On the northern bank of the Dutch river IJ is a life-scale reconstruction of Tilda Swinton’s former Chelsea flat. The installation forms part of a self-authored retrospective at the Eye Filmmuseum, which has seen Swinton, quite literally, pacing the corridors of her own life. Though the rooms are gutted, and closets bare, with nothing but the sound of a Tube rumbling underfoot, elsewhere you’ll encounter pieces from the actor’s personal and familial archive, some centuries old, suspended on a system of levers. “I’m very clear that my earliest relationship with fashion was an attachment to my father’s,” she says of the project. “He’d wear these beautiful uniforms with gold braids and buttons and long black trousers with a stripe down the side with patent shoes.” She connects his major-general dress to the clothes she wears as one of Chanel’s longest-standing envoys. “I talk about those clothes as my public uniform. And it does feel like that, because it means one is protected, and one is representing something. That’s what people in uniform are doing: representing something bigger than themselves.”
When we speak, Swinton is seated backstage at Matthieu Blazy’s debut Haute Couture presentation for Chanel, dressed in a low-slung bouclé skirt suit scattered with paillettes, its hem erupting in raffia. “I love it, it’s like someone chewed on it,” she says, as someone with a hair-dryer wafts warm air over her legs. “It’s enchanting here, I have to tell you. And the collection, well, it’s quite something. I think it’s what we’ve all been hoping for.” A close friend of and muse to the late Karl Lagerfeld, Swinton, perhaps more than anyone in today’s audience, has been holding her breath to see whether Blazy could shoulder the weight of the maestro’s legacy. “Three collections in, it’s still distilling,” she says. “But his attitude, his spirit, is clear. There’s something so inviting and so playful about the work, and that’s a reflection on him, all while, it must be said, digging into the patrimony and codes and rendering them without fanfare.” She pauses a while before comparing the two designers: “They’re curious, forward-facing modernists. Karl was a pop artist, but they’re both interested only in looking ahead, and that, of course, is critically, completely, Gabrielle Chanel. She was famously only ever interested in the next.”
But even a cursory glance across the candy-land terrain of magic mushrooms and weeping willows filling the Grand Palais – not to mention the enamelled forest creatures serving as buttons on a black tailleur, or fungi sprouting as heels on cap-toe pumps – points towards a more obvious parallel. “It’s just fun,” Swinton says. “Karl was so much fun, and so is Matthieu, full of joie de vivre. We truly, and I say this fervently, need that now. To be this much fun is cultural work in itself.” It’s a point worth considering: fashion – especially at its most rarefied, in haute couture – is often the first to be asked to justify itself when the world feels as though it’s on fire. “Art should never be seen as a luxury,” Swinton says. “It’s an essential contribution to human society and couture, of course, falls under that. Think of how many people work in the ateliers. Every piece carries with it the labour and spirit of so many hours and eyes and hands. That’s part of what, in Korea, they call ‘intangible cultural property’, and, as such, it’s incredibly valuable. We need art now more than ever. It’s our saving grace. It’s where we can dream, still bring our best selves. You don’t have to own couture to appreciate or understand it.”
Which leaves a more practical question for the millions of us who will likely only ever encounter these clothes from behind a screen – far less be soothed by a hairdryer backstage at Chanel: what is it like to step into that world? “Oh, it’s torture,” Swinton says, tongue very much in cheek. “You’re in Paris for a few days, driving past posters for shows and exhibitions that are closing next week. But it’s a lovely torture, because you know that when you come back, there’ll be something else.” It’s been a long time since she attended more than one show per season, she adds, and she doesn’t miss it. “But I have very fond memories. It’s like a festival, and the lack of sleep is a little bit like having newborn twins.” No doubt her own, Honor and Xavier, look up to their mother’s regalia as she did her father’s. “No, they both look down on me,” she says, with a laugh. “My son’s six foot seven. So let’s wait and see. I was gleaning from my father. Maybe they’ll glean from me.”