Fashion Neurosis with Hilton Als

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0:50Welcome to Fashion Neurosis, Hilton Alls. Thank you for having me. Can you tell me what you're wearing today and why you chose these particular clothes? Well, I've worked behind the camera for a number of years as a picture editor and fashion shoots, styling. And I realized that it would be good to have a white shirt for contrast with my skin. And then also a dark sweater in contrast with the white shirt. So there was some thought put into this. And how about your jeans? Where are they from? Oh, actually, the thing about these jeans is that I don't ever wear them. They were in the closet, and I have a favorite pair of jeans, but I couldn't find them, so this is what you get.

1:54and you're a pulitzer prize winning writer and also a curator and you're also one of the most exciting people to follow on instagram you make it so interesting do you enjoy the intensity of the short format i do um i think that like many of us um who grew up during the great age of magazines like ID and Mademoiselle. There was this great moment in the, I would say, the late 80s, early 90s, when there was a kind of cross-cultural exchange between British fashion editors and American fashion editors. So great people like Camilla Nickerson were coming over. And then And there was a marvelous woman, I can't remember her name, but she was the fashion director of Mademoiselle under Gabby Doppelt when Gabby was the editor there.

2:57And so I think that what I've always been interested in is the event of fashion. I loved the finished pictures, but I actually love the company more. And I love the reality of making a little movie. Yeah. It was really like filmmaking to me. And so I don't work in fashion anymore, but I think you're right that it's an extension of the short form that I grew up loving in magazines, fashion magazines in particular, where writing was also important. There were great writers being published in Vogue and Mademoiselle and I.D. and Jane and all those great places. So I've always just been very drawn to this idea of word and text being equal and also finite.

3:57That stories had a certain intensity and then they disappeared. Do you remember her name? She was a fat, she had white hair. Emma? Something. From Mademoiselle? Yes. I didn't know. I think you're too young. I don't know. I think I'm, I think we're the same age. No, but I think, well, you're younger in spirit. Emma something. But Gabby had all those great girls. Yeah. Camilla was such a force and I was at Vibe magazine and we would write fan letters to each other. Oh my God, that's so great. It's so at the beginning of a way of thinking and believing in images and text that I've never really gotten over and I tried to do.

4:57so the Instagram really is such a convenient way of carrying on that tradition because you can you can do anything but you also have to kind of understand the emotional temperature of what you're doing it's like having your own little magazine yeah and so things that don't that look as though they're sort of random juxtapositions. You begin to feel the emotional connection after a while. I like making people pause on Instagram and try to understand how they feel about the images and the text as opposed to me telling them how to feel. Yeah, well, it really, it's very effective and very evocative because there's a lot of tension in the posts you do and a lot of intensity.

5:53Yes. And so they really resonate. Every time I see one, I feel like I'm getting an influx of something and a kind of like the beginning of the movie with all the setup, which is a real talent. I hate that word, storytelling, but it is. It's like, you know, it's like the beginning of a thriller. It's great. Well, it's sort of the principle of movie making that's fascinating. And now I guess we could say TV making is that every story begins with a problem. And if you think about it, it's true. Something has to be solved. And I think that with Instagram, what I like very much is the stop and start of the story.

6:42that I present the problem and then I go on to the next problem. That's so genius. That's exactly it. Yes. Oh, I love that. That's so good. Yes. And I think also working at the New Yorker, you're working in a short form that's long.

7:05And I think I feel very much like Deanna Arbus where she said that she didn't arrange the subject, that she arranged her body to suit the subject. And I feel that way as a writer at The New Yorker, or whether it's Instagram or curating, that I'm reshaping my body to suit the subject. So whether it's writing this week about Robert Rauschenberg, I'm changing my body in order to understand and Port Arthur, Texas, where he's from, the South, its influence. I take my own experience of those places to understand where he came from. So similarly with Instagram, I've sometimes taken things down because they interrupt the flow.

8:03They don't contribute to it. And again, it's a sort of feeling. And that's what Billie Holiday said about her music and the blues, that it was a mixed up thing that you have to feel. And so I don't think that there's one straight way to do anything to the great consternation of my editors everywhere. Because I don't, I think that the art of anything should be reflective of the life. Yeah. And that life doesn't take us down a narrow path to anything. It's so interesting, you know, the feeling thing, because this mad idea that you either think or feel, as though you can't do them both at the same time, or you don't express your thoughts through your verbalize your feelings as if they're somehow kind of random rather than, I don't know, I hardly know what I'm talking about except for everything you said makes complete sense.

