Taylor Swift And Karlie Kloss's Friendship Breakup, Explained

Once upon a time, Karlie Kloss and Taylor Swift's friendship was the stuff of envy. Their deep, seemingly unbreakable, bond was established all the way back in 2012 when the Grammy winner saw a photo of the model during her Vogue interview and Swift publicly expressed her admiration for Kloss, as well as her desire to bake with her someday. It wasn't long before the Victoria's Secret Angel took Swift up on her offer on X, formerly known as Twitter, and the two A-listers were inseparable from that moment onward. In the following years, the busy ladies hung out pretty much every chance they got, took road trips together, and even shared a few sweet moments at red carpet events. 

However, cracks started appearing in their relationship once Swift's hurtful feud with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian kicked off proper. The "Cruel Summer" hitmaker's beef with the former couple started brewing in February 2016, after the divisive rapper took credit for the singer's success in his song "Famous." While Swift made it clear that she wasn't pleased with the diss during her Album of the Year acceptance speech at the Grammys, Kardashian later informed GQ that the singer-songwriter was well aware of the controversial lyric prior to the track dropping. Amidst all the drama, Kloss gave a Sunday Times Style interview, in which she stated that Kardashian "was a good person." 

Although the model struggled to find the right words, she managed, "I think she's been a lovely person to me in the past" before adding, "Look, I really don't know her that well." At the time, Kloss didn't quite realize that it would derail her friendship with Swift. 

As Karlie Kloss received intense backlash for speaking positively about Kim Kardashian, she took to X to defend herself, writing, "I will not allow the media to misconstrue my words. Taylor has always had my back and I will always have hers." And she certainly appeared to be on good terms with Taylor Swift when they stepped out in New York with several other friends shortly thereafter. Although the Victoria's Secret Angel followed her annual tradition of penning an Instagram birthday tribute for Swift up until 2017, the A-list duo appeared distant since they stopped gushing about each other publicly and were not even spotted out together much anymore. 

Then, in January 2018, Kloss posted a photo of herself playing basketball with the since-edited caption, "Swish Swish," which was coincidentally the name of the song that Katy Perry released to shade the "Bad Blood" hitmaker amid their own feud. Despite the supposed shade, the model clarified to the New York Times that she had no bad blood with the singer-songwriter, further asserting that they were still close and stayed in touch. 

In fact, Kloss even shared a pic with her celeb BFF after attending her Reputation Stadium Tour in August 2018. While Swift never outwardly addressed her alleged issues with Kloss, she touched on the fleeting nature of friendships in your 20s in her 2018 Elle interview. "Maybe they'll just be your comrades for an important phase, but not forever. It's sad but sometimes when you grow, you outgrow relationships," the Grammy winner reasoned.

Despite Karlie Kloss' insistence that she was still close with Taylor Swift, the pop star was notably nowhere to be found at either of her two secret weddings to Joshua Kushner. An insider disclosed to Elle that Kloss had extended an invite to her friend for both events, but she was "unable to attend due to prior commitments." Granted, realistically, Swift couldn't have made their first wedding in October 2018 because she was on tour in Australia at the time. While we can't know what went down during the second wedding in June 2019, one thing's for certain: Scooter Braun was in attendance. 

The "I Knew You Were Trouble" songstress made her feelings about the music mogul public the very next month with a lengthy Tumblr post calling him out for joining the hate train against her in 2016 and buying the master recordings for her first six albums out from under her. Adding more fuel to the fire, notorious blogger Perez Hilton shared a YouTube video claiming that a source had confirmed that their feud started because: "Karlie was telling things about her and her career to Scooter." Two of Swift's friends, Claire Winter and Ashley Avignone, reportedly liked Hilton's video when it was reposted on X. 

Swift seemingly addressed her falling out with Kloss in her 2020 song "It's Time To Go," with the lyrics, "When the words of a sister come back in whispers / That prove she was not / In fact what she seemed, not a twin from your dreams / She's a crook who was caught."