Taylor Swift Dropped $1200 on Vintage KC Chiefs Gear

By now, the lore of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s early courtship is embedded deep within the collective Swiftie cranium: The Kansas City Chiefs tight end first caught the pop star’s attention this summer by announcing his intent to give her a friendship bracelet with his phone number on it while attending her Eras Tour. Basically, he was saying, he was a fan who wanted to become something more, and incredibly, he got his wish. Ever since, barely a week has passed that the two haven’t been photographed all over each other.

Now, it’s Swift’s turn to mold herself into a huge public fan of her new boyfriend, and because “Miss Americana” has never done anything in her life half-assed, she’s gone about this project with enormous enthusiasm. Swift has turned up at Chiefs games cheering with a huge smile on her face and sporting her signature red lip, but her outfits have also been crucial to conveying her allegiance to her new beau.

For her first Kelce game ever, the pop star wore a Chiefs jacket sourced from ESPN commentator Erin Andrews’ WEAR line, perhaps a nod to the journalist’s podcast interview this summer in which she encouraged Swift and Kelce to get together long before it actually happened. And at her most recent appearance, the Midnights artist appeared in her strongest game day outfit yet: a long black winter coat and a vintage black and red Chiefs sweatshirt, sourced from the local Kansas City vintage store Westside Storey.

Shortly after photos of Swift’s look hit the internet, Westside Storey posted a TikTok confirming that it was behind the pop star’s look. In the video, which soon went viral, an employee packs five vintage Chiefs sweatshirts, along with a note for Swift, neatly into a box as Swift’s “Karma” plays in the background.

Chris Harrington, the owner of Westside Storey, told The Daily Beast that a few weeks ago, his store got an order for five specific vintage sweatshirts, totaling around $1,200. Through some clever sleuthing, he suspected it might have come from Swift’s camp.

“Mid-October, we got an online order,” Harrington told The Daily Beast. “Any time you get a bigger order like that, you want to do homework and just kind of make sure that everything checks out. So we dug into the addresses and where it was going, and I don’t want to say too much in terms of the detail of the addresses, but they were both tied to Taylor Swift and her camp.”

Harrington’s girlfriend, Kathryn Cacho, had the idea to film and bank the TikTok of them packing up the sweatshirts, just in case the order did indeed end up going to the pop star. They crossed their fingers and waited, and sure enough, Swift was seen wearing one of their oversized crewnecks at the Chiefs game in Kansas City on Dec. 10.

“When the video popped up of her wearing one of the sweatshirts from the order around game time, everything changed,” Harrington said. “Our store went to a level that it’s never been at since then. We’re just kind of riding the wave right now.”

Elaborating on the effect Swift has had on his business, Harrington said, “Generally we might have some traffic during or after a Chiefs game, especially after they win because people are on a high. But not on that level at all. There might be an average of five to 10 people on our site at a time on one of those normal days. We constantly had around 400 people on our website for around six hours the first night that Taylor wore one of our sweatshirts. We’ve never had online sales like we’ve had since the TikTok, and it’s kind of been nonstop. We’ve even had to get some extra help at the store.”

He’s not the only one—it seems Taylormania has swept through Kansas City and inspired other local shops to take a swing at winning Swift's business.

“I know from some other local boutiques in Kansas City similar to mine—they put together packages, not even sure where to send them, but they sent them to some address they had for Taylor or Taylor’s camp,” Harrington said. “Other people have been putting together gift bags and different things just in the hopes that she might receive them.”

Plus, Harrington added, Swift isn’t the only member of America’s most famous power couple who’s been doing some vintage shopping lately. Kelce, Harrington said, “went to a boutique called Fetch in the West Bottoms of Kansas City, and that’s where she got her first sweatshirt. He bought her that there.”