Author(s): Charlie Porter

Literature | Culture | Design | History | Biography and Memoir | Textiles

Why do we wear what we wear?  To answer this question, we must go back and unlock the wardrobes of the early twentieth century, when fashion as we know it was born.

In Bring No Clothes, acclaimed fashion writer Charlie Porter brings us face to face with six members of the Bloomsbury Group - the collective of creatives and thinkers who were in the vanguard of a social and sartorial revolution.  Each of them offers fresh insight into the constraints and possibilities of fashion today: from the stifling repression of E. M. Forster's top buttons to the creativity of Vanessa Bell's wayward hems; from the sheer pleasure of Ottoline Morrell's lavish dresses to the clashing self-consciousness of Virginia Woolf's orange stockings; from Duncan Grant's liberated play with nudity to John Maynard Keynes's power play in the traditional suit.

As Porter carefully unpicks what they wore and how they wore it, we see how clothing can be a means of creative, intellectual and sexual liberation, or, conversely, a tool for patriarchal control. As he travels through libraries, archives, attics and studios, Porter uncovers new evidence about his subjects, revealing them in a thrillingly intimate, vivid new light.  And, as he begins making his own clothing, his own perspective on fashion-and on life-starts to change.  In the end, he shows, we should all 'bring no clothes,' embracing not just a new way with fashion but a new philosophy of living-one which activates the connections between the way we dress and the way we think, act and love.

Review: A triumph. I could read Charlie Porter's books all day long. He makes us see a subject we thought we knew so well from a completely different angle; in writing that is deeply researched, but inviting, warm, and full of personality -- Katy Hessel
Excellent ... Porter's generous, empathetic eye feels like a corrective for the more salacious historical depictions of the Bloomsbury Group's affairs ... Bring No Clothes doesn't just introduce a new frame of thinking, it adds a fresh layer of humanity to the collective * Independent *
Charlie Porter is a magician, a radical historian who has pulled away all the threadbare myths about Bloomsbury, using clothes as a way of revealing the vulnerable bodies and wild new ideas of Woolf and her circle. In his hands, what people wear becomes an astoundingly rich way of thinking about love and grief, art-making and intimacy - and above all about old power structures and how to upend them. Bring No Clothes is at once an enriching account of the past and a primer for the future: a guide to how we too can clothe our bodies for freedom -- Olivia Laing
A call to arms from the first page - it's thrilling and radical -- Chantal Joffe
Porter clearly enjoys [the Bloomsbury Group's] company - exploring how Virginia Woolf's loose, long-line garments, John Maynard Keynes's 'soft tailoring,' Vanessa Bell's wildly colourful home-made dresses, photographs of a naked Duncan Grant, and the loosening of EM Forster's buttoned-up suits all demonstrate the radicalism of a group of people determined to live differently * New Statesman *
Spot-on ... the way the [Bloomsbury] circle thought about clothes was part of a wider revolt ... Thanks to his access to the contents of several Bloomsbury wardrobes, together with a trove of previously unseen photographs, Porter is able to provide a detailed illustration of how "Make it new" played out on the material level * Guardian *
Fresh, empathetic ... personal as much as intellectual ... Bring No Clothes might be read as the manifesto of a queer human * Times Literary Supplement *

Author Biography: Charlie Porter is a writer, fashion critic and curator. He has written for The Financial Times, The Guardian, The New York Times, GQ, Luncheon, i-D and Fantastic Man, and has been described as one of the most influential fashion journalists of his time. Porter co-runs the London queer rave Chapter 10, and is a trustee of the Friends of Arnold Circus, where he is also a volunteer gardener. He lives in London.