Tilda’s Cloakroom
Jan 17, 2015
Tilda Swinton’s latest role: a piece of performance art in which she interacts – and chats – with coats. The actress is the star of Cloakroom, which is being staged at the Pitti Uomo menswear show in Florence, Italy. The 90-minute performance sees Swinton taking clothes that have been checked in by audience members on arrival, and treating them as her co-stars. She nuzzled a red mohair coat, buried her face in a suit jacket and had a conversation with a gilet.
Interaction with the clothes involved “studying them, caressing them – she licked the floral lining and at least one button of someone’s blazer – and even chatting to them. ‘She’s not even here,’ she reassured a pompom scarf, and later, to a jacket, ‘Don’t be silly!’”
The show is the brainchild of Olivier Saillard, a fashion critic and historian, with whom Swinton has collaborated in the past. It has a serious point to make about our relationship with clothes and the role they play in our lives – an antidote to “fast fashion”. Swinton told i-D magazine she was interested in “the soul of clothes”.
She said: “The more I do this piece, the more I realise it’s about making relationships. We all have relationships with an old jersey that people have told us to throw out, but we’re not going to because you know what? You’ve got a very strong relationship with that thing.” Asked if she disliked fast fashion, Swinton replied: “I don’t even really know what it is. I’m pretty slow in every department.”
Source: Telegraph UK
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