9:16Yes. And the way you express it is, I suppose that's what's so enjoyable about reading you is how all these things happen at once that you describe. Yes, I think that it would be, I've enjoyed reading about you and your sister's novel because I had a sister who passed, but when I read and saw Hiddy as kinky, I was so moved by the mother figure figure because my sister was always searching for something. She didn't go to Morocco, but I think that the interior life of that character meant a lot to me. And I think one of the things that meant a lot to me in terms of her search was that it wasn't just one thing.

10:28She didn't know how to be one thing. And I think children really want predictability. Yeah. And they really want things to be the same. And yet at the same time, they know, I think children know even before adults, that things will be changing. They're changing. Yeah. All the time. interior self is changing and I think I just never knew how to write or take a picture that didn't show that I don't know why why it was so for me but it has always been so for me that it's never one thing so I don't know how difficult I thought this makes my personal relationships, but I think it makes me a very good friend because I know that you might have this feeling today, but that tomorrow I might present something else because of events, because of a wound or someone kissing you in a nice way.

11:49It's going to change the atmosphere. Because in your book, The Women, you say your mother avoided mentioning that she knew you wore her hosiery under your jeans when you were growing up. And you say you wanted to have her near you always. And you said, I wore my mother and sister's clothes when they were not at home. And I wondered which clothes did you like wearing best? unfortunately Bella Freud wasn't designing them everything would have been so good to slip under there but I remember in particular it would be kind of hosiery or it would be even just a little slip you know sort of undergarment but they were always things that you could hide.

12:53So I only got brave enough to wear skirts and dresses in my late 20s and I had a wonderful friend who made me a beautiful dress that I used to wear all the time. Wow. But I never felt, I think that these, I never felt gender specific about clothing. I always felt that my sisters and my mother, by example, were giving me permission to be an artist or to be queer or to be a humanist ultimately is what we're saying when we say we're a feminist or queer. We're saying that we're a humanist. And so I think my siblings and my mother in particular gave me that by example. My mother was a very kind woman.

13:59My sisters were a little bit sharper edged. And I think watching them as a child gave me language. because I was listening, but it also gave me a sense of how social life changes. Again, we're going back to this idea of changing and evolution. I really am grateful to them for not mentioning it, even if they knew. Yeah. Because then you're free to kind of invent, right? If you make clothing, I remember a Vogue story, a Bella Freud Vogue story that Camilla styled. And I was so moved by these young girls in ties and shirts. And I felt a level of identification with them that wouldn't have been possible if my family had said what I was doing was wrong.

15:08Gosh. And do you ever... I think that was, was that Jung and Tyler? No, I think, was it, I think... Was it Karim? I think it was, I'm trying to remember the photographer because first of all it was shot by Michael Roberts and then he painted all our hair silver and Alex Shulman freaked out and made them reshoot it with another photographer. Yes. It was so wonderful. Oh, Michael, wow. Oh, he was so great. He was just fantastic. Do you ever remember feeling shame about something you wore? And have you ever been motivated to disguise yourself with clothes? I think it's a sort of two-pronged answer.

16:05The shame that I felt on one Easter, we would go, my brother and I would go to our grandmother's with my sister who was closest to me in age. And I remember feeling very put together except for my shoes, that my shoes were not as beautiful as the rest of the outfit, that they were scuffed old shoes. And I remember feeling enormous shame and anger about not having a complete look. And that was one instance. and the other instance of trying to hide

17:00I don't remember trying to hide clothing I remember trying to hide a magazine Playgirl and it had a pictorial on Jim Brown and I remember taking it from my cousin's room it was in a very large house and I remember staring and staring and then having to put it under the bathtub because I didn't have time to return it to her room. So I don't know if that has anything to do with clothing, but it had a lot to do with Jim Brown being naked in the magazine. Oh, God. Because in The Women, you say, my propensity for identifying with women has been the dramatic center of my life. Yes. What does that feel like?

