Charlie Porter cut his teeth as an “arts with an s” reporter, at titles including The Daily Express, The Times and Esquire. In 2000, he became deputy fashion editor for The Guardian and following this, an associate editor for GQ and deputy editor for Fantastic Man. A quiet yet perceptible presence at fashion weeks, Charlie’s readers quickly lent him their ears as he documented the industry as menswear critic for the Financial Times. Until October 2018, that is, when—in a manner that may have seemed abrupt to some—he quit fashion.
Charlie has become known in the fashion industry as one of an elite “club” of critics that provide genuine criticism. He has, in the past, been banned from shows—an accolade awarded to those from whom brands take offence. taking an extensive coffee break during a day’s work writing and researching at the British Library in London, Charlie and I talked in depth about criticism; the ethics involved and the love of feeling something for fashion.
LARA JOHNSON-WHEELER: Can you talk about what you’re working on right now?
CHARLIE PORTER: I’m writing a book about the clothing that artists wear. Artists are a really great body of humans to study, to graph how we wear clothes. I do think that by talking about clothes, it can humanise artists—and humanise full stop. If done in the wrong way it can also be used to deify or to idolise. I’m definitely not doing this, and actually, for artists who are deified, I’m trying to break through that.
LJW: You’ve said that fashion’s biggest problem is that fashion is commerce; do you think that’s the same problem in the art world?
CP: I think it’s a bigger problem or a different problem. I find it really weird being interviewed—I just want to ask: what do you think?
LJW: You can.
CP: the thing with fashion is it does involve commerce; it does involve the exchange of garments if something is made. If something is bought, the root of it is commerce, and the thing that I like about fashion is when people are honest. that’s why I think Comme des Garçons and the dover street Market are so fascinating because it’s like a marketplace. It’s the ancient act of bringing some- thing to a marketplace—you’re exchanging some- thing for something. It’s honest and then pushing it even further—what they’re exchanging is stuff of such elevated ideas. so I think at the root of fashion, commerce can sit and then there’s all this other stuff around it which gets ignored. the thing with art is that there are assumptions that art full stop and artists full stop are the same as the art world and the art market. obviously, art and artists are essential to the art market but they can also fill other spaces and exist in different ways. Also, there is the presumption of precedents and there are precedents and lineage and things be- ing passed down among artists, so I don’t think any artist exists in isolation. But there are also assumptions within the market of the way things have been done and always will be done and I don’t think that’s necessarily true and that an artist should be able to make work in isolation from what is known as the art market.
LJW: Whereas in fashion, that isolation is an impossibility for a designer?
CP: someone could just make clothes for them- selves and be really important but yeah, you need to have someone who actually wants to wear your clothes.
LJW: With you having been a fashion critic for so long—or still, would you say?
CP: no, I quit, I retired.
LJW: do you find a difference between the way you would look at clothes and critique clothes and what you find appealing to wear? did you always find that when you liked something, if you liked its appeal, you could imagine yourself wearing it?
CP: that’s interesting, let me work it out. I don’t think it was necessarily the case that I had to like it to appreciate it. I think it is the case that what I find appealing in garments and the design of garments, the tension I was seeking in garments, you can recognise in garments that you don’t like personally or don’t think you wear personally, so I think that it was recognising that tension. And it’s a tension that is ephemeral.
LJW: Have you ever looked back retrospectively on a collection or piece and out of the context of the situation or time that it was shown, you’ve thought that tension didn’t remain or couldn’t stand the test of time?
CP: that’s really interesting. I’m sure if I went back there’d be cases where I was super hyperbolic, but now I wouldn’t be like that. But I also think that that was the beauty of being a fashion critic: you were very much engaged with a moment and the dis- play and quite often those clothes are never produced and it’s such a weird thing but it’s also such a beguiling thing. I’m thinking of Craig Green’s first collection outside of Fashion East—which was the first collection he designed after the death of Louise Wilson who taught him at saint Martins. It was the most extraordinary collection and I re- member it happening and feeling like I’m going to cry and I was really thinking about what happens when there are humans in a shared space, even just two humans, and there is definitely something to do with the release of some form of hormone or something that lets you know how each other is.
LJW: Yes, for me, seeing a fashion show is about looking at something someone has made in the context of their world and knowing you’re going to feel something.
CP: And trying to see what they’ve worked out as well, what they’ve resolved, trying to see what they’re thinking about. But it’s also the super mundane stuff. Maybe I should do a search to see how many times I’ve said the word crotch but oh my God, do I sound like an absolute pervert? But in menswear, in particular, the crotch was always so bad and it became a thing of definition— if they can’t get the crotch right then what am I doing here?
LJW: surely, that’s because crotches have different sizes?
CP: no, it’s specific to tailored trousers. Jeans always look good, jeans have nearly as much history as the tailored suit but are still seen as something facile when they’re actually a remarkable feat of engineering. Whereas this thing called the “tailored trouser” is just the worst. Quite often trousers that are down the catwalk are often from brands that come from tailoring and then put on a catwalk where tailoring is not the main event and just show that cut of trousers, let’s engineer these.
