And One More Thing, This Was 100% A Coming Out Post (ON LESBIAN VISIBILITY DAY AFTER A 13 DAY COUNTDOWN

Can we talk about in the OOTW video when her hands are covered in spiked icicles? Anything she touches she will damage, whether it be herself or others. Does this represent when her hands were tied behind her back and she couldn’t defend herself? 

Kaylor : The Eras Tour

First thread I'll import here is this one: Every Kaylor references on The Eras Tour

On Twitter I update this thread from time to time when I find new things, not too sure how it works on Tumblr 😅 But I'll figure it out!

So here's all the Kaylor references I could find while watching the concert, TikTok and by my beautiful moots on Twitter.

Let's start with a Kaylor classic! Daisies:

There is daisies on the necklace she wears during Lover Era.

Daisies on the ceiling during Love Story (Karlie's favourite song)

Daisies on the piano during the surprise songs.

My personal favourite: Karlie's birthday:

During Bad Blood - wich is Track 8 of 1989, there's a 3 light up on the ceiling.

8/3 = Karlie's birthday

The letter K now:

During Invisible String, you can see the letters KK light up in the audience.

This person found out that if you mirror two Ks, it gives a diamond. Just like the stage.

Sadly I screenrecorded it when I saw it and forgot to take note of who did this, so I can't credit...

Now the 2014 VSFS :

In Bad Blood Taylor on the screen wears something odly similar to what Karlie wore during the 2014 VSFS

Notice the floor that look like a chess game? Taylor recreated it during the Mastermind set.

And during the 2014 VSFS Taylor sang style and walked hand in hand with Karlie, well she does the same with one dancer.

More than that, with Karlie she walked exactly 16 steps.

With the dancer, she walks exactly 16 steps.

But she also points at the dance in the exact same way that she pointed at Karie.

The Eye Theory :

There's also A LOT of eye theory references during the show.

During Delicate

During My Tears Ricochet (PS I don't remembre where I took this picture, so if it's one of you, tell me and i'll credit you)

Also some pointed that the dilated pupils made them think of the Best Best Friends staring contest and Karlie's eyes.

During Illicit Affairs

During Fearless

During Mastermind. At some point the diamond look like an eye.

Other Kaylor Flagging:

During the reputation intro, the hands are not Taylor's, but looks a lot like Karlie's.

At the end of Delicate, the stage looks like a giraffe neck as pointed out by Gaylolore on Tiktok.

In Style when she sings "take me home" New York city appears on the screen with the sun moving toward something.

And there's a golden path illuminated in the streets.

The sun also appears on the screen during surprise songs.

The new Lover necklace has butterflies on it. (In the Best Best Friends video, Taylor described Karlie as a Fairy Butterfly, and there's also the ME! mural...)

The Folklore cabin is a replica of the Castro cabin where both Taylor and Karlie stayed at Big Sur.

Source: Kaylortruther on Twitter

The Delicate performance has a lot or ressemblance to this Caroline Herrera commercial Karlie did.

The entirerity of The Last Great American Dinasty with the Karlie look alike and their interactions.

Ok that's about it for the Kaylor references I could find in the tour visual.

I'll probably do a part two for all the Kaylor Koicidences that happened during the tour too. because there's A LOT.

It’s Nice To Have A Friend with dorothea?!?! Oh my goodness

What is happening?!

How can all of this happen in a week?

Ice Spice singing Girls Just Wanna Have Fun while holding a magazine with Karlie on the cover after this happened

Taylor’s friends wearing clothing with a Phoenix right before Karlie walked for Schiaparelli as the Phoenix

.

Travis on stage with his painted red bottom soles

Karlie posting a picture to her IG clearly showing her Louboutin red soles.

Taylor’s dancer basically copying another of Karlie’s IG posts

“ quick touch up”

.

Kam sanders likingSchiaparelli’s Phoenix post of Karlie

What is going on?

Oh and then Griff opened the Eras tour and sang Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

The Mirror Atlas: An Intro to Taylor Swift’s Reflection

I’ve been fascinated by Taylor Swift’s use of mirrors for a long time and the deeper I look, the more prophetic it becomes. Mirrors in her world are never just props. They’re signals. Symbols. Tools of revelation and concealment. A mirror might reflect a self, or fracture it. It might hide a truth in plain sight... or hold someone else entirely.

