CLOAKROOM: Don’t Forget Your Self feat. Tilda Swinton

A lipstick smudge on a lapel, a dry flower on a sleeve, a version of intimacy tried on for size… This poignant performance at Pittu Uomo in Florence explored the physical and implied boundaries of interacting with other people’s and our own garments. Each audience member left one article of their wardrobe in a staged cloakroom upon arrival. The performers then turned these jackets, scarves, bags into co-stars which shared stories of their owners and conveyed universal themes of desire, memory, loss…

It was conceptualized by Olivier Saillard, the director of Musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris, who has long championed the ebb and flow of art and fashion in his curatorial work. None other than the sublime Tilda Swinton, herself not a stranger to both the world of fashion (best/worst dressed lists & multiple magazine covers) and contemporary art (napping at MoMA?!), could have embodied this idea with more conviction, grace and humor.

Initiated in Paris, this is a first international and improvised performance piece in an ongoing Saillard-Swinton project wherein they co-re-create various clothing narratives. Judging by the increasingly enthusiastic critical and audience response, could we hope for a duo’s fashion weeks tour soon?