Transnational celebrity and the fashion icon: The case of Tilda Swinton, ‘visual performance artist at large’

Abstract

Tilda Swinton’s status as a fashion icon exemplifies the contradictory functions that Walter Benjamin attributes to fashion as both exemplifying commodity fetishism and expressing a utopian ‘image wish’. This vexed relationship with fashion inflects Swinton’s cinematic performances, enhanced by her emphasis on disguise and transformation that calls into question the nature of identity and its authenticity. Her persona speaks to the fluid and fragmented dimensions of contemporary European identities, which are rooted, but also cross borders, national and otherwise; similarly, her public presence testifies to the way that contemporary culture has generated new forms of celebrity as a means of representing identities in which the negotiation of gender is a significant component.

Sun, Sex, and Style in Smart Cinema: Tilda Swinton inA Bigger Splash(Luca Guadagnino, 2015)

“…Swinton's intelligent articulations in promotional materials repeatedly highlight both her commitment to performance as art (rather than acting), and her ambivalence about fashion. Her "not-so-accidental" position as a fashion and style icon is therefore integral to Swinton's "celebrity-commodity" status, in which the brand image must continually be constructed, updated, and transformed in order to both maintain the loyalty of existing fans and to reach and appeal to new niche audiences (Marshall 1997;Radner 2016). As Graeme Turner argues, "celebrities are developed to make money" both as "cultural workers" and as "property" (2013, 36-37).…”

“…As an avant-garde icon who both pays homage to and disrupts the fashion system and celebrity culture Swinton's stylish personae provides further evidence of Pamela Church Gibson's discussions of the ways in which contemporary celebrity culture, fashion and consumption "bleed" across the media (2012,11). Claiming to have a "beginner's mind," with "little knowledge" and "no real interest" in fashion, Swinton sees the couture shows as a "circus" (Matusik 2014;Radner 2016). Through Swinton's collaboration with Jerry Stafford (creative director at the French production company Première-Heure and style consultant to Swinton), performance art and fashion collide as she graces the pages of editorials and glossy international fashion magazines such as W Magazine, AnOther, and Candy in addition to appearing in digital fashion films (for instance McGinley 2010; Ethridge 2014; Madigan Heck 2017).…”

“…Through Swinton's collaboration with Jerry Stafford (creative director at the French production company Première-Heure and style consultant to Swinton), performance art and fashion collide as she graces the pages of editorials and glossy international fashion magazines such as W Magazine, AnOther, and Candy in addition to appearing in digital fashion films (for instance McGinley 2010; Ethridge 2014; Madigan Heck 2017). With Stafford as her guide, Swinton is dressed for the red carpet by her designer "friends" such as Viktor and Rolf, Raf Simons, and Haider Ackermann (Matusik 2014;Radner 2016;Woo 2012). Notions of friendship and collaboration become integral to the promotional discourses surrounding Swinton; she is granted agency and is frequently represented as a highly articulate, intelligent performer with an artistic vision, rather than yet another manufactured female celebrity whose raison d'être resides in her image.…”

Conchita Montenegro and the Spanish press: from national pride to nationalist melodrama

“…The concept of transnationality, as extensively examined in studies on celebrities (Durovicova and Newman 2010, Yu 2012, Meeuf and Raphael 2013, Radner 2016, Ribke and Bourdon 2017, Sandeau 2020, enables us to address the relationships between the global and the local within a constantly shifting dialectical framework. This dialectic entails a change of scale in the status of a star who is famous in their own country when faced with the chance-and dangers-of being drawn into the machinery of the Hollywood film industry (Philips and Vincendeau 2006, Miyao 2007, Navitsky 2011.…”