Now, nearly a decade after Kaylor, I remain ~unashamedly~ convinced that there is still a story being told. Whether it’s past or present, I don’t claim to know. I’m willing to wait, watch, and listen as it all unfolds. One thing is for sure, it's impossible for me to ignore. When I see a compact mirror in Karlie Kloss’s hand at the 2025 Met Gala, I can’t unsee it. The mirror is a portal—and she opened it on camera.

It’s no secret that Reputation was misunderstood when it dropped. What amazes me is that, even now, most of the fandom still doesn’t seem to get it. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe Taylor only ever meant for it to be revealed in hindsight. And maybe that’s why the rerelease is taking so long... When it comes, it’s going to be just as devastating as the first time watching it go over people’s heads again.

As I explore this, it's important to note that I see the mirror theory and eye theory in the same vein. So, if the visible eye on the Reputation album cover really is Karlie’s (and I believe it might be), then what we’re looking at isn’t just a concept album. It’s lore buried so deep, it’s taken years to even begin surfacing. Yeeeears to really start clicking.

This post is the beginning of a larger project, tracing the moments where mirrors appear in Taylor’s visual storytelling. Not as decoration, but as active participants in the mythos. This is about symbols that shimmer with double meaning—about what Taylor tells, and what she leaves unsaid. These are three mirrors that matter.

We begin in the present, with a mirror held by someone who’s never really left the frame.

1. Karlie Kloss, The Compact Mirror, and Met Gala Moments

On May 6th, 2025, Karlie Kloss posted a carousel of “getting ready” images to Instagram following the annual Met Gala. Her look that night? Glamorous, gleaming, and a little too Reputation coded, especially given who's watching. However, the morning after brought the smoking gun.

In one image, Karlie holds a compact mirror. The reflection shows an eye that doesn’t quite look like hers. It appears softer, rounder. There’s a flash of blonde bangs in the frame.

Peculiar, for sure...

A video in the same post, sped up to near-invisibility, shows nothing unusual at first. But slowed down, the reflection seems to catch the shape of someone else entirely. Some say it’s Taylor. Some say it’s just a trick of the light.

But to those of us watching closely, it’s giving the Call It What You Want Miss Americana clip all over again. Five years going strong.

Even the background audio adds weight. The song playing over Karlie’s video is “U Weren’t Here I Really Miss You” by Cult Member and Mia Martina. Released in 2019, the title alone echoes themes of absence and longing. It’s soft and moody and truly feels like a fever dream. If this was a curated moment, the music choice may be the quietest clue of all.

At the same time, Taylor is currently selling a compact mirror on her official site. It’s etched with the lyric, “Are you ever dreaming of me?” from Delicate.

A lyric about vulnerability, desire, and the terrifying risk of being truly seen. The mirror in Karlie’s hand lives in a video viewed thousands of times. Sure, they're not the same object, but they speak the same language. One asks the question. The other hovers near the answer.

Oh, the compact mirror... This wouldn’t be the first time it's made an appearance in their shared visual universe. In 2015’s Bad Blood—the cinematic music video where Karlie played the knife-throwing assassin Knockout—compact mirrors flash a couple of times.

In one shot, a mirror is held by Selena Gomez's character, Arsyn, and reflects Taylor (her character, Catastrophe) mid-battle. Right after, Arsyn blows smoke off the mirror into Catastrophe's face and she falls, shattering the glass wall behind her. In another moment, Gigi Hadid’s character, Slay-Z, holds a compact that functions more like a weapon than a beauty tool. The mirror isn’t for touch-ups. It’s used to see, to target, to surveil.

For my own entertainment, while we're at it and talking about Bad Blood, I wanted to note what I see as Bad Blood callbacks in two of Karlie's Met looks: 2025 and 2016… go figure.

The Met madness is deep within Gaylor lore and it's something that deserves it's own dissertation. For the sake of chronicling, let's turn our eyes to 2019. On the night of the Met Gala themed Camp: Notes on Fashion, Karlie posted a photo holding a compact mirror with the caption: “Looking camp right in the eye.” It was clever and pointed. For most, it was totally misunderstood. For some, it felt like the photo winked.

Camp, in its purest form, is queer—an art of exaggeration, subversion, and coded visibility. The fact that Karlie chose a mirror to make that statement only deepens the meaning. It wasn’t just a nod to the theme. It was a reflection held up to the gaze itself.

When a motif returns like this: same object, same players, years apart... it stops being aesthetic and starts being intentional. The compact mirror isn’t just a prop. It’s a reflection of things unsaid. When Karlie picks it up in 2019 and again in 2025, we’re not just watching a routine beauty shot. We’re seeing something resurface. A deep portal. A time travel. All the love we unraveled and a whisper that says: I'm still here.

