Taylor Swift / Travis Kelce Mashup Costume

After my 2019 Freddie Mercury / Freddy Kreuger mashup costume went viral, I started thinking about other potential combinations for a future split get-up. It felt like enough time had passed at this point to do the concept again, and since I never repeat the same thing twice I told myself that it had to be different enough or I'd just go with something else. Lo and behold, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce became a huge thing at the start of the NFL season and were essentially the hottest story of the year, so the idea of this crossed my mind pretty early on. I knew there would be a ton of couples costumes featuring the pair, but a singular split of them? Probably not a popular concept, especially given the complexity of it and the fact that split costumes aren't really a common thing (...at least not yet!). It came down to this or Barbenheimer for me, and at the end of the day my gut went with #Tayvis so I rolled with this.

My wife and I put a lot of work into this one and we're glad that we did because it was a hit! I tested it out on the Saturday night before Halloween and got some good reactions there, and then on the actual holiday I went to the NYC parade (an annual tradition of mine) where it received a lot of fanfare from both the crowd and other marchers. It's always great to get that sort of reception with these costumes, but many people also told me that it was the best costume they had seen all year and that really made my night. I think I had close to 500 pictures taken of me in total all night and I was also interviewed by two separate content creators who I randomly bumped into along the way, so it was another fun Halloween adventure. I ended the night at the Webster Hell afterparty, where I entered their infamous Costume Contest to a nice cheer from the crowd.

For this project you'll need:

Taylor Swift:

• One of her signature white slogan t-shirts. I actually bought 2 different ones and wore one each night (here and here)
• Short black glitter shorts (actual ones here)
• One sheer set of tights, and one fishnet set of tights (sold together here). These fit my 6'3 frame.
• A black fedora like this one.
• A black platform shoe, similar to this one.
• A wig like this one if you don't have her hair.
• Any portable microphone
• A fake eyelash like this.
• Dark red lipstick
• Blush, Mascara and other makeup for contouring (I got this done at Nordstrom but you can totally DIY it if you know what you're doing).

Travis Kelce:

• A red home jersey of his to contrast Taylor's white t-shirt. The more authentic the better, but you don't need a really expensive Nike one to pull this off.
• A Chiefs helmet (mine here). Couldn't find a good one for cheaper than this.
• Football pants like these.
• A football cleat. Again, the more authentic the better (mine here)
• A tall red athletic sock. This one will do.
• A football receivers' glove. I went with this yellow one since he's worn this color before.
• An actual football (here)
• Arm bands (here). He always wears this.
• A large hand saw like this to cut through the crown of the helmet
• An electric drill like this to cut the bottom grill of the helmet
• Red and white paint to touch up the helmet after cutting
• A small, thin paintbrush
• A chest and/or shoulder protector (optional)
• Fake moustache (optional if you don't have facial hair)

Miscellaneous:

• Black Velcro for the fedora (here) and White Fabric Velcro for the shirt (here)
• Packing Foam like this to cushion the inside of the helmet and fedora
• Painters Tape to mark where any cuts need to be made
• A pair of scissors
• A wire cutter if the fedora has a wired brim (ours did)
• Latex gloves
• Goggles
• A ruler for any measuring that needs to be done
• Beard Trimmer (optional)
• Razor (optional)
• Shaving Cream (optional)

Note: This step should be done by at least 2 people, with one holding the helmet and the other cutting.

The very first thing that I started with on this costume was the helmet, especially given the complexity of the task at hand. I had never cut this sort of object before and I certainly didn't want to have to buy a second one, so I enlisted the help of a handyman who knew exactly what he was doing.

First we put painters tape vertically across the top of the helmet so we could see exactly where to cut. We laid it in a way so that the edge of the tape was the cutting line, but it's really up to you how you want to do this. Just make sure that you have a clear line in sight since a perfect 50/50 cut is really preferable here.

Once the tape was down, we put on latex medical gloves for grip and safety, and then I strategically held the helmet with my hands away from where the cutting would be (this is important!!). With the hand saw in place, he used smooth, firm strokes to cut the crown of the helmet all the way from the front grill down to the bottom back, which was about 80% of the job. It ended up cutting very nicely so that was a big relief!

We couldn't use this saw for the front (white) grill since that part is metal, so we pulled out the big guns and used an electric drill for that part. I held the helmet in a similar manner as the first cut and he slowly made his way through the grill while sparks flew. You can see from the picture that I closed my eyes instead of wearing goggles, but you should probably do the latter just to be safe. Finally, you'll need scissors to cut the mouthpiece at the bottom of the helmet since that material is really soft.

