The sage advice Oscar-winning actress Tilda Swinton gave to Singapore students at Chanel talk

SINGAPORE – Younger generations seem to have lost touch with the collective spirit that powered older cohorts of artists, said Oscar-winning actress Tilda Swinton to a hall of 420 local students.

The popular notion now is to treat the self as a brand and fly solo, but that is “actual nonsense”.

The 64-year-old Scottish screen icon said: “It’s a global disease, this individuation. We are all in it together and we need each other so badly.”

The Chanel ambassador was speaking at the French luxury label’s student day event at Capitol Theatre on Nov 4, where she addressed a rapt audience of youth from Nanyang Technological University, Institute of Technical Education, Lasalle College of the Arts, Temasek Polytechnic, Singapore Institute of Technology and Essec Business School.

The 1½-hour masterclass session – which also covered how local creativity inspires and enriches the global imagination – was a prelude to Chanel’s Singapore restaging of its Cruise 2025/26 runway show, which premiered in April at Lake Como, Italy.

The event’s moderator and managing editor of Monocle magazine Tyler Brule had raised the cultural turn towards chasing personal stardom, saying it “irked” him.

“Is that supposed to be attractive?” asked Swinton, in a tone of earnest puzzlement. For the star of art-house films and blockbuster Marvel movies alike, the limelight is “bearable” only when she is representing something bigger than and besides herself – a kind of esprit de corps she learnt from her father, a soldier, she added.

“If you think your name is more important than anything else, then maybe you need some help,” she said, to laughter from the floor.

In a conversation and question-and-answer session that circled Swinton’s and Chanel’s creative principles, the actress often returned to the primacy of fellowship, as in her enduring partnerships: first as a newcomer with the late English artist and film-maker Derek Jarman, then with an international slate of directors such as South Korea’s Bong Joon-ho, Britain’s Joanna Hogg, Spain’s Pedro Almodovar and the United States’ Wes Anderson and Jim Jarmusch.

She said: “I think if I stand for anything, I stand for fellowship. I’ve worked with people for 40 years and I’m still working with them.”

Replying to a student’s question on what Swinton hopes to see from a new generation of creatives, she cautioned against going after “big bucks”.

The culture around making art went “off the rails” when people had the impression they could make money off it, she said. “In the 1980s, none of us made any money. We didn’t have it, we didn’t want it. We (lived on) social welfare and little jobs.

“I’m not saying that financial crises are a good thing, but they are healthy for artists because they remind us that money is not what we need.”

In a panel discussion, Australian-Chinese producer and former editor-in-chief of Vogue China Margaret Zhang, and Singaporeans Amanda Lee Koe, a novelist, and Clifford Loh, editor-in-chief of Vulture magazine, also talked about the local and regional creative landscape.

Lee Koe said: “(In Singapore), the danger of having excellent infrastructure and very intelligent top-down thinking is that we run the risk of becoming a hub or place that people use to access other things that feel more genuine around them, and it’s not because what’s around is necessarily more interesting or authentic.”

Chanel’s president of fashion activities Bruno Pavlovsky kicked off the morning’s disquisitions by getting straight into the Singapore question: Why here?

“In short, Singapore is a ‘Chanel city’,” he said. “We have a few cities in the world where we feel super comfortable in. We love them and we try to develop the best client experience, and Singapore is one of them.”

Bags and shoes are easy to sell, but fashion tends to be a challenging product, added the Frenchman in his 60s. Yet, the ready-to-wear client base here has increased year after year.

That is part of what makes local clientele unique. Another element? “(They) are quite demanding, but demanding in the right way,” he said.