Agent J The Chairman of The Tortured Poets Department with her Muses (Bridget Bones and Sofia Barkgara).
It all started with one simple request, “Girl, you really need to do a Taylor Swift photoshoot.” I had heard that before and thought I would look into doing that next year. But then one day, May 10th to be precise, I was brainstorming our upcoming Summer month's series themes. I was playing with the idea of using different patterns for one of the months but was having difficulties with coming up with clever titles and filling in the Frenchie Fridays. At that exact moment, that same friend sent me a message, “Are you gonna do a Frenchie Eras Tour? (winky face emoji).” I replied, “I’ve been contemplating doing that yes. Haha.” Which was followed by a bunch of GIFs encouraging me to do so. Accepting I was getting nowhere with my current idea session, I set aside my notes and switched gears to Taylor Swift and what we could replicate as there are so many looks and moments to choose from. What was originally planned to be a month-long series, turned into two months and then snowballed into THREE. Thus The Eras Tourist (Bridget’s Version) was put into motion.
Research and Planning:
To start with I had to find any and all information I could online and in books/magazines about Taylor Swift and The Eras Tour. I took meticulous notes both in shorthand and some in great detail. The book Love Stories & Bejeweled Snakes: Era to Era: The Unofficial Taylor Swift Concert Handbook by Sheri L Neilson is not only a fun book it also helped when I felt stumped or was having a creativity block over how to portray a certain era.
To prepare for the next era, I would listen to that specific album on repeat just to truly immerse myself in that particular era. All Taylor’s Versions of course, except for Reputation. We are all still patiently waiting for TV’s Rep to drop.
The girls and I have watched The Eras Tour The Movie over a dozen times. It’s just a remarkable piece of work. And after watching it the first time, I came away more excited than ever for this project. Taylor Swift is a talented powerhouse who has made her art uniquely all hers. So many exhilarating moments and details were crafted to make The Eras Tour like no other. Before putting together our next Era set, I would revisit the same in the movie just to confirm my plans were mapped out correctly and in a somewhat uniform fashion as that of the concert.
Publications
Taylor Swift Music Albums
The Eras Tour Movie
The Eras Tour Movie Merch
Props, Costumes and Staging:
Mics, Guitars & Bracelets:
First of all, Taylor Swift has a wide collection and selection of guitars and microphones. Each one is unique to a specific moment in time and Era. My research for props started there. Thankfully Taylor Swift posted a video introducing and showcasing all her microphones before going on tour. This proved to be very helpful. I found a pack of twelve child-size toy microphones that were absolutely perfect. From there I used a mix of adhesive vinyl paper and decoupage with decorative paper to mimic her mics.
DIY Guitars (left to right): Lover, Fearless 13, Koi Fish Speak Now, Humming Bird Folklore, Taylor's Acoustic, and Ed Sheeran's Acoustic.
I have made several different guitars in the past for photoshoot props, most were made out of cardboard another was made out of a dog toy avocado. But I found a company that makes small wood die-cut musical instruments. I first discovered them when I needed to make a cello for our Wednesday photo shoot (here). My first guitar was much too small in fact it was comical how tiny it was for Bridget. So I set it aside and found the right size, 14” (here). The too-tiny guitar ended up coming in handy when I decided to add a couple of special guests to our acoustic set. It was just the right size for little Sofia who played the part of Ed Sheeran.
What started as only planning to replicate four guitars, ended up being a total of six guitars. Last minute I wanted to add the Humming Bird guitar (pictured fourth from the left) for our Folklore set. Again, I used a mix of adhesive vinyl paper, decoupage with decorative paper along with some contact paper for the wood grain body and other parts such as the necks. For the Taylor curly Hawaiian Red Koa guitar I used custom-printed wrapping paper I found online. And for Ed Sheeran’s acoustic guitar, I used a furniture touch-up marker. The rest of my supplies were a mix of thumbtacks, cardboard, white and black duck tape, caulking rope, metallic elastic cord, construction paper, super glue, rhinestones, and stickers/decals.
Taylor Swift The Eras Tour Friendship Bracelets
Every Swiftie knows the symbolism behind the friendship bracelet and The Eras Tour. It’s an endearing act of making and trading friendship bracelets with other concertgoers. I absolutely love that this brought back the lost act of making and creating bracelets and then the comradery of trading them with complete strangers. So I knew I had to incorporate friendship bracelets to stay as authentic as possible. I thought it would be fun to tease our next Era by sharing images of the microphone or guitar with a friendship bracelet showing which era it was for. I found a pack of Taylor Swift Era Tour themed friendship bracelets, unfortunately, they no longer available. I already had my hands full with other craft projects I had to cut some corners, and therefore decided not to make the bracelets myself. I added The Tortured Poets Department set while we were already in the first month of shooting. I found the TTPD bracelet on Taylor Swift’s website shop, here. The gold chain bracelet was perfectly fitting to match the standout effect from her newly released album which was flawlessly added in The Eras Tour.
