Spot-On Comparisons of Tilda Swinton and Libraries Are Going Viral on Twitter

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.

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. 

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.”