This ended up going a lot better than I thought it would, and the helmet was split nearly perfectly in two.

Note: It's at this point that you'll need to decide whether you are going as Travis on the left side and Taylor on the right, or vice versa. I chose Travis on the left so that the "KEL" of his jersey showed on the back, and the rest of the instructions will assume that direction going forward.

Once the helmet is cut there are a few small details that you'll want to optimize, including:

• Painting the newly exposed rim red
• Painting the grill white, and
• Removing any nicks that you find along either

For the rim, you'll want to find a shade of red that closely resembles that of the Kansas City Chiefs (a standard red color really) and then paint the rim across its entire length. I only needed one coat to cover it but you can add two if you'd like. I then used the same brush to color in any parts of the grill that had peeled (in white), and to top it off, I carefully removed any extra nicks and rough edges along both. You can use an emery board or other smoothing tool for this to really perfect it, but I found that my bare hands could get the job done satisfactorily.

Note: If your fedora has a wired brim like ours did, you will need a wire cutter to cut through it!

With the helmet now cut, the last really tricky part of this costume is cutting the fedora, tucking part of it into the helmet, and attaching the two so that they are wearable as one. It's a bit more art than science here, so make sure you do this one slowly.

Cutting

The first thing that I want to stress here is that this cut should NOT be 50% down the middle like the helmet, because we need part of it to tuck into the helmet and stick to it with Velcro. We want 50% of it to show on Taylor's side of course, and probably another 10-20% of it intact for the other side (hidden). You'll need to use your best judgement on this, and you'll want to ensure that there's enough material on the hat to stick well to the helmet.

As mentioned above, there's a fairly good chance that your fedora will have a wired brim around the circumference of it, and a pair of scissors will be no match for this. A standard wire cutter will take care of it though, so start there and cut through it. After that you'll be able to switch to scissors and make your 60-70% cut on the hat vertically across it (figure 3).

It's important to do a fitting of this before the next step just to make sure your cut is a good one. You can always make additional cuts if needed.

Velcroing

Now that we've got our split fedora, we need to add Velcro to it along where we made the cut. Black Velcro is preferred here since it'll camouflage nicely, so use that if possible. You won't need tape this along 100% of this line since the hat is going to stick out in front of you and behind you, but you will need to tape any of it that is going to touch the helmet. You can always remove Velcro if you have to, so don't worry about adding too much at the onset.

When that's done, you'll need to tape Velcro to the rim of the helmet as well so that the fedora side can stick it. This should go across the entire depth of the helmet where it was cut in Step 1. With the Velcro in place on each of these, you'll want to carefully stick them together and press firmly so that they have a good, clean fit. You may need to adjust this a few times to get the desired look and complete the illusion that you are truly split right down the middle, so don't move on from this step until it really looks clean.

There are 4 items of apparel that we'll need to cut with scissors and the first is Travis' white pants. We need to cut these on the Taylor side (the right side for me) so that her black shorts are the only thing displaying on her leg, which will eventually be on top of her tights.

To do this, take a pair of scissors and cut above the right knee pad (figure 1 above) until that's fully off (figure 2). That's the first part of the job, but our work isn't quite done yet because traditional football pants also have a thigh pad and you're not going to want to keep it. It's easiest to remove this by turning the pants face up (figure 3) and cutting a small slit in it so that you can remove the pad entirely.

You'll want to try on these newly cut pants under the black shorts to make sure that the cut looks good. You can adjust this and cut more off as necessary, but just make sure to leave something on the right side so that the pants stay on when you wear them.

This cut is a little easier than the pants one, but it's just as important since it's very visible and you'll want it to be a perfect 50/50 split. Lay down painters tape vertically across one side of the jersey, using a ruler to help you keep it straight. Once your tape is in a good position, use a regular pair of scissors to slowly cut along it. I stress the word "slowly" here as it's unlikely that you have a spare one of these and buying another will be a pain.

Once the first cut is done, open the jersey up and repeat the same steps for the other side of the jersey. After the second cut, you should be left with the jersey split in two (figure 4), and you can put the other half aside.

Next, we need to cut the side of Taylor's shorts that are Travis' side since we don't want them to show over his football pants. You can either lay the shorts face up or face down to do this, but you should double and maybe triple check that you are cutting whatever side is Travis' (in my case, the right side). In the reference pictures above, the shorts are face down and the backside is facing us.

Warning: Do NOT make a full vertical cut all the way through on these because we want to preserve the entire horizontal elastic band at the top (see Figure 2). This will be way easier to wear and keep on than having to use Velcro.

