A Fashion Taxonomy of Taylor Swift's Engagement Photos

The powerhouse couple announced their impending nuptials on Instagram this afternoon. The caption is pointedly Swiftian, reading: "Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married 🧨" It's the sort of thing only she would write about herself and future husband, positioning each as the schoolteachers of Hollywood. She promotes literacy through prolific fan theories and he encourages athletics through NFL jersey sales.

The photos are quite something, featuring the two of them posed against a backdrop of flowers and greenery. He wore white pants for the staged shoot while she wore a simple striped dress. Classic!

I call it staged only because the location is so obviously a place one takes engagement photos in. I doubt the surprise happened here, or even in the last few days. I'm much more interested in the unassuming nature of the photos themselves, which show off some spectacular image management on the part of Swift and her savvy team of publicity architects. Despite currently promoting her upcoming album The Life of a Showgirl with dozens of alternate covers and limited release vinyls and CDs, the photos have been completely stripped back of any Tinseltown charm. This is not a pop star, this is just another girl in a linen dress.

Generally speaking, one wouldn't expect to find the engagement photos of the world's richest pop star on the gallery of a wedding photographer's website based out of Fresno, California. The couple's names are Steve and Sarah, and they met at Modesto Junior College, where she was studying pharmaceutical sales and he was taking business classes, a prerequisite to running his dad's Chevy dealership. I don't speak to condescend, either. The photos are like the rose Swift so often represents; she presents a beautiful package with hidden thorns that snag at the gauzy ribbon this bouquet's been wrapped up in.

More interesting is how many celebrity engagements we never see, especially for stars of her caliber. Engagement photos are the type of thing the entertainment press expects from the type of people who sell stories to People, not the highest grossing musical juggernaut of the century. She is a woman who is also an entire economy, and here she is, posed against some carefully arranged summer florals. Through that careful curation of the self, she has built an artistic persona that linked hundreds of millions of people together around the world through her music. She is just another girl in a linen dress, like her, and that other girl over there, and the one across the continent, or on the other side of the world.

It is the quintessential modern love fable. They are the average couple scrimping and saving for a Disneyland vacation; they are also one of the country's future most powerful husband and wife duos. It's the American dream refracted through the looking class of contemporary heterosexual banality, splayed across a dizzying diorama of music contracts and NFL sponsorship deals.

Her Instagram post prior features her in a bedazzled headpiece, ensconced by ostrich feathers, promoting yet another alternate album cover. The duality is, I suppose, just what life is like for a showgirl.

Photo via Taylor Swift's Instagram