Taylor Swift on dresses, relationships and breakups

Taylor Swift likes to wear the pants…metaphorically speaking.

The 22-year-old girly girl is rarely caught in any trousers, preferring frilly dresses, but Swift is still totally in control.

“There’s just something so feminine about a dress,” she told Harper’s Bazaar, in their December/January issue. “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.”

But don’t let Swift’s dresses fool you. The pop and country sweetheart is a force to be reckoned with. She is her own manager, and she even takes charge of her finances, handling her $57 million fortune.

"When I'm in management meetings when we're deciding my future, those decisions are left up to me," she told the magazine. "I'm the one who has to go out and fulfill all these obligations, so I should be able to choose which ones I do or not. That's the part of my life where I feel most in control."

So what’s one area where Swift is willing to cede a bit of control? Her love life. Swift explained that she thinks relationships are “the ultimate collaboration.”

“It needs to be equal. If I feel too much like I’m wearing the pants, I start to feel uncomfortable and then we break up.”  

And break up she does. Swift reportedly called it quits with Connor Kennedy last month, and before that she dated teen idols like John Mayer, Joe Jonas and Jake Gyllenhaal. And let’s not forget that brief time when she and Taylor Lautner got together, and the “Taylors” traipsed around town, confusing everyone with their identical names.

To cope with these breakups, the singer turns to her music. She said her songs help her understand the worst parts of her breakups.

“Some combinations of people are toxic, you know? You have to find the right one that isn’t just going to explode into fiery ash and destruction,” she said. “Despite all of that and how unpleasant it is, as a writer you get a lot from it. It’s a crazy justification system. You know that guy you really wish you could erase from your memory? But then the answer is track six, eight, 12, and 13.”