Taylor Swift Reinvents Her Style For 'Showgirl' Era

The new album is set for release on Oct. 3.

Neia Balao,

Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift unveiled a new vinyl cover for her 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, which will be released on Oct. 3. Swift teased fans with a cryptic countdown on her website before announcing the limited edition vinyl pressing. The Life of a Showgirl: The Shiny Bug Vinyl Collection will be available for preorder on Swift's website.

The latest vinyl cover comes less than a week after Swift unveiled the track list and original album artwork for her upcoming project. Just as the album’s title suggests, Swift has so far referenced burlesque imagery in her looks, with feathered boas, opulent headpieces and scalloped diamonds fit for the most glamorous burlesque dancer. With help from luxury houses like Area, The Blonds and Rene Caovilla, Swift’s Showgirl era is already underscoring that more is more — and that a true Vegas showgirl always embraces excess.

For the album cover of The Life of a Showgirl, Swift wore an intricate, crystal-embellished minidress with a balconette-style bra and scalloped cutouts from embellishment designer Area. The garment hails from the brand’s spring 2022 collection and is a nod to what Vogue describes as “the glitz of an off-duty Vegas dancer.”

Art Deco-inspired glamour appears to be the theme of Swift’s recently unveiled Showgirl era. Also among her featured album artwork ensembles is a rhinestone-encrusted, deep red one-piece with a corseted bodice and pointed accents along the bust from The Blonds fall-winter 2024 collection. Swift completed the look with matching opera gloves and knee-high boots, along with her signature fishnet tights.

Swift’s voluminous ostrich feather Showgirl look is from The Blond’s fall 2025 collection too. Sarah Chappelle, a Swift-focused fashion critic, notes how the brand’s designers previously said that their muse for this specific collection was a “model, showgirl, it-girl, or an actress” — appropriate descriptors for Swift’s Deco-coded sartorial era. The False God hitmaker paired the extravagant, light pink getup with a crystal headpiece and chandelier wrap-around sandals by Rene Caovilla.

While on Travis and Jason Kelce’s podcast, New Heights, Swift unveiled the inspiration behind The Life of a Showgirl era: She wanted to dramatize the realities of life on the road. Swift visited 21 countries over the course of 21 months during the Eras Tour, which kicked off in March 2023 and concluded in December 2024. Clocking in 149 shows across five continents, it became the highest-grossing tour of all time.

“My day ends with me in a bathtub, not usually in a bedazzled dress. … I wanted to sort of, like, glamorize all the aspects of how the tour felt,” Swift said on the podcast. “The reason I wanted to have an offstage moment as the main album cover is because this album isn’t really about what happened to me onstage. It’s about what I was going through offstage.”