Billy Porter is not afraid to take aim at Anna Wintour.
Porter, who won a Tony for starring in Kinky Boots on Broadway and an Emmy for playing Pray Tell in the groundbreaking FX series Pose, has been one of the biggest forces in expanding men’s fashion over the last decade. However, sometimes he feels that he isn’t given the credit he deserves.
When Porter was winning awards for Pose, he redefined men’s red-carpet fashion, often wearing dresses, skirts, and other clothes that aren’t traditionally for men. Now, he reveals that Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour talked to him about his fashion trailblazing just a few months before putting Harry Styles, a cisgender and heterosexual white man, on the cover of the long-running fashion magazine in a dress.
In a new interview with The Telegraph, Porter revealed that Wintour approached him, asking how she can help to uplift marginalized communities.
“That bitch said to me at the end, ‘How can we do better?’ And I was so taken off guard that I didn’t say what I should have said,” Porter recalled, saying he should have said, “Use your power as Vogue to uplift the voices of the leaders of this de-gendering of fashion movement… Six months later, Harry Styles is the first man on the cover.”
“It’s not Harry Styles’ fault that he happens to be white and cute and straight and fit into the infrastructure that way,” he added. “I call out the gatekeepers.”
“It doesn’t feel good to me,” he continued. “You’re using my community – or your people are using my community – to elevate you. You haven’t had to sacrifice anything.”
Porter had previously called out the cover when it first appeared in 2021.
"I changed the whole game," Porter told The Times of London about the issue. "I. Personally. Changed. The. Whole. Game. And that is not ego, that is just fact. I was the first one doing it and now everybody is doing it."
"I feel like the fashion industry has accepted me because they have to. I'm not necessarily convinced and here is why. I created the conversation [about non-binary fashion] and yet Vogue still put Harry Styles, a straight white man, in a dress on their cover for the first time."