Wardrobe and Costumes:
A little behind the scenes in our planning. I was originally only planning to do one costume per Era, but had a change of heart when we arrived at the Speak Now set. I loved the 3D flower long-sleeved champagne-colored dress she wore for the Speak Now era. I already had our purple tulle ballgown but I kept thinking about that other dress. So with only a few days before shoot day, I went against my better judgment and added the cream dress to our Speak Now set. I learned a lot about today’s crafting such as how one can attach rhinestones. Unfortunately, I didn’t learn that until much later, and after I spent hours using my fingernails to place each rhinestone on the dress. I also made, I believe, about 300 3D tulle flowers. and then dolloped hot glue in areas of the petals and hand rolled them to give the appearance of a more 3D effect. If that makes sense?
For the 1989 Era, I wanted to recreate the same multiples of Taylors. I was able to find a couple of colors of the same outfit and we just did the shoot a couple of times with three outfit changes. The tricky part was the boots. About those boots. I used our white pair of infant cowboy boots as a template. Then cut out pieces of different vinyl paper and attach them with regular tape. To replicate her red bottoms, I used bright red adhesive felt paper. The kicker (no pun intended) was that I could only use the boots one era at a time. So for 1989, we had three different colors of boots needed, so I had my different colored pieces already cut out and ready to go, after each set color, pink, yellow, and blue I would quickly make our boots then while BB took a nap.
Originally I only had Sofia scheduled for one set each month. I already knew I wanted to do the 22 Hat giveaway for the Red Era. And Sofia would make the perfect little Swiftie to receive it. To pay homage to the Red Era, I had Sofia wear a red wig. But things changed when we got into the next month, August. I had her in as one of the witchy orb backup dancers in the Evermore Era. But after rewatching the 1989 set, I had to add her into that set as well wearing a houndstooth sweater (we already had) for the song Style. After careful thought, I decided to split the TTPD set. We ended the second month (August) with TTPD in the wedding dress and military-style jacket. And began the final month (September) with the ICDIWABH set. Again, I already had Sofia being featured in the finale but while looking around in my office, I saw my mini top hat and remembered I had a walking dog groom costume, and that it would be perfect for the opening scene. And come on, it was brilliant. So then naturally I thought we have to add the feather fan bit too.
Once again, last minute, I made yet another change and I chose to add special guests to our acoustic set. I felt like we kept setting the bar so high that we needed to just keep going and giving it our all in both creativity and cuteness. Because this was a last-minute decision, I had to pick our guests that I could easily replicate with stuff I already had on hand. Which truth be told, I have a lot of “stuff” to work with. So Sofia played the part of Ed Sheeran for the acoustic guitar set and Sabrina Carpenter for the acoustic piano set.
Now for our big finale which was the Midnights Era, after rewatching that set, I determined we could recreate each song. I had the backdrops already to make it happen and I really didn’t want to have to choose which songs to do. Midnights is one of my favorite albums. So we replicated the entire set list for the Midnights Era. I mean you gotta go out with a bang, Am I right?
A friend of mine gifted me the arrow statue. I am a Sagittarius as is Taylor Swift. I thought using it to display our Eras wardrobes would be perfect. In the first Era, Lover, I didn’t think about adding height to make the one-piece hang nicely. But I quickly caught on when our Fearless dress was much too long and it required height to display.
Other Props and DIYs:
This was such a fun project. It brings me so much joy to make and craft things especially out of found items or otherwise things that are considered to be garbage. I really didn’t have too much to make just a few things here and there. But a couple of examples, for her riser/platform I used a wooden crate I have had and used for several other shoots in different ways. I covered it with different tapestries or materials appropriate to the Era. Not every background, riser cover, or floor was a tapestry or a sequin table cover, I found printed posters from RedBubble.com to be great for that as well. Especially when I wanted to have the same lit candle effect for The Reputation set.
Originally I had planned to make my own grand piano out of cardboard for the Evermore Era, but while researching how to I found some relatively inexpensive child-size pianos online. Unfortunately, I would not be able to get the style I wanted in time for our scheduled shoot day. So I thought I would just for the sake of trying, look on my local FB marketplace for one. And would you believe it, the other style that was much more expensive that I found online and could not justify buying, was on there, FOR SALE, STILL available, and for less than the one I had settled to get but it would have shown up later than I wanted thus causing a delay and throwing our entire rest of the series off track. The private seller was quick to respond and a day later we had the most beautiful mini baby grand piano. I have to say the Evermore piano set just might be my favorite out of the entire three-month series. Everything about it was breathtaking, I was able to capture the mood with dark lighting and Bridget looked so great sitting up at the moss-covered piano. Here are a few of my favorite shots from our Evermore piano shoot.