2. Reputation – The Disappearing Act

If there’s an era where mirrors stop reflecting and start breaking, it’s Reputation. The visual and lyrical language of this album is all about distortion, erasure, and strategic self-construction. It’s not about being seen—it’s about being watched. And what better symbol to carry that weight than a mirror?

Let’s start with the cover.

EYE THEORY TRUTHERS, RISE.

Tiktok

Replying to @jembroyderies 🫣 #eyetheory #taylorswift #gaylor #kaylor #karliekloss

Replying to @jembroyderies 🫣 #eyetheory #taylorswift #gaylor #kaylor #karliekloss

The Reputation album cover is a grayscale newspaper layout that blankets half of Taylor’s face. Some believe the visible eye belongs to Taylor, and the obscured one? Karlie’s. (It’s me. Hi.) A theory, sure—but the ambiguity holds. The cover itself becomes a mirror. Or maybe a mask. Either way, it’s hiding as much as it reveals.

I need to make my own Eye Theory deep dive (and I will)... but if you're interested now, there are so many lovely Tik Tok creators that are a total wealth of knowledge :)

Digging into the album, the use of mirrors continues. For the sake of this being an intro, let's touch on a relevant music video from this era.

We’ve already seen the compact mirror show up in Bad Blood, where it’s held like a weapon. But in Delicate, the mirror becomes something more slippery—something emotional. In this video, Taylor isn’t fighting anyone. She’s trying to find herself. And the mirrors in the video don’t reflect a consistent identity. They shift. They vanish. They resist.

Let’s break it down.

00:33–00:36 In the opening hallway scene, Taylor walks with her bodyguards through a grand hotel corridor. She catches a glimpse of herself in a passing mirror, and something strange happens: she and the guards stop, walk backward, then charge forward again. It’s as if the sight of her own reflection interrupts the performance. The self in the mirror is the managed one. The one who turns around? That’s the version trying to break free.

00:44–1:02 In the dressing room scene, Taylor stands alone, making wild faces into the mirror. It’s one of the only moments in the Reputation era where she’s truly unguarded, and it’s with her reflection. She isn’t performing for the world. She’s performing for herself. It’s silly, strange, and a little unhinged. It’s honest.

1:03–1:12 But then, the spell breaks. Three women enter the room. Taylor vanishes. And so does her reflection. The moment she’s no longer alone, the mirror erases her. That is not subtle. That is design.

2:34–2:45 Later, in the elevator scene, a woman stands beside Taylor, smiling, applying lipstick, completely unaware of her presence. Taylor is still invisible. She exists outside the reflection, outside the frame, outside the narrative.

To me, Delicate is one of the most emotionally rich videos in Taylor’s entire visual canon. It’s a meditation on freedom—the kind that only comes when no one is watching. The moves she makes in the video are strange, almost feral. And I think that’s the point. She’s showing us how she behaves when the mirror no longer holds her. When she’s unseen and alive.

There are more mirror moments in Reputation that we’ll get to in the Mirror Atlas, but Delicate stands alone in its depth. It isn’t just a pop video. It’s a reflection of what happens when the reflection disappears.

3. mirrorball – Shimmer, Performance, and Emotional Reflection

If Reputation was about erasure, mirrorball is what’s left behind in the spotlight. It’s one of Taylor’s most quietly devastating songs—soft in delivery, but sharp in what it reveals. This time, she isn’t looking into a mirror or breaking one. She’s become the mirror itself.

In the Long Pond Studio Sessions, Taylor describes mirrorball as a song about performing through pain, about the exhausting need to be “everything for everybody.” She compares herself to a disco ball—beautiful because it’s broken, casting fractured reflections for others to enjoy. “If you break it, it’s just made of a million pieces of broken glass.” That’s the metaphor. And it’s not just poetic—it’s literal.

She didn’t perform mirrorball in a mirrored outfit on the Eras Tour, but that detail only makes her earlier choices more significant. In 2018, at the American Music Awards, Taylor stepped out in a full mirrorball dress. A mosaic of tiny mirrored tiles wrapped around her body. She wore it to accept awards for Reputation, the album that she’s still letting us unravel. The look was bold, but intentional. She showed up shining—reflective, beautiful, unreadable.

