Tilda Swinton

I remember where I was in the room when I first met Tilda Swinton. I was kneeling on the floor of my sitting room. The carpet was pale grey and the only furniture was an old corduroy sofa and a huge 19 th century gold framed mirror over the fireplace. I was looking up at Tilda standing there, and she was like the Statue of Liberty made by Rodin, so lithe and full of energetic force. I had received a message about making outfits for her next film called ‘Female Perversions’ and here we were, talking about how she wanted to look. She explained how the clothes worn by the woman she played in the film needed to be like a psychological portrait in themselves. This corresponded to everything I feel about how clothes can work for a person, to place them in a pool of focus so that they are inexplicably fascinating – but without exposing them; it’s a delicate balance and I wanted to get it right for her. I wanted the suits to be the colour of her skin, so that she had this atmosphere of being naked inside her clothes. Tilda’s skin is endlessly, astonishingly transparent. It seems to show her thoughts as she thinks them. I had the fabric specially dyed: it was a Venetian wool in a palest oyster-coloured taupe with a sheer sheen. I remember how everything made so much sense when we talked about it. Then, seeing how she looked in the film, it was almost a shock that the idea we talked about was so viscerally present, exactly as she had envisaged it. Calls from Tilda come in various forms, sometimes directly, sometimes via her styling co-collaborator Jerry Stafford who is a brilliant visionary and also very funny and good company. Jerry asked me for a suit for a Cannes Film Festival a couple of years ago. Tilda usually steals the show with what she wears and how she wears it, so I was excited. Cannes came and went but my suit seemed to be stuck at the back of the closet. About 6 months later there was a rumour rumble from Jerry saying she might be wearing it soon at the premiere of her film ‘The Eternal Daughter’ directed by Joanna Hogg, there she was, looking like she fell from the sky as David Bowie, immaculately in my pale blue suit with the special silk shirt and soft black tie that I had made for her.