For the portfolio shot by Tim Walker on the following pages, Swinton and Stafford created a “mood board” together, collating images from diverse sources— Arnold Genthe’s portraits of Greta Garbo, Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, and the work of French artist and provocateur Claude Cahun, famous in the Twenties for her explorations of gender role play. “People talk about androgyny in all sorts of dull ways,” says Swinton, noting that the recent rerelease of Orlando had her thinking again about its pliancy. “Cahun looked at the limitlessness of an androgynous gesture, which I’ve always been interested in.”
Ultimately, though, her starting and ending points are always her own style icons: David Bowie—whom she says she’s been orbiting ever since she saw The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)—and her father, Maj. Gen. Sir John Swinton. “My aesthetic North Stars,” she calls them. “The individuals with whom I share the same planetary DNA.”
Swinton’s father is a former commander of the Queen’s Household Division in London, and she affectionately remembers the meticulous conversations she and Stafford had with him about the ideal way to pack the gold lace collar and cuffs on the dress that Pilati had made for the royal premiere of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in 2005. Her father’s years as a military officer in court uniforms had made him an expert in such matters. “From childhood, I remember more about his black patent, gold livery, scarlet-striped legs, and medal ribbons than I do of my mother’s evening dresses,” she says. “I would rather be handsome, as he is, for an hour than pretty for a week.”
