Why Taylor Swift’s London squad may very well be a center finger to her ex

What do you mean, she’s got enough friends already? For Taylor Swift, 34, there is no such thing, especially when they are of the famous-enough-to-be-mobbed-in-the-street-for-selfies variety.

The singer, whose star-studded and somewhat eclectic celebrity shindigs have become almost as renowned as those self-penned lyrics of love and licentious exes, has partied with everyone who’s anyone in the world of entertainment, from pop VIPs Lana Del Rey and Justin Timberlake, to supermodels Gigi Hadid and Kendall Jenner.

Last week, on our shores for her record-breaking Eras Tour, it was Swift’s Bash: The British version. On a four-day break before resuming her bonanza in Liverpool, she dined at Notting Hill restaurant Casa Cruz with an army of glamorous guests including supermodel Kate Moss, designer Stella McCartney and singer Chrissie Hynde.

For a woman worth an estimated £300million, accustomed to socialising on luxury yachts, in front of millions at the American Superbowl and at her Rhode Island holiday home, the venue was relatively low key – and is just a stone’s throw from a council estate. The restaurant is billed as an ‘extremely nice setting’ but one with ‘unripe’ avocados, according to recent Tripadvisor reviews.

The girl squad could have dined on the Argentinian bistro’s £22 risotto zafferano with bone marrow or a slow cooked lamb shoulder for £48, washed down with a Chilean Pinot Noir for £55 or an £18 El Pinche cocktail, with Quiquiriqui Mezcal, Cointreau and grapefruit juice.

The motive, too, was unclear. Was Swift plugging her friend Stella McCartney’s business on a night off by wearing a £1,150 moulded corset and £1,509 wool coat from the fashion designer’s label? Or was throwing such a headline-worthy dinner a two-fingers up to her former flame Matty Healy, reportedly the subject of much criticism on her latest album The Tortured Poets Department (TTPD), after the 1975 frontman’s model fiancée just posted a picture of her engagement ring on Instagram?

Then again, the dinner raised bigger questions about Swift’s former relationship with British actor Joe Alwyn – because Alwyn’s friend, Andrew Scott, was there too.

It was the Ripley actor, 47, who created a WhatsApp group called Tortured Man Club, after all, with Alwyn and actor Paul Mescal the only other two members. That was in 2022 when Swift was still with Alwyn, and while Scott said the group was named after ‘tortured characters’ the actors were playing, it surely inspired the title of Swift’s new work.

Of course, having split with Alwyn after six years last April for reasons reportedly related to ‘differences in personalities’, she is now dating American football player Travis Kelce. So was her decision to socialise with Scott a middle finger to her ex? A sign that the former couple are on civil terms? Or simply because she’s a fan of Scott’s intensity as an actor and wanted to thank him for inspiring her album title? Certainly you wonder whether Alwyn knew of the invitation beforehand.

Scott, for his part, has wasted no time singing Swift’s praises since the split, telling Variety magazine he had texted the singer to praise her ‘sensational’ album, calling her ‘an extraordinary human’, ‘a force of nature’ and revealing – tactfully, perhaps – that his favourite song on TTPD was The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived, which is believed to be about Healy, rather than Alwyn.

With Scott on the guest list, it is perhaps unsurprising that his friend, co-star and Fleabag creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge, was also invited. 

Waller-Bridge, 38, and Swift reportedly became close in 2019, after they met while both appearing on an episode of American show Saturday Night Live. Swift told Entertainment Weekly that she was ‘really obsessed’ with Waller-Bridge, describing her as ‘unfathomably talented’ with ‘razor sharp instinct’ and ‘killer wit’ in a letter to Time magazine the following year. 

No coincidence, clearly, that Waller-Bridge matched her pal’s style in a £2,065 Stella McCartney camel coat. Can you imagine the WhatsApp group chat?

Gushing tributes appear a hallmark of Swift’s relationship with another guest, Lena Dunham, the American creator of HBO series Girls. Dunham has lived in London since marrying her Peruvian-British husband, musician Luis Felber, in 2021 (Swift was a bridesmaid).