LJW: Is that specific to your eye? You mentioned that the tailored suit is to hide the male form.
CP: I see what you’re asking, but I do think that then those trousers don’t actually sell.
LJW: I’m now visualising so many crotches.
CP: I think there are so many shows where you think, this is terrible because they’re attempting to present wearable menswear as opposed to fashion and it’s really insulting because there’s no thought put into that or engagement. no, it definitely isn’t me wanting to see the crotches. It’s just that thing of whether someone has bothered to think about something.
LJW: You’ve stated a number of times that you’ve quit fashion, but do you still think of yourself as a critic in other aspects?
CP: no, absolutely not, like really not, like really specifically not. In the period of being the FT critic, I had the absolute pleasure of involving my- self more within art and it was such a tonic and it helped my fashion criticism to have this other world which I was thinking about or other way of thinking, but it was very definitely not criticism. I was very happy that I realised that I didn’t want to be an art critic. It’s not the case that I replaced fashion criticism with art criticism and the way that I look at art is very definitely not as a critic and very definitely not with that eye. What I realised is that I love what I love, and I don’t care if nobody else has ever heard of it. I’d love it if everyone loved the thing I liked. But I’ve got no desire to persuade people or be like “mine’s better than yours”, no interest. And there’s something really gleefully vile about something I hated that most people liked, and I’d get no pleasure in it, but other people liked
it and I couldn’t find a place, that place didn’t sit well with me. And I’m not saying that criticism therefore shouldn’t exist, but I didn’t have a zeal to convince.
LJW: do you think I can sum that up by saying that you felt unsettled by the ethics of criticism?
CP: no, because I was very happy to be a critic in fashion. Any form of art criticism involves some presumption that the person reading it can enter into that space, buy a ticket for that film, buy that album, stream that album, and engage with the work, and be present with the work. But the thing about fashion shows and fashion show criticism; ok, so say the Prada show, that’s 60 looks, so may- be 200 garments, 250 garments—in that review I might go, oh my God that jacket, that sweater, that look, it was this, and that gets published straight away. six months later that went to a store, there’s no guarantee that any of those garments I talked about will ever be produced. It may be the case that one person who read that review, six months later buys that piece, but it’s unlikely that it’s be- cause of me. there’s a very different relationship with the reader.
LJW: What about the ethics of criticism when it comes to the impression on the designer?
CP: Well, that’s interesting and I think, or I hope, that I was fair. But I know they were presenting something that I wanted to talk about in a certain way. I think that I was aware of who they were and what they were in terms of what they were doing when I was writing about them. But I also conversely do actually worry about that as we move into a place where criticism is now normally in places where advertising appears. sometimes you need a moment to scream and I worry that independent designers often suddenly get a lash- ing that’s undeserved because the critic is able to talk freely, and they aren’t given any due diligence in that way. I was always lucky enough to be in a position at the FT, I was able to say anything I wanted and I’m so grateful to the FT for giving me that position and supporting me with that.
LJW: there are so many power dynamics that are at play when you think about that. You were in an incredible position of privilege being backed by the FT as their writer. A lot of young writers com- ing up perhaps wanting to emulate and also take the advice of certain critics who they’ve read—the Cathy Horyns, the Colin Mcdowells—they’re told to write what you think, but they don’t have a position to do that. How would you advise someone who wanted to critique fashion honestly?
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CP: that’s a really difficult question because that’s assuming that journalism exists and it’s assuming that publications exist and there is a publication that equates with the aforementioned. If you are a young writer, then you have grown up in the era in which journalism has died and we are part of the reason for its death because we all now communicate in other forms. I wish I knew the answer but all I can say is be rigorous, don’t compromise, work out ways of writing. don’t glorify the shows, or don’t glorify luxury shows.
LJW: What about when it comes to writing about young designers and emerging talent? What do you think the ethics are when it comes to criticism there?
CP: there are different elements to this. the FT allowed me to write on brand new [designers] without questioning why. We never had a conversation about it, I just did it. For me, the ethics of criticism was that it was always my duty to report and to report on new and give new a chance.
LJW: We’ve dived back into the depths of fashion criticism—do you feel at all nostalgic thinking about it?
CP: no. no. I loved doing it, I absolutely loved do- ing it, it was an absolute privilege and an absolute pleasure and the further I get away from it the more I appreciate what it allowed me to do. The key thing for me is that I’m aware of how debilitating it is for me to do as a form. I’m 45, I’m 46 this year—I was finding it debilitating.
LJW: do you feel a sense of responsibility to talk about your work, to talk about writing?
CP: I don’t know—to who?
LJW: Writing is a didactic practice anyway, but I think people want to learn about that.
CP: no one’s ever asked me that before. I love talking with writers, talking about writing, talking about pushing writing, talking about what you can do with writing but that makes it sound very grand. I think that also goes back to what we were saying at the beginning about the presumptions of what things are and the presumptions of writing and the presumptions of journalism. And it’s like, well no. Why should it be that I can contain my writing within this presumed framework that I don’t believe exists? or that I don’t believe should have that hold or that dominance? so, I think I have a responsibility to myself to think about it.