17:55I think it has made me feel two things. I think it's made me feel that I have a community, and then I think it's also made me feel great loneliness. because I'm not... I haven't had a life that many women have had, which includes children and those responsibilities. On the other hand, there's great emotional identification with what I would call striving. Yeah. Striving to make a home, to love friends, love children, and also to do one's work. I think I've had parallel experiences that are not the same, but enough so that the narrative has always enthralled me as being similar. but as I grow older I know it's not the same and that the compromises are not the same and so that's the loneliness part yeah that is not the same as a as a woman's life but the identification makes me feel comfort at times yeah your mother used the term auntie man to denote a gay man and it's kind of a very sympathetic description it struck me as that that and i wondered does she ever refer to you as auntie an aunt um i think that um one of the things that uh i think culturally it's sort of again we're going back to this idea of not just one thing right so when she's using words like that she's speaking out of her culture right yeah and then when she's speaking to me it's a different she's speaking to hilton so if you have a kind of cultural language it doesn't necessarily mean that it's the language of intimacy yeah it's your cultural language so i think when she's speaking like that it's out of her culture and then when she's speaking to hilton she's speaking to hilton yeah so it's more like a kind of different end of the telescope when she uses that it would be a tantamount to your father saying something in german that you don't understand yeah yeah but he but it's his culture yeah you know what i mean yeah i do and then he's speaking to bella yeah he never actually spoke german because he hated it so much oh really what happened yeah oh wow i mean the only thing we talked a bit about brecht and things and i was obsessed with some of the songs yes and then that was the only time we communicated but again exactly as you said He was talking to me and he wasn't using a cultural kind of term.

21:13Yes. So it was suddenly intimate. Did he feel odd about having an accent? No, I don't think. He never mentioned that. And he probably never noticed. And it was a sort of inflection. It was really nice. I loved it. Yes. That kind of European accent, it seemed like. Yes, yes. But then sometimes if he'd be booking a table or saying something on the telephone, and he'd try and do an English R, and it would sound so hilarious, like a child or something. Yes, yes. R, R, like.

22:08And I read when you were young, you'd learn about someone that you found interesting and then you'd want to dress like them. And I wondered who you chose. Oh, my goodness. Such a good idea. It is true. And I just thought of them the other day. There was a newspaper editor of the New York Tribune. This is almost 200 years ago. And I was completely besotted by him. He was a socialist and a vegetarian. And his name was Horace Greeley. Oh, yes. And I used to wear cravats. I would make style myself to look like Horace Greeley. I don't know what I was thinking. but my imagination was so rich in terms of wanting to connect to other people that I started to dress like them.

23:12And you're making me fall in love with my mother again, Bella, because she never said anything about it. And I used to have a desk. She bought me a desk. It was sort of a break front. And there was a desk that came down and that was my desk. And I remember writing with an ink pot and, you know, pen. A quill. Almost a quill. One of those ink pens. Yeah. You know, you dip it in. Yeah. Because I wanted to be in the 19th century like Horace Greeley. Yes. I was also completely in love with a woman reporter from that period named Nellie Bly. And she went around the world by herself, but it wasn't even in 180 days.

24:15It was something like 170 days or something to that effect. and she was I read this book over and over again Nellie Bly girl reporter and I was so in love with the 19th century American spirit and then I discovered Emerson and Melville and all those great people but it really began with a poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar and I used to read to my mother my brother from his poetry and then I would be Horace Greeley and then I would be Nellie Bly somewhere in there. So these are three people who had an enormous influence on me. I liked the transcendentalists like Louisa May Alcott's father, Concord, Massachusetts, all of those stories about Americans, the American spirit, striving for something, for some ideal of purity.

25:23I was completely in love. But you're making me fall in love with my mother again, because I would have these readings on Sundays, reading Paul Lawrence Dunbar poetry, and she would make my brother sit and then she would just sit there and listen she didn't say this feels insane or um why is my child reading poetry aloud she was just present for it so so wonderful that's such a so encouraging yes very the first exhibition you went to as a child was Rauschenberg at MoMA and you said the docent who talked to you about the work opened the door and made me step out of the closet of my thinking. Yes.

26:15And she gave me enough information to know my intuition was correct. And I wondered how would you describe the closet that you were in? I think that when children, when you're given language,

26:35it sets you free. I don't think I had any I didn't have any critical language when I was a teenager.

26:46And what the docent gave me was a way of deciphering what I was looking at. So that if I had the language and the historical context for something, I would be able to see the thing and come out into the light of my thinking. Until then, until you have language or history or context, you are in the dark about what something looks like in terms of what something feels like you have the feeling but you don't have any way of expression self-expression and then when you're given this language it's like a key a light goes off yeah because suddenly you're not in the morass of your feelings but you're in the light of critical inquiry.

27:51Yeah. And that's what happened. I just remembered who was in your shoot, by the way. It was Stella. No. Stella Tennant. Mm-hmm. And she had a white shirt and a black tie and her hand was resting on something and the nails were chipped a little bit, the varnish. was that the Stephen Mizell shoot we're going all over the place it was in Vogue yes and it was styled by Izzy Blow there was another one that Camilla did then after that but Isabella Blow did do it yes yeah yeah that was amazing yes because I remember she she said darling theme is christening dresses. Can you make a christening dress? So I said, okay.

