinking: what would each album smell like if it were a perfume?

Music and scent are both so closely linked to making memories and Taylor's Eras Tour is custom-built to give fans a night to remember. But whether you're heading to see it IRL, catching it on Disney+ or listening to her albums at your own pace, we've rounded up a corresponding scent.

Here's what we think each of Taylor's eras would smell like as a perfume…

1. Lover

While not chronologically the first album, Taylor kicks off her tour with Lover. An album known for its optimism, it signalled the rainbow after the storm that was Reputation. Expect sparkles, pastels and seriously sweet escapism with lyrics from Lover including “can we always be this close forever and ever?” Scent-wise, Kilian's Love Don’t Be Shy is a syrupy gourmand that smells like cream soda, fluffy marshmallows and clouds of candy floss, blended with a glug of sensual vanilla.

2. Fearless

Taylor's second album, Fearless, stomped (Cowboy boot-clad) onto the scene and stole the show in 2008, winning four Grammy's with bops like You Belong With Me and Love Story. In the show, Taylor taps up a custom-made gold and silver fringed mini dress by Roberto Cavalli to shimmy in, so it's only right to call on a Main Character perfume, also by Roberto Cavalli in the form of the eponymous Roberto Cavalli Eau de Parfum. The amber floral fragrance opens with powerful but pretty pink pepper accord, before creamy orange blossom and vanilla come through the base. It's sexy, seductive, confident and comforting all in one hit.

3. Red

For Taylor Swift, Red was about discovery, angst, expression and emerging into her twenties with songs like 22, I Knew You Were Trouble and We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together. Her uniform of high-waisted shorts, preppy brogues, slogan T-shirts, a fedora hat and red lipstick became synonymous with this era, so it tracks to choose a perfume to match. Juliette Has A Gun Lipstick Fever is designed to mimic the scent of a lipstick bullet with raspberry, violet and iris, while patchouli, vanilla and cedarwood bring up the base. It's fruity and feminine, but with some powdery retro charm and nostalgia.

4. Speak Now

Taylor Swift keeps it brief with just one song from her Speak Now album, Enchanted, which follows a fairytale theme of being enchanted by someone after meeting for the first time. The tour sees her wear lilac gowns from Nicole + Felicia, a Zuhair Murad and an Ellie Saab. As for the fragrance, we couldn't not mention Taylor's (now discontinued) collab with Elizabeth Arden in 2011 on a perfume that borrowed its name from Enchanted's lyrics: “Wonderstruck”, and the follow-up “Wonderstruck Enchanted” which launched a year later. Both were sweet florals with notes of freesia, peach and sandalwood, and peony freesia and vanilla respectively. You can still pick them up on re-sell sites like eBay, but for a scent that's still readily available, we'd recommend turning to another of Taylor's rumoured favourites: Viktor & Rolf Flowerbomb, a floral explosion of orchid, jasmine, rose and freesia, that smells young, sweet and fairytale-worthy.

5. Reputation

Things take a dark turn when Reputation hits. A furious, brooding, retaliation of an album, Reputation marks Taylor's return to the public eye with songs like Look What You Made Me Do, after she was trolled into submission following the Kim Kardashian/Kanye West drama. At the time, she was flooded with snake emojis on Twitter, but on the tour she flips the narrative by making the snake a signature image across the section. Underneath the bravado though, there's vulnerability, as alluded to in her song Delicate, so, a Reputation fragrance calls for something strong and powerful with subtle softness. Luckily, Taylor already picked out just the scent. Beady-eyed viewers of the Taylor's Miss Americana documentary on Netflix, may have already clocked Tom Ford's Santal Blush Eau de Parfum among Taylor's beauty products backstage during her Reputation tour back in 2018. Tom Ford are known for making fragrances that pack a punch, and this comes out fighting with a dark, provocative fistful of aromatic and bitter spices, softened from behind with creamy ylang ylang, jasmine and rose, but the dry-down is all about warm, grounding sandalwood and cedar. It's a beautiful, complicated, comforting scent that unravels as it goes.

6. Folkmore (Folklore and Evermore combined)

In the updated tour, Taylor has merged indie sister albums Folklore and Evermore to create Folkmore, a cottagecore tribute to folksongs with storytelling and introspection woven throughout. She tackles emotionally heavy themes, such as divorce in Exile, betrayal in My Tears Ricochet first love and heartbreak in Cardigan and youthful mistakes in Betty. It's a back-to-basics album, stripped back barefoot and baring all, which is why nature is such a strong theme in the woodsy imagery that surrounds it. To scent the soundtrack, Commodity's Moss picks up on the woodland theme with an earthy oakmoss fragrance that's reminiscent of a walk in through the forest floor at dawn. The opening is citrusy, fresh and green (to capture the summer of Folkmore), while the dry-down is warm and woody (to channel Evermore's autumn-winter).

7. 1989

Producing bangers like Shake It Off and Blank Space, 1989 saw Tay move from a country singer to a mega pop star and relocate to New York. It was the era of crop tops, skater skirts, bob haircuts and her famous “squad” of celebrity pals. Technically speaking, on the tour Taylor wears a green or purple fringed two-piece to perform, but we're channelling the airy, blue escapism of her re-released 1989 Taylor's Version album. With it's pastel blue sky and seagulls, it conjure up girl's trips to her Rhode Island holiday house (yep, the one where she has those famous 4th of July parties) and breezy walks along the beach. Dolce & Gabbana's Light Blue captures the mood perfectly. It's a clean, casual, cool-girl scent that taps up soft citrus with notes of Sicilian lemon, apple, bamboo, jasmine, white rose and musk. It works for city girls or a seaside escape.

8. The Tortured Poets Department

The curveball album that no-one was expecting, Taylor had to reconfigure her Eras tour to make room for The Tortured Poets Department, which she released in April 2024. Defined by Taylor as "An anthology of new works that reflect events, opinions and sentiments from a fleeting and fatalistic moment in time— one that was both sensational and sorrowful in equal measure," it deals with heartbreak and “female rage”. Aesthetically, Taylor chose a corseted white Vivienne Westwood gown with a black vintage typeface across the skirt to represent the era. Together with the album artwork and music videos, it brings to mind classic Victorian female writers like Emily and Charlotte Brontë and Emily Dickinson or modernist authors like Virginia Woolf. We're imagining the smell of fresh parchment paper and ink, which is perfectly captured by Diptyque's L'Eau Papier. It's a bibliophile spin on a skin scent with nuzzly musks bringing the base and the pulpy scent of pages on top. It manages to blend just the right amount of lightweight musty nostalgia with the fresh possibility of a blank sheet of paper.

9. Midnights

The last era performed by Taylor is her 2022 album, Midnights, which shared “the stories of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout my life," according to Taylor. It touches on elements of all her different eras and marks a return to the deeply personal rumination that first endeared her to fans. The era is reflective and nostalgic, looking back on her past, so it makes sense that the aesthetic has a charming bygone feel about it. Byredo's Slow Dance taps into this vibe seamlessly with it's contradicting bittersweet notes of aged cognac, mysterious labdanum, powdery violet, sweet geranium, creamy vanilla, herbal patchouli and fiery incense. It's warm, spicy, sweet and boozy, and you can imagine Tay sat in an old retro leather armchair in the witching hours writing the album's songs.

For more from GLAMOUR's Senior Beauty Editor, Elle Turner, follow her on Instagram @elleturneruk

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