Taylor Swift’s success is metered via a set of breathless metrics. Her personal fortune is estimated to be $1.6bn. She’s achieved 12 number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100. She holds records for the most top-40, top-20, and top-10 debuts. The most successful female artist, the pop star has tectonic powers. According to seismologists at London’s UCL, she generated a reading of 0.8 on the Richter scale, the equivalent power of a harmless earthquake, at Wembley while performing on her Eras tour.
Her engagement to American football star Travis Kelce this week elicited another flood of numbers. “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married,” she announced on Tuesday via Instagram. The pictures found the couple captured in an outlandishly abundant garden, surrounded by a billion blooms. They were frozen in the proposal moment, she crouched over Kelce wearing Ralph Lauren and Louis Vuitton; he kneeling, asking for her hand.
That post has been so far liked by 32mn people. Much speculation has followed about the engagement ring. Experts agree that it stars a “somewhere between” eight and 10 carat Old Mine Brilliant cut diamond: a fancy way of saying it’s an antique stone. Set in yellow gold, the ring is estimated to have cost between $500,000 to $1mn. All the better to set off the diamond-encrusted Cartier Santos Demoiselle Quartz watch that flashed upon her wrist.