by For all the column inches, airwaves and social media outcry dedicated to Taylor Swift, the woman herself remains a blank space.
She is music’s biggest star, a 34-year-old self-made billionaire, currently on the European leg of a stadium tour that has broken more records than a rogue elephant in HMV.
However, what we know about her inner life is largely a projection.
No one could blame the woman who asked for her latest album Tortured Poets Department for using a stiletto when a sledgehammer was available.
She enjoys rose glasses with friends, small walks in the countryside, shopping for antiques.
With all this in mind, it is surprising that Swift did not discover the Cotswolds earlier. As her almighty caravan prepares to roll into the UK, the singer has reportedly rented a £3m house right in the heart of Chipping Norton, where she can be alone with her American football player boyfriend, Travis Kelce.
If true, the move makes perfect sense: the Oxfordshire town is Britain’s closest thing to Marie Antoinette’s celebrity village, where you can enjoy a sanitized version of the English countryside in less than 90 minutes with a Range Rover from home.
As an Anglophile as Swift is, however, she may still need a helping hand to make the most of her new digs. Although seemingly tranquil, the Cotswolds is a hotbed of vipers, old and new, of class, status and money, which will take all of Swift’s diplomatic skills to negotiate.
The fashion
Where the Cotswolds used to be all moth-eaten soups and cartridge bags, in recent years there has been a significant injection of glamour. There are three broad groups: Old Cotswold Types, New Cotswold Types and Even Newer Cotswold Types.
They head down the M4 covered in prominent labels: Gucci hats and logo socks for walking the dog, Marfa Stance puffer coats when it’s chilly, and Phoebe Philo dresses for those approachable lunches. Swift’s previous sounds and personal style suggest that she will place herself in the middle of this spectrum.
She could do worse than modeling herself on Alexa Chung, sometime Cotswold-dweller and the original leggy millennial. Think wellies, shorts and Barbour. Of course, no brand is a simple brand anymore: they cover together like ducks in frost. It will be Ganni x Barbour, Stella McCartney x Hunter. Can we clearly rule out seeing Tay-Tay in Schoffel’s brilliance? We can’t.
The great lords
A conker doesn’t fall from a branch in these parts without Lord and Lady Bamford knowing about it, let alone one of the most famous people in the world moving in. Thanks to his oversight of the family business, JCB, Anthony Bamford was one of Britain’s richest men. But it was his wife, the wonderful Lady B – simply called Carole – who inspired the transformation of the area into the Shangri-La lifestyle.
Kingham’s shop-restaurant-spa, Daylesford, draws Teslas, Porsches and Range Rovers like buffalo to a watering hole. Inside, visitors feast on hedgehog-sized sausage rolls and buy incredibly expensive chickens to roast in their Agas. It was to a cottage owned by Bamford that Boris Johnson fled with his young family when he quit Partygate. We may never know the details, but it would be surprising if Swift’s relocation didn’t have their fragrant handprints somewhere.
The famous people
The ‘Chipping Norton set’ will forever be associated with David Cameron’s government in 2010. Cameron has always been ambitious, but now he has achieved a title beyond even his wildest dreams: not just MP for Witney, not just Prime Minister -Minister, but Lord Cameron of it. Norton clip. If Swift wants to respect her, she’d do well to track him down. If not the big man, the singer may have to satisfy herself with other local talent: Rebekah Brooks, Matthew Freud, the Beckhams, Jamie Dornan and his wife Amelia.
If she wants musical company, there’s Ellie Gouldling, Max Richter and Blur bassist Alex James, who also makes “Britpop” cheese and sparkling wine. If that’s not enough local produce, Swift could visit local farmer Jeremy Clarkson. If he fell out with Kelce, perhaps Swift could find Clarkson’s distinguished assistant, Kaleb Cooper, a blond Englishman in the mold of Swift’s former actor, Joe Alwyn.
Clubs
Did you think the countryside was for everyone? Think again. The area around Chipping Norton has become Pall Mall in wellies, thick with private members’ clubs. Soho Farmhouse, Nick Jones’ ersatz farmhouse hotel in Great Tew, was the first, allowing Londoners to drive two hours into the countryside to wait an hour for a hamburger. Meghan Markle did her hen there. It recently faced new competition in the form of Estelle Manor, ten miles south, the country resort of Maison Estelle, Mayfair’s private members’ club.
Then there’s The Club by Bamford, Carole Bamford’s health club, where members pay £3,500 a year (plus membership fee) for access to a swanky gym. In the video for her recent single ‘Fortnight’, Swift is seen playing pickleball: The Club with Bamford has courts for pickleball’s European cousin, Padel. Fortunately there are no fees for the most unbearable club of all: wild swimming.
pubs
We know Swift likes a pub. An Madra Dubh, in Vauxhall, has attracted Swifties since she used the name as the title of a song on her latest album. Her new home is rich in options, but there are factions. Take the pretty village of Charlbury, just outside Chipping Norton: home to The Bell, a 17th-century foodie pub owned by the Bamfords, just meters away from The Bull, a 16th-century foodie pub owned by the Public House Group it, which also stands. The Pelican in Notting Hill.
Is Swift more bell or bull? She will have to pick a side. The Bamfords also own The Fox at Oddington and The Wild Rabbit at Kingham. For a slightly more traditional experience, she could try The Checkers, a medieval pub in the heart of Chipping Norton.
Shopping
If Swift isn’t already associated with crystals, gongs, floaty tea dresses and cashmere shawls, she would do well to develop a taste for them. You can barely move without being offered an expensive piece of quartz. Not interested in cashmere, or at least linen, her local shopping options may be limited.
To stimulate her interest in antiques, she can go to Stow-on-the-World, where mostly old people buy and sell old furniture and trinkets. Naturally for groceries she will hit the Waitrose in Chipping Norton, perhaps mixing it up with a trip to Jesse Smith’s, the Cirencester butcher. Wherever she goes, she’ll have to describe your favorite local small talk: planning permission, celebrities and how the influx of Londoners is clogging up the roads.
Enterprise
If Swift wants to join the Cotswolds series, she needs to start a lifestyle brand, ideally something related to ‘hosting’. What this business may lack in profitability, it more than makes up for in opportunities for smug Instagram posts featuring dinner parties.
Novelist Plum Sykes, who lives in the Cotswolds, has set her latest book among her lambs. “I realized that an interesting new breed of female had emerged: the Country Princess,” Sykes wrote in Tatler. “She was rich, she was glamorous, she was funny, she lived (almost exclusively) in the Cotswolds and she had a lifestyle to die for.”
It’s almost as if she had prior knowledge of Swift’s early arrival. Sykes added: “I heard one rich man say to another: ‘You’re only really rich if you’re losing ten a week funding a business your wife set up where she lays tables all day.'”
Losing money doesn’t come naturally to Taylor Swift; but that’s the price of fitting in.
