'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
'Charlie Porter is a magician' Olivia Laing 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 artists 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. As Porter carefully unpicks what they wore and how they
wore it we see how clothing can be a means of artistic intellectual and sexual liberation or
conversely a tool for patriarchal control. Travelling through libraries archives attics and
studios Porter uncovers fresh evidence about his subjects revealing them in a thrillingly
intimate vivid new light. And as he is inspired to begin making his own clothing his
perspective on fashion - and on life - starts to change. In the end he shows we should all
'bring no clothes ' embracing a new philosophy of living: one which activates the connections
between the way we dress and the way we think act and love.
