What to wear to get into the spirit of a Taylor Swift concert when you’re still in the first flush of youth and what to wear when you’re staring down the throat of a bus pass and can remember a Time Before Tay Tay are two very different questions.

I’m in the second camp, in case you’re wondering.

I try to answer both questions by opting for my much-loved Grateful Dead t-shirt and adding a pink scrunchy for my hair. Not sure what the scrunchy says but the t-shirt reflects my vintage. And the Grateful Dead are also much loved by Aaron Dessner who, as any paid-up Swiftie should know, collaborated on her 2020 albums Folklore and Evermore and has appeared with her on the selfsame Eras tour which has now settled down in Edinburgh to thrill the lucky 200,000 who managed to get tickets. Oh, and Dessner’s own group, The National, once made a sprawling Grateful Dead tribute album, and the cult stoner jam band’s most famous line of lyrics – “What a long, strange trip it’s been” – seems oddly appropriate to the career of Taylor Alison Swift of West Reading, Pennsylvania. So there you go.

Taylor Swift at Murrayfield review: Scotland really has never seen anything like it

For Swifties, the concert day costume matters, of course. A lot. Those whose adolescence and teenage years have been sound-tracked by the singer’s hook-laden, confessional pop take it all very seriously. A pink scrunchy alone won’t cut it. To look across the boiling sea of fans assembled in the stadium is to see up close the things that make the cult of fandom what it is.

There’s a no flags or signs rule in the stadium, which is a pity in a way, but the other paraphernalia is all present and correct. The friendships bracelets, which are either swapped with strangers or simply given to them. The clothes hand-emblazoned with meaningful lyrics or slogans. The sequinned skirts, dresses and jackets. And of course the t-shirts, with their slogans.

Taylor Swift performs on stage during her Eras Tour at the Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh. (Image: PA)

But Daddy I Love Him and Karma Is My Boyfriend are firm favourites, I note. One is a song title, the other a line from the song which will close the show, Karma. My favourite t-shirt, though, is one which shows Swift as the Madonna – arms folded just so, eye cast down demurely.

The decoration is more than sartorial, though. One guy’s beard has been dressed (is that the right word?) with glitter, though most people who have gone down that route have applied the stuff more strategically. Did I miss a trick there? I’d say no.

As for the demographic, there are kids and teenagers (lots), and a strong showing too from the Millennials and Gen Z-ers – unsurprising: Swift is nearly 20 years into her recording career – as well as one or two other greybeards to keep me company. Unsurprisingly, they’re all glitter-free.