For the past few weeks, containers spilling over with colorful beads have been scattered across Leanne Feil’s kitchen table. Traces of newly thought up designs and finished friendship bracelets fill her Butler home as she and her daughters prepare for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour.
Feil and her daughters Chloe, 14, and Avery, 10, are in “full on Swiftie mode,” as they continue to make bracelets, adorning them with song names, inside jokes and album titles all connected with the singer. The plan is to trade with other fans during this weekend’s shows at Acrisure Stadium.
Fans for months have been crafting the bracelets, a response to Taylor Swift’s song titled “You’re on Your Own Kid,” where she sings: “Make the friendship bracelets, take the moment and taste it.”
Friendship bracelets aren’t a new idea and may trace their roots to Indigenous tribes in Central and South America. The symbol of friendship was worn to honor the time and energy put into the relationship. Swift fans first honed in on the idea in 2019 after being inspired by a social media post showing the singer wearing 13 friendship bracelets.
The phenomenon has now swept cities across the country as Swift continues on her U.S. leg of the tour. Fans show up to performances with armfuls of bracelets, some wearing the jewelry up to their elbow, giving them the opportunity to meet others at the show they wouldn’t normally interact with.
“I think it’s a way of making this far more than ‘just’ a concert,” Feil said. “I’m so excited to meet other fans and exchange bracelets as the most unique souvenirs. Knowing my girls and I are creating memories that we will hold on to for a lifetime gives me all of the feels.”
In Pittsburgh, the pastime has already connected many people as they prepare for the concerts on Friday and Saturday.
“Sharing/trading of the bracelets is a way of saying, ‘Hey You! Hi! I’m in this too!,’” Lisa Dyer Stelitano of Pittsburgh said in a message. “‘I’ll take a little piece of me and give it to you and know that I see you, and we shared this moment together.’”
Nikki Schneider of Ross for months has been making bracelets with her daughters Molly, 11, and Margot, 8. They plan to trade if they have one representing somebody’s favorite song or if they just see one from somebody else that they like.
“I just thought it’d be a really cool idea to have this cool experience in the stadium with so many people and just trade a simple little bracelet,” Molly said. She added that she plans to wear a T-shirt from Swift’s “1989” tour, which she attended when she was 3.
Ms. Schneider is excited to show her daughters “how big community can be.”
“It means a lot to me to go to this concert,” Margot said. “There’s going to be a lot of people and the bracelet trading is really cool.”
Others, like Katie Fennell of North Huntingdon, have had friendship bracelets stashed away for years. Fennell, alongside her friends, originally made bracelets for “Lover Fest.” But the 2019 concert was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now, Fennell and her friends are “making as many as we can,” she said.
“We're in our late 20s and 30s and it's not often we have an excuse to spend an evening drinking wine, listening to Taylor Swift, and picking out beads with cats on them,” she said in a message. “It has been a nice way to spend time together and relax while getting excited for the concert.”
Lauren Morgan is flying in from Texas to attend the show with friends traveling from Arizona, Arkansas, Texas and Virginia, as well as from across the East Coast.
“The most important part of attending this show is the people I will be attending with,” Morgan said. “Due to the Ticketmaster debacle, we are not all sitting together, but we are spending the weekend together in the city.”
Morgan attended Swift’s show in Arlington, Texas with only a few bracelets.
“I was blown away by the positive interactions happening between fans who were trading,” she said in an email. “There were people of all ages, sizes, backgrounds, and abilities building each other up. It was BEAUTIFUL.”
While Jennifer Erdely didn’t win in the great Ticketmaster war, she still plans to drive up from Morgantown, West Virginia to experience trading bracelets in the Acrisure parking lot. She wants to have “fellowship with others that share my love of all things Taylor.” Erdely, who used to live in Belle Vernon, is bringing her husband Michael Erdely and 23-year-old son Cody Curtis.
For others, the idea of friendship bracelets has already connected them.
Maria Broniarz of Morningside and Deanna Bustilloz Davis of West Virginia are part of a group of six women who met through a Facebook group when the tour was announced.
Now, they try to video chat nightly to talk about their days and to make bracelets.
“Finding this group has been absolutely amazing,” Davis said. “I joined just because I didn’t have other people in my life to talk to about the upcoming concert, and I found a group of my best friends. I talk to them literally every day. It doesn’t matter that we live in separate places, I’ve become incredibly close to them so quickly.”
While some members of the group have met in-person, this weekend will be the first time they are all together.
Now, they are making bracelets with personal touches for each other, which they will exchange during the show.
“I never feel awkward or uncomfortable just saying something that is on my mind because I know they will address it in the most supportive non-judgmental way,” Broniarz said. “That is truly something that nobody predicted and I don’t think that even Taylor herself could have predicted that she was going to bring people that close to each other.”
First Published: June 15, 2023, 9:30 a.m.
Updated: June 15, 2023, 4:03 p.m.