Carefully cut along the dotted line from Figure 1 - with the line being slightly off center so that you don't cut the seam in the middle. You can see from the picture that the line is 45% from the side instead of 50%. Once you reach the elastic band at the top, turn the scissors 90 degrees and then remove the rest of the rectangle on the dotted line. Again, make sure to leave that elastic band intact because it'll save you some time later.

The last fabric that we need to cut is Taylor's white t-shirt in the front and the back. This is a small cut but a necessary one so that we can tuck the shirt into Travis' side and leave it hanging above the black shorts on Taylor's side (figure 3 above).

We decided to do this slightly off center to show a little more material on Taylor's side - which you can see via the long black vertical line in figures 1 and 2 - but a central cut will probably work here as well. With the shirt laid out 100% flat, make a small vertical cut through both layers that is 5 inches from the base (the red lines in the reference pictures). We initially made a 3 inch cut and then extended it to 4, but after I tried on the shirt and the shorts I realized that it wasn't quite enough, so you'll want to do a similar experiment as well. You can't really go wrong with a 5 inch cut, but you might need slightly more depending on your frame.

Now that we have all of our cuts made, it's time to Velcro Travis' jersey to Taylor's tee! You can either do this while wearing the tee-shirt and then draping the jersey over it to do the taping, or you can do all of it beforehand and then put on the new Franken-shirt as one. The above pictures show method #2, and since that's easier we'll go with that here. It's also worth noting that you'll probably want a second person helping you here to ensure a seamless 50/50 split.

Open the jersey so that it is face up on a flat surface and affix White Velcro along the inside border so that the entire length is covered. We went with nine pieces total at around 4 inches each and covered as much as we could since you really don't want any of this sticking up and spoiling the illusion of the costume. Note that I underlined "White" since Black Velcro could easily show through and that wouldn't be very fun. Once the entire inside rim is Velcroed, carefully place the front of his jersey (the part with the 7) down the exact center line of the white tee and press firmly down so that the Velcro sticks well to the shirt. Flip the shirt over and repeat on the back of the tee, where Kelce's name and #8 appear. The more center that you can get this, the better of course.

Try on the new shirt/jersey combo, and have your helper adjust the taping as needed. In my case, I needed the shoulder area adjusted because too much of Taylor's shirt was showing in my collar area. You're not going to want to adjust this throughout the night, so it's important to get this right at this juncture.

If you have facial hair like I do, then it's time to bust out that trimmer and razor because it's obviously not something that we want to showcase on our Taylor side!

With a mirror to guide you, carefully use a standard beard trimmer to remove all facial hair on the Taylor side of your face (right for me), ensuring a straight line right down the middle to complete the illusion. I spent an extra 10 minutes on the center line under the nose, lip and neck and you'll probably want to go slowly as well. Once you've trimmed everything off, you'll want to use an actual razor and shaving cream and go over everything to get a nice clean look (figure 3) since stubble won't be very flattering or realistic on her.

One thing that I want to point out here is that since these pictures are in front of a mirror, I'm still shaving the right side of my face. You probably figured that out already, but I just want to make that clear so this is consistent with the rest of the steps.

A similar endeavor to Step 9 - we will want to shave any leg and arm hair on Taylor's side since these limbs will be pretty exposed in the costume. I made the fun mistake of not shaving my right arm for the first go-around and then I heard about it all over Reddit, so thankfully I am able to warn all of you and help you avoid the same fateful mistake.

Like we did with the facial hair, you'll want to start with a beard trimmer since this hair will tend to be very long. Using smooth, gentle strokes, go vertically down your leg from top to bottom and gradually remove all of your leg hair, almost like you're mowing a mini lawn if you will. This was a definitive first for me so I went very slowly, and I do want to stress for all the guys out there that you'll want to go really slowly as you get closer to the crotch area.

Once you've removed most of the leg hair with the trimmer, apply a gentle amount of shaving cream to your whole leg and use a razor to get it nice and smooth. Again, this will be a highly exposed area under Taylor's tights, so it has to look as bare as humanly possible.

Repeat the above steps on your right arm so that this looks clean as well. The hair will likely be a lot shorter there so you won't need as much time or shaving cream to get it done, but as I've learned, people will still notice it so don't overlook it!

We've already contrasted the two sides of our face by eliminating the facial hair on one, but now it's time to really accentuate it by putting on Taylor's signature makeup. I'm certainly not an expert on this by any means, but you can see from the reference photo that she likes to wear the following:

• Eyeshadow for a smoky look
• Mascara
• Fake eyelashes
• Bright red lipstick
• Blush, and
• Powder for a lighter, pale look

I had this done at Nordstrom by a professional (shout out to Maria!) because I wanted to mimic this look as much as I possibly could, and she did a great job on it. You can see the stark contrast of the colors from the Taylor and Travis side on me - especially with the base layer tone since Taylor likes to go with a very light shade for that.

