What Artists Wear
Shortlisted as a Financial Times Book of the Year, this is the kind of book that makes you look at your wardrobe differently before you've even finished the first chapter. Olivia Laing, writing in the Guardian, called it 'a punk cousin to John Berger's Ways of Seeing' and said it transported her somewhere 'glamorous, exciting, even revolutionary.' That's a bold claim, but Porter earns it. Most of us pull on our clothes each morning without giving them much thought. Artists, it turns out, think about them quite a lot. Charlie Porter, a respected voice in fashion writing, argues that clothing in the hands of a creative person becomes something altogether more charged: a vehicle for identity, defiance, narrative, and self-invention. The book moves with real curiosity across a wide cast of figures. Yves Klein's immaculate tailoring sits alongside Yayoi Kusama's vivid, pattern-heavy ensembles. Andy Warhol's studied denim gets the same careful attention as Charlotte Prodger's understated casualwear. Porter has a gift for noticing the small, telling detail, the single choice that suddenly makes a whole persona click into focus. Generously illustrated throughout, it works simultaneously as a visual feast and a genuinely thoughtful piece of writing. It's part affectionate tribute to creative dressing, part quiet invitation to reconsider your own relationship with what you wear. Stimulating, visually rich, and surprisingly moving in places, it's a book that lingers well after you've set it down.
- Author: Charlie Porter
- Publisher: Penguin
- Genre: Photography
- ISBN: 978-0141991252
- Pages: 376 pages