Celebrity StyleSpot-On Comparisons of Tilda Swinton and Libraries Are Going Viral on TwitterA thread started by writer and cartoonist Jude Atwood perfectly compares architecture and fashion using library buildings and the Orlando star

By Rachel Wallace

January 7, 2022

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Tilda Swinton’s look at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival was compared to the Sharpsburg Community Library in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the Children’s Library in Palo Alto, California. Photo Stephane Cardinale / Corbis

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This isn’t the first time Tilda Swinton has become a meme. The Academy Award winner, who is impeccably costumed in films like Suspiria, The Chronicles of Narnia, and I Am Love, also has a unique off-screen sartorial style. Her signature androgynous look, complete with a coiffed undercut that often changes in volume, angularity, and color, has simultaneously made her a fashion icon and fodder for online jokes—in the best way possible. 

For example, over the summer, Swinton turned up to the premiere of The French Dispatch at the Cannes Film Festival in a chic electric blue suit. An image of her standing with costar Timothée Chalamet (in a T-shirt and combat boots), director Wes Anderson (in seersucker), and costar Bill Murray (in what can only be described as Deadhead-on-vacation attire) quickly went viral, spawning endless memes where people compared the four wildly different outfits to everything you could possibly think of.

Twitter content

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Twitter content

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Now, there’s another Swinton-inspired meme circulating that we at AD find especially clever. Writer and cartoonist Jude Atwood started it off on December 6, when he began a Twitter thread titled “Tilda Swinton as Libraries.” The first Tweet shows an image (by Kayla Hartzog) of Texas Southern University’s Library Learning Center, a slanted, angular, and shiny building by the architecture firm Moody Nolan. Next to it is a photo of Swinton from a Golden Globes afterparty in 2012 in which she is wearing a shiny blue blazer and chiffon dress by Haider Ackermann that landed her on Vogue’s “best dressed” list at the time. 

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The thread continues from there, comparing a shoot Swinton did for AnOther Magazine in 2009 in which she wore a futuristic, tailored dress by designer (and Kanye West collaborator) Louise Goldin to the Geisel Library at the University of California, San Diego. Named after Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel), the brutalist structure was designed by architect William Pereira and resembles a concrete and glass spaceship. One can picture a sci-fi movie in which the main character emerges from this building wearing the Louise Goldin dress. “When I found a photo of Swinton in a gray dress, with her elbows pointed forward, reflecting the angles of that building’s stepped tower, I gasped,” Atwood tells AD. “It felt like this was meant to be.”

The Geisel Library at the University of California, San Diego.

Photo: Barry Winiker

One of the reasons the “Tilda Swinton as libraries” comparison works so well is that Swinton often opts for tailored pieces that cut a sleek, sharp silhouette, and one thing most buildings of any style have is angles. However, not all of the comparisons feature pointy modern architecture. In one tweet, Atwood put an image of Swinton in a flowing Rodarte dress at the premiere of the 2008 film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button next to the Saint Florian Monastery Library in Austria, a baroque-style building with a yellow exterior and plenty of embellishments. Other Twitter users have since chimed in with their own contributions, even comparing her to mobile library buses.

Atwood has his own take on why this meme was lightning in a bottle. “First: Celebrities, even indie celebrities, wear a lot of different outfits; many famous people are never photographed twice in the same clothes. Second: Civic architecture around the world is a lot more outré than most people realize; even some small-town libraries feature some really beautiful design elements,” says the author of the forthcoming novel Maybe There Are Witches. 

Moody Nolan president and CEO Jonathan Moody echoes this—when his firm designed the library that kicks off Atwood’s thread, they thought of it as a lot more than just a place to store books. Balconies were added so students can take a break from studying to check out what’s going on along the school’s highly trafficked main walkway, and they thought of the project as a library for the whole community, not just the school. “At so many HBCU campuses across the country, academic buildings can’t just be for the students… We wanted to ensure that it is impactful for anyone who comes to visit,” Moody tells AD.

Here’s our takeaway: Swinton’s style (she has said her favorite designers include Iris Van Herpen, Haider Ackermann, Virginie Viard at Chanel, Charles Jeffrey, and Jeanne Vicérial, and she works with the stylist and creative director Jerry Stafford on her looks) takes her star power to the next level, and in architecture, style is what takes a project to new heights.

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