'This Is My Life' — Billy Porter Slams Vogue's Harry Styles Cover
Billy Porter is unhappy with Vogue's Harry Styles cover.
"Last November, Harry, 27, made history as the first solo male cover star of US Vogue in its 127 years, in a shoot which saw him wear a Gucci dress and feminine garments," writes the Daily Mail.
But the Emmy-winning "Pose" actor says Styles came to the ball late and stole all the coverage.
"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," he said in a new interview with London's Sunday Times (behind a firewall).
"I'm not dragging Harry Styles, but he is the one you're going to try and use to represent this new conversation? He doesn't care, he's just doing it because it's the thing to do," Porter added. "This is politics for me. This is my life. I had to fight my entire life to get to the place where I could wear a dress to the Oscars and not be gunned now. All he has to do is be white and straight."
Porter was the first gay black man to win a lead acting Emmy in 2019. He has been wearing dresses to red carpet events for years, including a custom-made Christian Siriano tuxedo dress to the 2019 Oscars and donned a winged Cleopatra gold bodysuit to the Met Gala the same year."
He called out the fashion industry for ignoring his groundbreaking style.
"I. Personally. Changed. The. Whole. Game. And that is not ego, that is just fact," he said. "I was the first one doing it and now everybody is doing it."
Porter's autobiography, "Unprotected: A Memoir" is available on book sites and in stores.
Check out some of Porter's classic looks below, including one with a doubting Glenn Close: