I recently read Charlie Porter’s Bring No Clothes: Bloomsbury and the Philosophy of Fashion and found it both fascinating and thought-provoking. There is much to unpack in it, and I won’t even attempt to do an exhaustive review here – do read the book if you’re interested in fashion as a form of self-expression and its philosophical/existential dimensions. What I want to share today are some thoughts inspired by the title and Porter’s entry point to his exploration of the topic.

Bring no clothes: words written by Virginia Woolf (then Stephens) to her future husband, Leonard Woolf, prior to him coming for a visit to her house in the countryside. Similar words were found in other letters from Woolf and her sister, artist Vanessa Bell, to their Bloomsbury friends. Here is Porter explaining what it meant.

“By ‘clothes’, Woolf meant the traditional fashions of her Victorian upbringing. This was an oppressive world codified by garments, with outfit changes throughout the day … All Woolf needed to say was ‘bring no clothes’. Her meaning: come as you are. We are no longer living by those rules. We refuse them, we reject them, we are pushing for something new.”

Elsewhere in his book, Porter makes the argument that clothing is archetypal, even today. Items of clothing – the classic suit, for example, but even basic items like shirts and dresses, etc. – carry meaning and symbolism, associated with and imbued by social structures and norms. He writes that “they provide the subconscious messaging that gives us knowledge of another human before they speak.”

Porter says:

“This knowledge of clothing is unconscious, like our knowledge of language. As with our knowledge of language, we are always learning. Our understanding of clothes is not finite, but is always evolving, and yet we tend to brush it off. This dichotomy … is at the heart of our contemporary experience with fashion. It is the tension between our self-denial and our subconscious knowledge.”

He invites us to consider this: “Imagine waking up one day and dressing without pre-conception, in response to your own body, its physical needs as well as your desire for expression. This would answer Woolf’s call to ‘bring no clothes’.”

Porter recognizes that this is not always possible — and frequently less possible for some people in our society than others — but he thinks that it can still be a goal that those of us who have the privilege to do so can work towards. I agree. I also find the phrase “bring no clothes” very inspiring in broader sense, beyond fashion. To me, “bring no clothes” can be equated to something like “bring no unexamined ideas or preconceptions to any ritual of living or of creative expression.”

We all inherit an enormous amount intellectual/psychological baggage dictated by the social environment in which we grow up and live. Traditions, norms, ideas, expectations, etc. etc. If society is the house in which we live, it comes already furnished, so to speak. In this context, bring no clothes means … bring no furniture except whatever you actually like, find valuable, etc. Redecorate. Keep and toss things as you please. If, in a metaphorical sense, we inherit and live in our parents’ houses, that doesn’t mean that we must keep them unchanged forever. We can make them our own.

For me, ‘bring no clothes’ resonates in the same way as ‘living in discovery’, which is a mantra I have been using for several years now. I consider it one of my guiding principles for living with intention and with meaning. Both of these approaches require curiosity – curiosity that is bold and fearless, but also humble. Another way that I think about curiosity as a concept is “openness”. Openness to the world – people, experiences, ideas – unblinkered by preexisting judgments. Openness is not the same thing as automatic acceptance. To be curious is not the same as being gullible.

To return to fashion …

Over the last decade or so, I have thought a lot about clothes in the context of my exploration of identity and self-expression. Without having consciously set out to do so, I ended up deconstructing my relationship with clothes and then reconstructing it, after my own pattern. Or, at least, mostly after my own pattern. It is loose enough to allow me room to move and grow and evolve. And, funnily enough, nowadays I rarely (consciously) think about clothes anymore. I know what I like and I wear what I like (and I recognize my own privilege in having the freedom to do so) and I am never not comfortable in my own clothes – as I have learned to be in my own skin. It is a state, and a freedom, I hope everyone can get to experience. As Porter writes, “[c]lothes are at the heart of how we experience ourselves.” The first step is to acknowledge that clothes have meaning and power and to start consciously thinking about them in those terms – and see where that takes us.

I’m back! I would tell you that my little hiatus was relaxing, but it was not because I was working like a madwoman to finish my WIP, so the ‘break’ in fact started this week because I am done, done, done! Yay! I still have a bunch of projects on the go, but I am forcing myself to take it slow and easy. The fact that I am going through one of my periodic spirals of writer’s doubt is helping, sorta, lol. But let’s not focus on that; let’s focus on the positive.

My garden is slowly greening, which means summer must be close. Also close? My annual clothing swap: two weeks and counting (down). And a few days after that, pub date for The Mysterious Affair at Gaunt Hall. Thank you to everyone who has pre-ordered a copy! I <3 you.

Scrapbooking is going strong; in fact, I’ve decided to start a daily scrapbook journal to work on alongside my scrapbook collage books. I also have to confess that I’ve fallen prey to the siren call of buying supplies. I’m still struggling to source magazines, but I’ve acquired a bunch of new equipment/materials – a paper cutter, a cutting board and scalpel/knife, several paper punches, and a slew of new stickers. Some are new/retail, some are thrifted; nothing is too expensive individually, but they do add up so I’m trying to be sensible. The problem is that I’ve always had a weakness for pretty stationery, and this is kinda scratching that itch. Oops. The good thing is that I’m using all my supplies, not merely hoarding them. And the craft section of the thrift store has been a godsend.

I’m currently reading Marriage by Susan Ferrier, which a dear friend of mine gifted me. If you love Jane Austen, this might be a book for you. Ferrier was a Scottish contemporary of Austen’s, and apparently sold more books than her during their lifetime, but is not well known these days. So far, Marriage has been a delightful read and very much in that Austen vibe.

Recently, I made my closet switch – from fall/winter to spring/summer – and I’m very excited to reunite with all my warm weather skirts, dresses, and jackets. With the clothing swap around the corner, I think it’s time to do a little closet edit too. I’m going to set aside some time this weekend and next for that. My style hasn’t really changed, but my body has (a little) so it’s time to reevaluate what still works and what doesn’t. My closet is feeling a little over-full at the moment and I’d like to make a bit of space. The problem is that I love pretty much everything I have, so letting go of things is gonna be harder than in the past. Wish me luck!

Have a great weekend!

I’ll be the first to admit that, these days, I don’t pay very much attention to fashion industry news or, similarly, celebrity news – and, by extension, the intersection of the two. I used to be an avid red-carpet watcher and I’m not anymore. But the Met Gala remains an exception, mostly because it’s the one major occasion where there’s a chance of interesting fashion displays. So, of course, I checked out this year’s event and … I have thoughts. Naturally.

In short, it was both fun and disappointing.

Let me explain.

On a purely aesthetic level, I enjoyed a lot of the outfits on the Met Gala red carpet. They were fun and inventive. And I’m a sucker for art references. There was some outfits I strongly disliked, because I felt they fell all the way into Halloween costume territory (I won’t name names, but you probably know who I’m talking about), but on the whole, it was an enjoyable parade of looks.

On a thematic level, I was disappointed. Quite apart from the Halloween costumes, I felt that most of the attendees missed the point of the year’s theme.

So, first of all, the Met Costume Institute’s current exhibition is called “Costume Art”. Per the Vogue cover story (May 2026 issue), the exhibition “sets art and fashion side by side – and erases any distinctions between the two.” The theme of the year’s Met Gala, which is a fundraiser for the Institute, was “Fashion is Art”. The Vogue article has a bunch of interviews with art and fashion people about the question of: is fashion art? I found it very interesting to read different perspectives on that, from both sides, but the key takeaway was that the Met’s overall message was that, yes, fashion is art. Not just a craft or a discipline, but capital-A Art.

This is what I think most of the Met Gala outfits missed. The majority were basically some version of a famous art piece (painting or sculpture seemed most popular) rendered in dress form. What this was giving was Art as Fashion, not Fashion is Art. These outfits centered other art as the art, and fashion as merely the medium of delivery. To put it differently, fashion was reduced to mere materiel.

Which is unfortunate, imo. As noted, I think the question “is fashion art” is a really interesting one and worth exploring. I think there are designers out there who have and do treat fashion as art – that is to say, as a mode of creative expression. I tend to agree with Tschabalala Self, who is quoted by Vogue as saying “[t]o me the separation between fashion and art is a false dichotomy. They’re both means of expression, and they’re both vehicles … that allow artists to express the concerns and desires of our time.” They go on to say, “when we dress, we all make a statement.”

This reminds me of what Charlie Porter writes in his book Bring No Clothes: Bloomsbury and the Philosophy of Fashion (on which, more soon):

“… the clothes we put on each morning can lock us into acquiescence to the structures of power that we find so crushing. If we were to pay more attention to our thinking through clothing, we could begin to wriggle loose.”

Society has many ways of enforcing its structures and surveilling individual compliance, and clothing can be one of the ways that bodies, specifically, are subjected to that enforcement and surveillance. As Porter argues in his book, clothing is archetypal. Fashion as art is intimately about the body – more so than any other art form, perhaps, given that it is literally worn on the body. In this way, it is set apart from other art.

This is the piece that, on reflection, I think was missing from the Met Gala. By focusing so much on other art pieces, fashion’s essential relationship to the body was obscured, as well as its ability to communicate in a very unique and specific way ideas about our bodies’ existence in the world of today. You might be thinking: OK, but what’s the big deal? Ultimately, the Met Gala is just an excuse for rich people to parade in pretty clothes before the admiring eyes of the unwashed masses – right? [I say that tongue in cheek, but not really.] And on a certain level, that’s true. But it’s also an opportunity to hold a different, interesting public conversation about fashion and art – and by reducing fashion, once more, to frivolous fripperies, we are reinforcing the message that it’s irrelevant. Which, in turn, obscures the very issue that Porter highlighted: fashion is not frivolous. It is art and like all art can be used for good (self expression) and bad (aka propaganda and reinforcement of social structures).

Anyway, that’s my take on the Met Gala.

I would love to hear your thoughts.