Swift and the writer, 38, became friends after Dunham tweeted in praise of singer’s fourth album Red in 2012, saying that had Swift been famous while she was at college, she would have been the subject of Dunham’s essays, rather than Sylvia Plath. Swift was ‘scared she was being ironic’, but ‘decided to follow her anyway, just in case’, and within five minutes the pair were messaging privately.

While Dunham says she ‘insidiously’ wormed her way into the popstar’s life, Swift more graciously describes her friend as ‘a hug in the form of a person’.

And one person who is surely grateful for their friendship is Cara Delevingne, who was introduced to Dunham by Swift years ago and later appeared in season five of Girls. The model-turned-actor joined them at the Casa Cruz, along with her singer girlfriend of two years Minke (real name Leah Mason).

Swift herself met the British model after performing at a 2013 Victoria’s Secret Fashion show in which Delevingne was walking. That Delevingne is reported to have dated Harry Styles in 2013, shortly after Swift and Styles broke up, appears only to have bonded the pair. They have been spotted in New York and London together, as well as at Swift’s annual – and raucous – Fourth of July party at her £13million Rhode Island pad. 

Delevingne, who is currently appearing in West End show Cabaret, starred in Swift’s Bad Blood video in 2015 and joined her on stage during her 1989 World Tour the same year.

Delevingne left Casa Cruz with Minke and McCartney, whose summer 2024 ad campaign she is currently starring in, and who Swift described in 2019 as ‘a friend for a really long time, and also just a woman I respect so much’.

Swift met McCartney at one of Swift’s London concerts, after which they ‘would go on walks, have cocktails, and talk about life,’ Swift later told Vogue magazine. Swift – the daughter of a stockbroker whose family moved to Nashville as her music career took off – became so fond of the designer she name checked her in her 2019 track London Boy, calling herself a ‘Tennessee Stella McCartney’.

A flattered McCartney – ‘I couldn’t believe that my name is in a Taylor Swift song’ – collaborated with Swift on a clothes line, Stella X Taylor Swift Lookbook, to celebrate the singer’s album Lover in 2019. Swift praised her ‘whimsy and imagination’. For her part, McCartney, 52, gushed: ‘What I love is how we really complement each other in what we generate creatively together.’ (McCartney, incidentally, is also said to be close to Waller-Bridge – they reportedly attended her father’s 2022 Glastonbury gig together.)

Kate Moss, 50, unlike the other guests, is not known to have socialised with Swift before, although clearly she has the credentials – model background, strong fashion sense, musician ex-boyfriend(s) – to be in the singer’s so-called #girlsquad. 

The supermodel’s presence is most likely to the result of her 30-year friendship with McCartney, for whom she modelled at her graduate collection for Central Saint Martins in 1995, and who said earlier this year, ‘we’ve never really left each other’s side’ since.

She put in an appearance at the dinner before dashing across town to her friend Charlotte Tilbury’s house party, where she was spotted mingling with the likes of Sienna Miller, Noel Gallagher and Damien Lewis until the early hours.

Perhaps it was Moss and McCartney who brought Chrissie Hynde, 72, along to Swift’s soiree. The veteran rock star is a close friend of McCartney, recording a song for her Stella Nude perfume advert 14 years ago, and of Moss, too, who took to the stage to perform Karaoke with Hynde at a fundraiser at Ronnie Scott’s jazz club in London in 2016.

Perhaps Swift, who had been due to headline at Glastonbury in 2020 before the event was cancelled due to Covid, and has been accused of snubbing the event ever since, was consulting Hynde on the pros and cons of playing the festival; the veteran singer performed there last year.

Completing the Casta Cruz clan were Este and Danielle Haim, two of the trio of sisters who form the American band Haim, who have supported Taylor Swift on tour and holidayed with her in Hawaii. 

After Swift’s split with Joe Alwyn, it was reportedly the Haim sisters she turned to. The women are so close that Swift has joked, ‘Long story short, I’m the 4th Haim sister now, confirmed.’

As for the rest of the group, none has given their verdict on the big night out yet, but if it was a success, there’s opportunity for a reunion after they’ve all recovered – Taylor Swift is back in Britain this August for yet more earth-shattering concerts.

• Additional reporting by Antonia Lenon