Taylor Swift’s ‘87’ Beanie Has a Sweet Backstory—And a Massive Waitlist

In the early days of Taylor Swift’s career, the star was known to exchange handmade gifts with her fans. She sent out presents; they presented her with shirts. Nowadays it’s more common to exchange homemade friendship bracelets with other fans at her concerts, as reaching the singer herself is, for security reasons, pretty impossible. But one lucky Kansas City–based swiftie got to crochet a hat for Taylor that ended up on Swift’s head, and the story of how it got there is just so sweet.

In case you’re not keeping up, Swift has been going to her boyfriend Travis Kelce’s football games on a pretty regular basis this year, and since anything she wears will immediately sell out, her team bought up a bunch of vintage Chiefs merch so she can have her own style instead of looking like every other person in the stadium. Her haul came via Westside Storey, a vintage store in KC that has a ton of Chiefs stuff. Their social media manager, Kat, AKA @kuttheknit, has her own side hustle making crochet clothing and accessories, and when she started to suspect that the store’s latest package was heading toward T.Swift, she decided to throw in a special gift, as she explained on TikTok:

The most important thing here, obviously, is that Kat’s cat was keeping her company the entire time. Swift herself is a mom to three felines, so it’s not only appropriate but kind of perfect that there are probably cat hairs embedded in the beanie.

Kat explained that she stitched “87” (Kelce’s number) on the hat because, though Swift is associated with the numbers 13 (her birth date) and 89 (her birth year), she didn’t want to accidentally start some rumor that Swift was there to see Nazeeh Johnson or Matt Bushman, who wear numbers 13 and 89 for their team, respectively.

Obviously, Swift liked the beanie and probably appreciated having a one-of-a-kind item to keep her warm in New England. If you want one of your own, bookmark this Depop page for when orders open up again. Kat is still catching up on orders, but she can customize the number and is selling them for the reasonable price of $30. Cat not included.