Songfacts®:

• Possibly the raunchiest song Taylor Swift has recorded, this intimate, steamy anthem finds her expressing her lust for an unnamed guy that she is close to:
  
  I don't want you as a best friend
  I only bought this dress so you could take it off
  
  Fans who attended one of Taylor's exclusive secret sessions reported that the Pop Princess' parents were extremely uncomfortable while listening to this track.
• So who is the "best friend" that Taylor is wanting to get intimate with? When Reputation was released, many Swifties were initially convinced it was her pal Ed Sheeran that the songstress had been getting down to business with sexually.
  
  Our secret moments in a crowded room
  They got no idea about me and you
  There is an indentation in the shape of you
  Made your mark on me, a golden tattoo
  
  Taylor appears to be referencing Ed's hit tune "Shape Of You" and the "golden tattoo" could be one of his many inkings. However another lyric likely lets the English singer off the hook.
  
  Flashback, when you met me
  Your buzz cut and my hair bleached
  
  Speaking to Time Out Singapore, Ed said of the song, "I don't think it is [about me]. If you read into it... it's not. She mentions someone with a buzz cut haircut and I've never had a buzz cut."
• Speaking during her iHeart Reputation Album Release Party, Taylor said:
  
  "This song was one of those things where almost every line is something that I came up with like a year before, and then when I was writing the song, I just cherry picked, and I was like, 'Like that, like that, like that, like that.' And I was really proud of the hook of this because it sounds like a pickup line, and yet it is a love song about deep and tender feelings."
• Reputation is the most adult album that Taylor has recorded to date. Not only is this song overtly sexual, but it also references alcohol during a clumsy romantic moment:
  
  I'm spilling wine in the bathtub
  You kiss my face and we're both drunk
  
  Nine of the album's fifteen tracks have references to the general topic of alcohol, and Taylor's spilling of wine in the bath here is a strongly sensual image.
• The song was produced and co-written by Jack Antonoff, the same guy who worked with Lorde on Melodrama. Antonoff collaborated with Swift on six of Reputation's 15 tracks.
• "Dress" plays during a pivotal scene in The Summer I Turned Pretty season 3 finale where the characters Belly and Conrad make love for the first time since high school.
  
  "It's really sexy, it's passionate, and I thought it would be great in that moment," showrunner Jenny Han told People of the use of the track.