Worst-dressed-list makers love to pick on Tilda Swinton. While every other actress wears whatever her stylist tells her — usually a perfectly lovely Marchesa gown, Swinton is more often than not swishing around in a sack dress with almost no makeup, wrinkles showing. Yes, face wrinkles. And God bless her for it! Someone has to throw a fork in the well-oiled Us Weekly celebrity-media machine. Besides, the dresses she wears are always of highly coveted labels, like the Lanvin one she wore to the Oscars, so she clearly knows what she's doing. She just chooses to be different, and, unlike your average hipster, it actually makes her cool.

So cool, in fact, she became muse to counts of the avant-garde Viktor & Rolf when she met them in 1999. She even walked their runway with an army of Tilda models in 2003 (if that doesn't make you jealous, you are just not human). In addition to embracing the fine lines around her eyes, she also embraced her body after giving birth. W magazine notes that Swinton appeared nude in The War Zone in 1999 four weeks after having twins.

“I was not in a state to make a film of any nature at that time,” says Swinton, “so I thought the one thing I could contribute was the real body of someone who had just given birth.”

Juergen Teller shot Swinton for the September issue of W. At left you see her casually wandering about the park with a big tail-less cat, wearing Rodarte hose and a Giorgio Armani coat and skirt. And there's more where that came from after the jump.

Social Studies [W]