To top off the look, Maria colored in my Travis facial hair with a dark brown brush to really make the two sides pop next to each other. This is optional of course, but I definitely appreciated the extra attention to detail.

There are tons of online tutorials for this, but here's one just for reference.

If you don't have Taylor's flowy golden locks and bangs - which I certainly do not - then you'll need to get a hold of a good wig and work with that instead. Fortunately there are plenty of options for this, and the one that I bought on Amazon (here) was pretty good and relatively inexpensive.

Place a wig cap on first (this should come with the wig) and try to fit as much hair under this as you can. I couldn't fit all of mine under it given its very long length, but I fit enough of it under to hide it from view and that's the main objective here. Once the cap is on, fit on the wig so that it is comfortably on your head while also covering the bottom of the cap underneath. At this point, I decided to cut the Travis side of the hair since it really isn't needed, and shoving it all under a helmet was a difficult task for me. You do want to be careful if you're going to do this though, because if you accidentally cut some off of Taylor's side then it's not going to look very good.

Place the helmet/hat combo on your head once the wig is on, and make sure to cut away any extra strands of hair that are showing under the helmet. The less of Taylor's side that we can show on Travis' and vice versa, the better of course.

One thing that I learned pretty quickly with this costume is that even half of a football helmet weighs considerably more than half of a fedora, so it needs to be engineered to account for that. I also learned that there is zero padding inside of a replica football helmet. For both of these reasons, we'll need to pad the inside of the helmet with foam to make it both comfortable and functional, which you'll really appreciate if you're wearing it for multiple hours at a time.

Packing foam works pretty well for this, but any type of squishy foam should work. In a circular motion, roll the foam clockwise around the inside of the helmet until it gets to a diameter that is slightly bigger than your head (so that it snugly fits instead of sitting on top of it). The actual amount that you'll need here is highly dependent on the head size, so make sure to periodically test this to see if you need to add or remove foam. Once you have enough in there, you'll then need to weight the foam circle so that it's mostly on the fedora side and slightly on the helmet side so that it balances appropriately.

This took me a lot of trial and error, so try not to be too hasty with this. It's part art, part science, and maybe even part luck, and it's a very important step.

Now that we've got the bulk of the costume done, we just need to add some bells and whistles to complete the look!

Here's what I went with:

Tights

During my research I discovered that Taylor wears two pairs of tights when she performs - a fishnet on top of a sheer one - so I bought a combo pack that included both. Carefully slip the sheer tights on first before you put on any other part of the costume, making sure that you pull them all the way up above your waist. Then do the same exact thing with the fishnet tights, layering them on top of the sheer ones. I do want to stress here that these things rip very easily, so it's essential to do this slowly. And they're not exactly cheap either, so it's in your best interest to do so.

Platform Shoe

Taylor tends to wear black Christian Louboutin platform shoes, but we certainly don't need to! My wife found this relatively inexpensive ASOS shoe and it worked well for the look. Just make sure to get the right size since you might be covering some major mileage in them.

Football Cleat

Travis tends to wear Nike football cleats when he plays, so that's the preferred look here if you don't mind spending some coin. However, any football cleat will do. I went with white as a primary color and black as a secondary here, but he also likes to wear red and gold cleats too. As with the platform shoe, make sure that you get the right size!

Other Items that you'll want:

• A tall, red athletic sock
• A regulation-sized football
• A football receivers' glove (yellow or white is a common choice for Travis)
• A white arm band for Travis' elbow
• A singers' microphone for Taylor to hold

Optional:

• Shoulder pads to go under Travis' jersey (these will need to be cut in half and might be more trouble than they're worth, hence the reason I skipped them)
• A blue contact lens for Taylor if you have brown eyes like I do
• Sharpie-drawn vertical red and gold stripes down Travis' pant leg.
• A fake moustache for Travis if you don't have any facial hair (split in half, of course)

Your look is now complete! You may want to add some padding or an insole in the cleat so that it matches the height of the platform shoe, as that was my biggest gripe while walking around in these for hours. I also want to note that football pants and Taylor's glitter shorts are both pocket-less, so you may want to have a friend hold your valuables for you if possible. Make sure to bring some extra black Velcro as well just in case your jersey comes off the t-shirt or needs any adjustments throughout the night.

Now go out there and get your #Tayvis on!