In 2012, Olivier Saillard and Tilda Swinton invented – in Paris, where else?

– a curious genre.

“Fashion performance” is a stagecraft—“stage” here in the sense of having a defined playing surface faced by seated spectators—that borrows from dance and theater, even film, photography, and fashion parade.

Her distinguishing feature, or rather her trademark, is that she focuses on clothes: their pure materiality, the process of their creation, their individual history, the do's and don'ts of the fashion industry.

The latest performance by Saillard & Swinton, "Embodying Pasolini", has now been launched in the Paris branch of the Milan Fondazione Sozzani.

An old industrial hall in the darkest part of the city of lights, north of La Chapelle: the white of the walls increases the vastness of the huge room under the glazed gabled roof, while black-painted Eiffel support structures stand out graphically.

In the middle of the long hall, the floor is papered with wrapping paper;

this ground-level "catwalk" is bordered on three sides by two rows of folding chairs.

Enter Swinton.

She wears a cross between a lab coat and a nettle model: half minimalist-sterile, half unfinished-unreal.

From tissue paper she unwraps vaguely head-shaped wooden structures made by the Roman Laboratorio Pieroni, the leading manufacturer of hats for the film industry.

She arranges these primitive sculptural objects on two tables in the background.

The continuous blowing of the ventilation system creates a slight dizziness that reinforces the strangeness of what is happening.

Then Saillard, also wearing a light-colored lab coat over blue work trousers, brings in a first piece of clothing.

Like all of the thirty or so creations that will be on view throughout the evening, it was designed by Danilo Donati for a feature film directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini.

The costume designer, who died in 2001, had worked since the 1960s with Italian directors such as Rossellini, Bolognini and Benigni, but above all with Fellini and Pasolini, for whom he "dressed" six and nine films respectively (including such unforgettable eye symphonies as Fellini's "Satyricon" and "Roma").

All of the collection items shown in "Embodying Pasolini" are on loan from the Roman Sartoria Farani, whose founder, Piero Farani, had realized Donati's designs.

"The Gospel According to St. Matthew," Swinton announces solemnly.

The rules of the game are simple: Saillard and two helpers bring robes, coats and hats, and Swinton, the actress, performs them.

Some she simply holds to her breast, while others she slips into, avoiding direct skin contact.

Some of the garments are iconic: Silvana Mangano's pearl-colored wool suit as Giocaste in Edipo Re and two of her Madonna robes in Il Decameron, Laura Betti's scarlet silk outfit as Donna di Bath in I racconti di Canterbury.

Others have a sentimental value, so to speak, most notably Pasolini's green robe as Chaucer in the latter work and Totò's black straw hat as a philistine conversing with a talking raven in Uccellacci e uccellini.

In addition, there are also many figure costumes,