The lead music video for Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department” showcases many different historical fashion references from the 1890s to the 1920s.

The video is complete black and white, reminiscent of a 1920s silent film.

The opening shot has Swift wearing makeup heavily-inspired by the 1920s “it-girl” Clara Bow. Bow was considered the greatest sex symbol and icon of the silent film generation. Her eyes were shaded with heavy dark shadows, lips drawn in deep plums or reds in the cupid’s bow shape and pencil-thin drawn on eyebrows.

Swift copies this look, but she changes up Bow’s iconic fluffed out pin-curled hair for a pinned up and waved look similar to the popular comb or marcel waves of the time.

We see Swift enter an office setting next wearing a costume straight out of the 1890s. The silhouette of this time period had a bell-shaped skirt, hourglass figure and large leg-o-mutton or gigot sleeves.

During most of the 1800s, Queen Victoria’s pious nature and disgust of cosmetics had many women avoiding public and obvious use of them. This changed after her death in 1901, and women began to create heavily whitened complexions with rosy cheeks and penciled in eyebrows. The look Swift wears is a more modern interpretation of a natural turn of the century look.

1800s hairstyles move in and out of Hellenistic inspired braids and thick updos. Middle parts were very popular during this period, especially the latter half. The pulled back updo Swift wears is more of a modern take on the updos of the time.

Photo of Taylor Swift. (Contributed/rollingstone.com)

By the 1890s and 1900s, hair would be put into a more bouffant style.

The periods of the 1890s and 1920s both mark shifts in women’s lifestyles with the new woman of the 1890s and the flapper of the 1920s.

Both experienced a newfound freedom in fashion and in politics.

The callback could signal a new freedom in her music.

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