ONTD

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Taylor Swift loves dresses. She's loved them since she was a teenager, when she tore out a picture of Gwyneth Paltrow's pink Ralph Lauren Oscar gown from a magazine and walked around the stores at a local mall asking if they had anything like it. "I was 15 and going to prom for the first time, and I saw that picture of Gwyneth in the pink gown," she recalls. "I went all over the mall and showed it to all the store owners and said, 'Do you have anything that looks like this?' And no one did." She guffaws."So there's that. That's a sad story for you."

So while Taylor failed in her quest to look like the 1999 Oscar winner, when it comes to dresses she is unwavering. "There's just something so feminine about a dress," she says, currently sporting a bathrobe in a Nashville photo studio. "Whether it's a summertime dress that makes me feel carefree, an evening cocktail dress that makes me feel fancy, or a vintage dress that makes me feel like a '50s housewife—which I enjoy feeling like, for some reason—I just really like dresses." How many does she own? "Hundreds. Because I'm in a predicament where I can't wear a dress twice or else it's pointed out in magazines, so"—she starts laughing—"unfortunately I have to shop for dresses all the time."