Billy Porter criticizes Harry Styles Vogue cover: ‘All he has to do is be white and straight’

CNN says since Harry Styles’ became the first man to grace the cover of American Vogue alone almost one year ago — and did so wearing a full-length dress — the British singer has come to symbolize a new, more expressive era of men’s fashion. But he’s the wrong face for the moment, according to actor Billy Porter, who has built a reputation around his gender-fluid fashion choices.

In an interview with British paper The Sunday Times, Porter argued there was a disconnect in the opportunities afforded to him as a Black, gay man and those given to Styles. “I feel like the fashion industry has accepted me because they have to,” he said. “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.”

https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/billy-porter-harry-styles/index.html

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After rejecting gendered fashion norms on red carpets and sharing what androgynous style means to him in interviews, Harry eventually became the first man to land a Vogue cover last December and was photographed in several extravagant skirts and dresses for the spread. pic.twitter.com/xb3PpIop4v

— BuzzFeed (@BuzzFeed) October 18, 2021