Beauties: Tilda Swinton

Tilda Swinton was like a Richard Neutra house plopped down in a tract of Hollywood McMansions on Sunday. Her bleak marble face, that curtain-wall column of a dress--next to that, even the normally quite modernist Hillary Swank looked like a fussy boudoir throw cushion, with all that lace.

Swinton's beauty is challenging, requiring the onlooker to strain and reach, to really experience the act of seeing. At first, for instance, you want desperately to give her eyebrows, but this would be wrong, very wrong, like putting a cornice on the Lever House.

If you try to understand Swinton's appearance in terms of the red carpet, or even in terms of of movie star, she is impossible to compute, but think of her in terms of an architectural statement, and it's possible that she's finally doing for beauty what Mies and Eliel did for architecture in the middle of the last century, ie, changing it forever, from the DNA up. Although it's possible that she will remain a splendid anomaly, like Kate Hepburn, who wasn't a skyscraper at all despite her height, but a yar sailing ship.

My boyfriend sent me a link to a story about her interesting love life--apparently the 50ish Ms Swinton lives with her 70ish artist husband and their children, and they are sometimes all joined in happy cohabitation by her 30ish artist lover. I think it's grand that this odd, elegant creature lives such a passionate life of her own devising (even if she was a communist in her 20s--why she couldn't just smoke crack like Amy Winehouse is beyond me. At least she has the decency to be a rich communist.).

I just got samples for MAC's new line of austere neutral shades, and I will be experimenting with them with new respect, now that Swinton has set the bar for stark elegance so very high. I may have to try going without eyebrows, or taking a young artist lover--and fair being fair, if my boyfriend wanted to bring Tilda home and paint her in the nude at our rambling country manor, I'd have to let him. We'd just have to steer clear from politics at the dinner table.

Comments

[Krista]

I give her credit for wearing this so confidently. She knows exactly what she looks like, and she's proud of it. Would I wear it? Would I have picked it out for anyone? Probably not. But I can't see her in something pink and/or gold and fluffy either.

[jkonrad]

I must agree---I was really thrown at first when she walked the red carpet, but then the more I looked at her, the more I realized that I wasn't looking at a stylist, or a designer---I was looking at some tremendous bone structure and confidence---confidence that is NOT based on said stylist! The more I look at her pictures, the more I like it.

[Monica]

GMTA. I just wrote this today, in response to a bit of ragging on the Divine Ms. Swinton:

"I loved Tilda. She looked like a frickin' artist. Which she is. She doesn't need a stitch of makeup. She's a magnificent, flame-haired individual in a trivial sea of false eyelashes, airbrushed tans and painfully correct strapless gowns.

"I was saying last night that the Oscars show what a conservative time we're living in. They're so dreadfully boring because everyone's scared to death of being made fun of or censured the next day."

And:

"Why do women have to wear makeup? And for all we know she was wearing some. Just not spray-tan. She looked real, for Christ's sake. She wasn't tarted up. Her gown was organic and regal. (One thing: I wish the shoulder line on the sleeveless side was a little narrower.)

I'm not sure why I can't let this go, and of course everyone has a right to their own opinion, but there were a whole shitload of women dolled up in the expected accoutrements. Why can't we have an outlier?"

I thought she looked like beautifully draped alabaster.

[Gisele B.]

WOW! GO Tilda! What a lifestyle.

Perhaps her lifestyle explains her look. It's hard to say anything else than she knows how she is and she's not trying to play out to any "industry beauty standards"...she does her own thing and I respect her for that...even if I would NOT be caught dead wearing that dress.

As for her age...she does not look at all like she's in her 50s.

Miss Gisele B.

[MJ]

Love it! I'll take 10 of her any day (and I'm not a Communist, though I agree with her implication that perfect happiness every day is an American consumer marketing-based myth and a real, honest life involves dealing well with loneliness at times) to a vapid, boring Britney Spears. I don't have to agree with everything about her to find her stimulating and interesting (and God bless the actress who admits to hairy legs and gnarled feet with pride).

[Carolyn Leber]

Tilda did a very amusing photo shoot the day after the Oscars at the L'Ermitage Hotel in which she's dressed much more colorfully. The amusing part is that she sort of plays with the Oscar like it's a Barbie Doll... she's quite the character!

[Maggie]

I agree completely. I was shocked at the kind of vitriol that was directed towards her in the celebrity blogs (especially in the follow-up comments). I mean, "fugly" and "scary"...really? God, we've lost any semblance of imagination, haven't we?

[kellymo]

From the collarbone up - LOVED the hair, lack of makeup, everything. From the collarbone down... there wasn't a better dress?

[rokhl]

Small comment- I found it hard to believe that the stunning Ms. Swinton was '50ish'. You got all their ages wrong. Swinton is 47, her SO is 67 and her young man friend is 29.

[Jackie Danicki]

rokhl, from where I sit, Hillary got all of their ages right. In what world is 47 not 50ish, 67 not 70ish, and 29 not 30ish?