In 2023, at The 1975’s concert in London, Taylor made a surprise appearance wearing another mirrored mini-dress. It wasn’t just a callback. It was a performance of an identity. She was stepping into a space filled with speculation, projection, and fantasy—and she wore exactly what the crowd would expect. Not because it was her. Because it was what they wanted her to be.

And that’s what makes mirrorball so devastating. The mirror isn’t something she holds. It’s something she becomes. In the crowd’s gaze, in the fandom’s theories, in the industry’s demands—she reflects, refracts, and never quite settles into her own outline. Even her absence is curated. At the 2025 iHeartRadio Awards, Taylor didn’t attend, but sent a performance clip of mirrorball from opening weekend of Eras. She didn’t appear. The mirror did.

Some may believe otherwise, but to me, this isn’t a song about love. It’s about exposure. About what it costs to be adored, interpreted, and seen only in fragments. mirrorball doesn’t reveal who Taylor is. It reflects who we ask her to be.

And maybe that’s the point. I mean, the last thing we’ve heard from her in months was a clip of mirrorball standing in for her at the 2025 iHeartRadio Awards. Now, there's many buzzing fan theories of all sorts stirring around the 2025 AMAs. If she were to break her silence there, it'd be on the same stage where she first wore that Balmain beauty in 2018. it’s hard not to feel like the loop is closing. The timing is too sharp to ignore.

The End of the Intro, The Beginning of an Atlas

So, given this brain dump, I hope it’s clear that my interest lies in the mirror—not just as a visual, but as a motif woven through Taylor’s body of work. What I've started here is just the beginning, but even with only three moments, the pattern starts speaking for itself.

It’s enough to say with confidence: the mirror isn’t just a flourish. It’s a signal. A portal. A language. And once you see it, it’s everywhere.

This post isn’t a thesis. It’s a foundation. A first pass at something deeper, something still unfolding. The Mirror Atlas will grow—moment by moment, frame by frame—as we trace this reflection through Taylor’s universe.

If you’ve noticed a mirror—literal or symbolic, lyric or live—share it. The comments are open. The story is still being written.

And if you ask me, this mirror trail feels less like theory, and more like an invisible string tying Taylor to… her.

the kind of desire that dare not use the door: rob sheffield / taylor swift

does anyone wanna hold hands until we feel a little braver

Illuminating: Style and its obvious clues

Opinions have been varied on who Style is about, obviously many claim it's about Harry Styles because of their relationship, as well as Dianna because of her James Dean photoshoot.

Even though I knew of Karlie's James Dean photoshoot on Dec 2012, I was still on the fence since the lyrics is talking about the cycle of intense love, crashing down, and coming back to the same person. So if they just met, how can this be about her, right?

However, since Taylor's clues have pointed to the timeline being a public narrative, such as:

First introduced by Bevan with Emma Stone in April 27 2008

Karlie on magazine mentions meeting and talking at the Met 2011 and baking dates

Mentioned Karlie unprompted on her 1st US Vogue Cover (does she do that a lot on print?)

released songs from the rep album such as timeless (confirmed single) and ICSY (sonically/lyrically according to critics) under Speak Now vault (screenshot below)

Karlie wearing an Enchanted gem on her bracelet (come on, how many songs do you have and you picked Enchanted?)

I am inclined to believe they have met longer than the public knows.

Clue # 1 - Style was written and recorded by Feb 19, 2014 while Dianna's InStyle magazine was Feb 2014 and Karlie's was Dec 2012. Not definitive but it's a start.

Clue #2 - might be the most obvious one yet and it's in the lyrics

"You got that long hair, slicked back, white T-shirt"

Both had the slicked back hair, only Karlie has worn a white t-shirt.

Clue #3 - "And I got that red lip classic thing that you like"

from Vogue 73 questions - she rarely wears red but sure it's favorite

Clue #4 - Walking to Style during VSFS 2014 as the King and Queen of chess and Taylor recreating this moment every eras tour?

Clue #5

I mean, can't be a coincidence, right?

A few times in between Karlie was allegedly with Leigh or Toni while Taylor we know has had a few flings as well.

Lyric parallels

"So it goes" is such an iconic line for them and I believe that Taylor has purposely made it a title in one of the rep songs for a reason

There are 13 "so it goes" in the song including the title

"'round and 'round" - While the YAIL reference sounds a perfect callback to the 1st VSFS it could also refer to them circling each other, chasing each other like cat and mouse (Paper Rings), being on different sides of Atlantic (Come back, be Here)

and how many times have we heard Karlie with the phrase "never go(es) out of style"? - this year alone she said it twice while being interviewed.

let me know what you think