'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 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 artistic 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. Now
with a new Afterword by the author
