Tilda Swinton’s Surreal Fashion Fantasy

Tim Walker and actress Tilda Swinton created a series of phantasmagorias inspired by artists Salvador Dalí, Giorgio de Chirico, Remedios Varo, Leonora Carrington, and other muses and collaborators of English eccentric, poet, and surrealist collector Edward James.

 
 

Cover of W magazine. Modern Beauty issue. May 2013

 
 

Givenchy by Riccardo Tisci dress; Cornelia James gloves

 
 

Vera Wang Collection dress; Vicki Beamon lips and fingertips; Cornelia James gloves

 
 

Acne Studios gown

 
 

Maison Martin Margiela dress and gloves

 
 

Rick Owens jacket and dress

 
 

Ann Demeulemeester dress; Cornelia James gloves

 
 

Balmain jacket; Max Mara jacket; Swinton’s own Olivier Saillard gloves

 
 

Rochas dress; National Theatre Costume Hire underskirt; Cornelia James gloves; Céline pumps

 
 

Angels the Costumiers cape; Gucci gown; Vicki Beamon mask; Cornelia James gloves

 
 

Azzedine Alaïa top, skirt, and shoes; Emilio Cavallini bodysuit; Alexander McQueen headpiece

 
 

Louis Vuitton dress and shoes; Cornelia James gloves; Emilio Cavallini tights

 
 

Haider Ackermann shirt and trousers

 
 

Mary Katrantzou dress; Cornelia James gloves

 
 

Giorgio Armani blouse, skirt, and pants; Haider Ackermann dress; Ann Demeulemeester top; Cornelia James gloves; Prada gaiters and socks

 
 

Francesco Scognamiglio dress

The Daring Issue

Harper’s Bazaar November 2014 issue. Photo by Alexi Lubomirski

 
 

Giorgio Armani Privé dress; Cartier earrings and bracelet

 
 

Maison Martin Margiela bustier and Donna Karan New York skirt

 
 

Posing alongside The Kiss, a sculpture by Romanian-born sculptor Constantin Brâncuși

 
 

Altuzarra bodysuit and skirt; Cartier earrings

 
 

Balmain bandeau; Philip Treacy hat and Cartier ring

 
 

Versace dress and sandals ; Cartier ring and bracelet

 
 

Schiaparelli Haute Couture dress

 
 

 
 

Actress Anne Hathaway is the November 2014 cover star of Harper’s Bazaar US, posing in an Armani Prive gown on the cover photographed by Alexi Lubomirski. Inside the “Daring” issue, Anne stars in a feature made with creative direction by George Lois where she even wears a heart-shaped bustier with the words “I love you” decorated on top. She says about being daring, “I am getting more daring now—I’ll wear my mom jeans in public that haven’t been tailored ‘just so’ yet, just because they feel good.”

Hathaway tips a daring hat to, number one, Tilda Swinton. “Tilda is it, but she’s so cool about it. She’s so cool, she’d be like, ‘Oh, it’s not daring. I just did it.’ Hmm, Jonathan Demme”—who directed Hathaway to her first Oscar nomination, for Rachel Getting Married—“he’s still my mentor and hero. And Matthew McConaughey is the most daring man I know. He never judged himself along the way, and it’s all come together for him so wholly and deeply. He is totally himself.”

Stars Must Stick Together

Celebrities aren’t usually the ones doing the stalking, but David Bowie re-imagines the role famous people play in other people’s lives in the video accompanying his new single The Stars (Are Out Tonight).

Bowie and Tilda Swinton play a nicely settled middle-aged couple whose comfortable existence is upended when a celebrity pair – Saskia De Brauw and Andrej Pejic – follow them home from the grocery store and take over their space, both physical and emotional. The Norwegian model Iselin Steiro plays the young Bowie. The couples’ roles slowly reverse, calling into question exactly what Swinton and Bowie’s characters mean at the market when they agree, “We have a nice life.” Tilda Swinton being married to David Bowie is also like an alternative album cover for the Psychedelic Furs‘ classic Mirror Moves.

 
 

Mirror Moves (1984)

 
 

 
 

The music video directed by Floria Sigismondi, revisited some of the places the singer used to frequent in Berlin in the Seventies. The Stars (Are Out Tonight) is the second single from Bowie’s twenty-fourth studio album The Next Day (2013).

Lovers Throughout the Centuries

“My main inspiration for this film, which isn’t referred to anywhere, is Mark Twain’s The Diaries of Adam and Eve. I’m a big Mark Twain fan, but that’s maybe my favorite book of his. ”

Jim Jarmusch

 
 

 
 

Only Lovers Left Alive is a 2013 British-German vampire film written and directed by Jim Jarmusch, and starring Tom Hiddleston, Tilda Swinton, Mia Wasikowska, John Hurt, and Jeffrey Wright.

Married for centuries and now living half a world apart, two vampires wake as the sun goes down. The only solace he finds from miserable modernity is Eve. Lovers throughout the centuries, the two would be soul mates – if only they had souls. Adam sits holding a lute, in his cluttered Detroit Victorian , as Eve wakes up in her bedroom in Tangier, surrounded by books. Acting like addicts, blood for them is a drug that provides a wave of euphoria as well as sustenance. They are dependent on local suppliers of the “good stuff”, fearing contamination from blood poisoned by the degradation of the environment. Adam visits a local blood bank in the dead of night, masquerading as “Dr. Faust”, paying “Dr. Watson” for his coveted O negative, while Eve relies on their old friend Christopher Marlowe, who faked his death in 1593 and lives under the protection of a local man.

After influencing the careers of countless famous musicians and scientists, Adam has become withdrawn and suicidal. His desire to connect through his music is at odds with the danger of recognition as well as his contempt for the corrupt and foolish humans he refers to as “zombies”. He spends his days recording his compositions on outdated studio equipment and lamenting the state of the modern world whilst collecting vintage instruments. He pays Ian, a naive human “rock and roll kid”, to procure vintage guitars and other assorted curiosities, including a custom-made bullet with a brass casing and a wooden tip. Having acquired substantial scientific knowledge over the years, the vampire has managed to build contraptions to power both his home and vintage sports car with technology originally pioneered by Nikola Tesla.

The film is one of several Jarmusch productions, alongside films such as Night on Earth, in which the action mainly occurs at night-time. Swinton stated after the film’s release: “Jim is pretty much nocturnal, so the nightscape is pretty much his palette. There’s something about things glowing in the darkness that feels to me really Jim Jarmusch. He’s a rock star.”

The film’s greatest triumph is how it manages to avoid and subvert the clichés surroundings vampire folklore. The v-word is never mentioned, and in a playful twist, it is the humans who are derisively referred to by Adam and Eve as “the zombies”. The two of them are cultural snobs, looking down upon humans as mindless beings who go about their days without a thought to the finer things in life.

It’s a personal take on how Jarmusch himself must feel. A film-maker who has built his hipster reputation as an independent New York artist working outside the mainstream, those like him who devote their time to the counter-culture will always feel isolated from the rest of the world. In Adam and Eve’s tender relationship he has made his warmest film yet, a movie with the message that the price of genius doesn’t have to be loneliness if you find a loving kindred spirit.