I had quite a few props I needed to brainstorm. I had random things already on hand while others I had to make. For example, our Folklore house was my kitty’s cat house hideaway with moss rolled on top of the roof. I added a chimney I was going to place an incense cone for the appearance of smoke coming out of it, but completely forgot when I got it all set up. Stuff like that happened a lot. When I start getting BB and Sofia dressed after setup, it’s go time. And occasionally I would realize I had forgotten a detail I had planned when cleaning up. I found a doll house chandelier, which I thought was a working light-up chandelier, but was duped or I just was too excited I misread the item description. To remedy that I put a puck light under it to give the illusion the chandelier was lit. Then for the stairs, I used the girl’s bed steps, removed the cover, and attached oak-colored wood contact paper to them. I added a couple of battery-operated candles in the windows but they weren’t all that visible after everything was said and done.
For the 1989 Era I found a child-size golf club secondhand and wrapped it with neon blue battery-operated light wire trying to recreate the Blank Space scene and the poster of the car was again found on RedBubble.com. This was a bit of trial and error, originally I had bought some glowsticks thinking I could crack them and attach them to the golf club quickly. I reminded myself, that we only get one shot and when it’s go time, IT’S GO TIME so I got the light-up wire instead. I should have got a longer length to really cover more of the club, but I didn’t realize I didn’t have enough until it was too late to get a new one in its place. So we had to make it work.
I had the mini bed frame I used in the TTPD Era shoot. I originally got it for other photo shoots and for my kitty, Evey when not in use. When I saw the newly added TTPD set I knew we needed to incorporate that, since Fortnight is one of my favorite songs on the TTPD album. I had planned to cover it with matte white drafting tape because there was no way I was going to spray paint it just for one set. I got about part way done with only one small side and concluded it looked dreadful so I removed the tape and kept the bed frame that brass gold color for the set. I doubt anyone noticed anyway. It’s funny because I was fashioning two clear acrylic bookends together to act as a table for our mini typewriter to be placed inside of the bedframe when I realized the bed was so small, that only BB would be able to fit on it. So I had to leave the typewriter on the floor on the side. That is a small bank I have had for a couple of decades. It was a must-used prop in my opinion.
BB already had a little sofa, we have used it several times for shoots. I knew it would be perfect for TTPD Act II ICDIWABH set. I covered it with crushed red velvet material I already had.
For our acoustic flower piano, I actually used the box the mini bed came in. I kept it not knowing it was going to be perfect for something later on. That’s the type of person I am. I found that beautiful replicated print on RedBubble.com and attached it to the front, I used contact paper and acrylic markers to make the wood grain top match the front as best as I could and attached the sheet music stand from our baby grand on top. I knew I wanted the just get a full front view so I wasn’t concerned with making piano keys or even covering the sides of the box. Sometimes you have to fake it to make it. ;)
The Midnights Era was our grand finale and it had me making all sorts of fun props. Starting with those ladder clouds. The ladders are birdcage ladders I found on sale at PetCo which I painted using this holographic iridescent blue/purple paint. I spray-dyed the cotton puffs for our lavender-colored clouds. I used an old empty bottle of lavender-scented cleaning spray, so the clouds literally smelled like lavender. We were certainly in that Lavender Haze during our photo shoot. I quickly realized these would not stand up on their own, so to make them stay standing up I attached doll stand bases to each ladder leg with zip ties. And holy smokes it worked! I love the shots we got. I wanted to recreate the Midnight Rain outfit transition and knew exactly how we’d do it. The mini black umbrella, I have had since I was a young child. My Auntie gifted it to me one year and I have held onto it throughout all these years and have used it for so many different things including other photo shoots. Now that adorable Vigilante Sh!t pub-style chair. I originally was looking for a child-size one, but I wasn’t thrilled with my search results or the pricing I was finding on the used market. So once again, I decided to try to make my own. I found a small step stool and then bought some black rubber tubbing, I threaded wire through the tubes to give them strength and structure for our back. I used a lot of electrical tape to wrap the black tubes around the stool’s back legs. I believe it turned out great. The only thing I’d do differently though would be to get the larger size of that stool. BB hardly fits on it. But, my doesn’t she look like she’s dressing for revenge?
Now that this three-month series is completed we will be going back to our monthly series schedule. I will begin to archive this experience. I found a few VIP Eras Tour gift boxes to use as our storage on Poshmark and I bought the TTPD journal from Taylor Swift’s website shop (here) which I will use to transfer all my planning and the notes I took along with a scrapbook style of all our Era Tourist photos. I thought that would be a special keepsake for such a special project. Even though this chapter is closed, due to high requests and demands, I will be putting together The Eras Tourist (Bridget’s Version) 2025 wall calendars. I will start working on those in the next coming weeks, so I can have them ready in time for the Christmas holiday. This will be a very limited run so if you would to get on the list for your own, please send a direct message to Bridget Bones’s Diary FB page. I have quick and easier access to that than the email I have linked with the AgentJ.co website.
To my friend Lynn, thank you! Thank you for inspiring such a fun, engaging, and overall beautiful series. It had me having to come up with so many ideas on how to translate a that into a this. I made more guitars and microphones than I had ever done before. Each one turning out better than the next.
This was absolutely a labor of love and you are the reason. So again, from the bottom of my heart, thank you!