28:50And then I made this dress that had a sort of white Peter Pan collar that I could imagine vaguely might have. I mean, it wasn't a christening dress. And then the whole theme changed, but that's what I'd made.

29:10And it was incredible. I tried for a little bit of time to make a, I wanted to make a documentary about Isabella Blow. I didn't know her, but then it was kind of preempted by this film that's coming out. Oh, yeah. I wonder what that will be like. Me too. God, you would have done a great documentary about her. Yes. She was amazing. Yes. and do you think growing up in a matriarchal family plays havoc with our our idea of men and their power um that's a great question i think growing up in a matriarchal society

29:58makes you suspicious of power because you see how power works on actual bodies and people, that it's not an abstraction, that power can misshape people or shut them out of things or deny them things that they should have, like information about how to make your life better or what schools to send your children to. So I think it's always, it's growing up in a matriarchal society for sure has influenced That's my skepticism about power, absolutely. And you're a critic and you speak a lot about the value of love. And how do the criticism and the love go together? I think criticism and love should go together.

30:58Because how do we know if we're getting any better? if there's not a loving person to tell us that we're getting better or worse or to protect us from our worst instincts. I think the criticism, when I was writing theater criticism in particular, I was trying to do something that was beyond a yes or no vote. I was trying to enter into the world of the production and tell the artists what I felt and saw in a way that was not a mamby-pamby supportive way, but a way to bolster the production. So that was critical love. I think that a lot of critics stand outside of the enterprise at too great a distance.

32:04I think part of what makes regular reviewing so exhausting for me anyway is this or my tendency to, again, And it goes back to the Arbus quote of shaping my body to fit the production, you know, and what they were trying to do. So sometimes if I felt it didn't have enough fingers or enough of an arm, it was what my body responded to. And it was my job to find the language for what was missing. So this goes back to the Rauschenberg docent story of someone giving me language to articulate the feeling. I think criticism is a great way of understanding the power of language, but also the deep mystery of it.

33:14that you can't capture something so fleeting as a performance, but you can capture the experience of feeling for three hours. And when you have that feeling, where does it occur in your body and how does it travel up into your language? That's a great question. I think it begins in the pit of the stomach. But I think it depends. I think that if it's a bad production or a bad book or poem or piece of clothing, you can feel it almost sort of like a sort of sour resin in the soul. But when it's something that is going to lift you up and free you, you feel it immediately in your heart and your head.

34:10It's almost sort of a feeling of being almost slightly shy around it, embarrassed, stripped a little bit bare. Blushing. It's a blushing relationship to the truth. Oh, that's great. Yeah. Yeah. It's sometimes when I think about or I feel it and it's almost like it goes into a color scheme in my system. Yes. Kind of the discomfort is one way. But I find if I can just allow it to kind of go around a bit, then I can get the thought that it's, I can get the idea that it's kind of suggesting to me rather than just a panic from the feeling. Yes. Yes. I think that's certainly a viable thing. You said about your mother, I was like her weirdness, her weirdness realized.

35:22And what did that look like, literally? What was the look that connected you both? I think given the context of that culture, I think it was our kindness. I think it was a very aberrant thing in that world, sort of West Indian world that my mother grew up in. And there was a premium on a kind of teasing or distance. And my mother didn't do that to people. She didn't other people. Yeah. And so this cultural othering was something that I don't think that she was comfortable with. And it wasn't certainly something that I was comfortable with. Being a queer kid, you you're carrying secrets. And when something is when a culture is othering, you're so afraid of being found out.

36:34and I think that my kindness and sensitivity was something that my mother had and I think that that was the weirdness of us in that culture. Right. Gosh, that's so remarkable because all it takes is a mismatch and then it's just terrifying really, isn't it? Yes, yes. To be stranded. Yes. God, how amazing. She sounds so marvelous. Oh, you would have loved her. She sounds amazing. Yes. Because you also talk brilliantly about clothes worn by women. And you said, my sister wore pencil skirts to play handball. She did. And it's so vivid. Yes. Do you have a favorite garment you like to see a girl wearing?

37:26Oh, that's a great question. I'm always a sucker for fringe because my mother had fringe. I'm also always very susceptible to really good men's shoes and women. I'm also very susceptible to a pleated skirt.

37:57and Peter Pan collars, a tie,