The Kansas City Chiefs star wore a “1989” KidSuper jacket into Arrowhead Stadium, where he was later seen leaving with the pop star after the game last night. But what does it all mean?!
“In your life, you’ll do things greater than dating the boy on the football team,” Taylor Swift sang exactly 12 years ago last night, during a stop on her Speak Now tour at Kansas City’s Arrowhead Stadium. (That lyric is from “Fifteen,” which was her first encore song that night back in 2011.) On Sunday, the pop superstar returned to the stadium to cheer on her maybe-possibly-rumored new boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, whose blue-patterned pregame outfit seemingly nodded at Swift’s album 1989. Swift, of course, is an all-time pro at self-mythologizing; for her fans, this was simply too many coincidences to bear.
Donna Kelce (mother of Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce), left, and Taylor Swift cheer from a suite as the Chiefs play the Chicago Bears at Arrowhead Stadium on September 24 Cooper Neill/Getty Images
Kelce headed into the stadium last night sporting a splashy ensemble, albeit one that felt pretty standard to the “tunnel fits” model that’s been adopted across professional sports: a matching denim jacket and pants — bearing an all-over print of artful female figures in watercolor-y sky blue— from the Brooklyn-based label KidSuper, along with a simple pair of white Chuck Taylors. He wore this same outfit after the game when he left Arrowhead with Swift, who, for her part, wore a Chiefs windbreaker and matching red lipstick and spent the game cheering in a VIP box with Kelce’s mom Donna. (Lest we forget, Donna Kelce is a NFL mom twice over; her eldest son, Jason Kelce, is a centre for the Philadelphia Eagles, which is coincidentally Pennsylvania native Swift’s hometown team.)
Swift fans — as they are wont to do — quickly began unpacking the possible meaning behind Kelce’s KidSuper outfit. As they discovered online, the jacket and pants were even called the “1989 Bedroom Painting” print, per the brand’s website. (Fans will also tell you that sky blue, per the album artwork of both the original 1989 EP and Swift’s upcoming Taylor’s Version remake, is color of the 1989 “era.”) The product names, as it turned out, were a bit of a gag on KidSuper’s part: Just hours prior, the products were simply listed as the “Bedroom Painting” set, but the brand updated the titles with the “1989” qualifier after Swift was spotted at the game.
“Look at the name change haha,” KidSuper designer Colm Dillane tweeted on Sunday evening, after he referred to the outfit as a custom “taylored” set. (Dillane is a familiar figure in the streetwear world; in January, he debuted a guest collection for Louis Vuitton Men’s, where he was once rumored to be a contender to succeed Virgil Abloh before the role went to Pharrell Williams.) Later on, the designer shared sports personality Joe Pompliano’s post about the brand changing the name “when they found out Taylor Swift was at the game. No one knew the original name & they got millions of impressions because people thought Travis planned it.”
Photographs: Getty Images, KidSuper; Collage: Gabe Conte
In the replies, the designer said the move transpired in the KidSuper group chat “where we all talk about funny stuff. We’re big fans of Kelce and everyone was talking about him and Taylor.” That’s when the team decided to update the product info on the website. Apparently, the brand saw a Google Search spike and “decent sales conversions” in the aftermath. As of Tuesday morning, the $295 jacket is already sold out in a couple sizes.
As far as how Swift actually ended up at the Chiefs-Bears game in Kansas City last night, it turns out Kelce invited her: “I threw the ball in her court and told her, ‘I’ve seen you rock the stage in Arrowhead. You might have to come see me rock the stage in Arrowhead and see which one’s a little more lit,’” he recently said on ESPN’s Pat McAfee Show. To little surprise, anywhere Swift shows up these days becomes immediately lit by proxy.
