This past awards season, Pose star Billy Porter emerged as the must-watch star of the red carpet. The actor wore suits and dresses with equal aplomb, and he not only ignited a conversation on genderless dressing, but seemed to unleash a long-suppressed conviction that actors—and anyone—should be able to wear whatever they want, whether it’s a tuxedo or a ball gown. (Or, as he showed at the Oscars, both.)
The man helping Porter shape this look is stylist Sam Ratelle, who has worked with the actor for a little more than a year. From the beginning of their collaboration, Ratelle and Porter knew the red carpet could be a starting point to challenge assumptions about gender and clothing. We spoke about developing Porter’s “genderless” style, how you call upon a fashion house for men’s and women’s clothing, and why the whole world is ready to wear skirts.
GQ: Billy, for a lot of people, is becoming this face, or is this face of gender-fluid dressing. I think that for a long time, that seemed to mean something really specific to people: it’s kind of a gender-ambiguous, suiting look. But he’s totally changed what that means to people. And I was wondering if you were thinking about that when you first started working together, and what that means for the two of you?
Sam Ratelle: I think innately, it’s foundational. That’s actually who he is. He happens to be that human being. For me, objectively, clothing is just clothing. I don’t really associate a gender [with] it. I just think people should wear what they like. And I was thinking about this the other day, and I was like, “Do people think I wear dresses and stuff?” because [styling Billy] is what I do. That doesn’t mean that I’m opposed to it. I wear women’s clothing when I feel like it’s perfect for me. And I think it’s become just an aspect of something that has become a society standard.
When Billy and I came together, and we realized that this had a political angle to it, it became even more exciting to work on it, because we want to represent people who are nonconforming and gender-fluid. And we realized that there were so many other people like him who didn’t feel like they had a voice. At least we have great platforms. We have this TV show, and we’re able to do all of these events. But a lot of people can’t really do that.
I come from a Latino family who is extremely religious. I can’t actually wear things like that around my family. And the more I analyze myself, I’m like, “Maybe that’s why I don’t wear things like that.” I never had the freedom to. Even now, as I’m going through this notion of what gender is, with him, it’s kind of like this blurred line. Is he allowed to be on a women’s magazine on the cover? Well, why not? Who cares? What is gender? What does that mean? I think it’s just a way of society segregating us instead of just looking at us objectively as humans. The spirit and how you identify as yourself, it’s a lot broader than those two little boxes.
I love what you’re saying about feeling like wearing what is appropriate for the occasion. That is such an interesting way to reframe it, because in some cases, you put Billy in a velvet suit. And then in other cases, you put him in a gown. And it’s not necessarily what’s appropriate for a gender or one gender or one sex. It’s like, This is a velvet suit night. This is a gown night. So can you talk to me a little bit about your thinking there?
My styling is always situational. That’s my method. I think there’s a time and a place for anything in life. And that also applies to clothes. There’s an outfit to go to the grocery store, and there’s an outfit for you to do your laundry. If we’re going to the Oscars, that’s specific.
Clothing is collaborative art. Let’s say I’m painting a painting—it’s not going to talk back to me. If I’m dressing someone, they’re going to be like, “Bitch, I’m hot.“ “I can’t walk in this.”
And I think right now, we’re going through a phase where people are really all about loving themselves because the pendulum’s gone the other way because we had it so crappy for so long. So now people are really interested in expressing themselves. I think that’s beautiful. That’s happening because of political reasons. So I think for me, dressing is really just mostly a sense of expression and a sense of convenience. And that’s where I go from it. But at the end of the day, it’s always, always situational. There’s a time and a place for a ballgown, and there’s a time and place to be naked. And there’s a time and place for a bathing suit. It just depends on what it is.
What interests me about your thinking in this way is that there’s been such an orientation over the past decade, or even two decades, of this “desk to dinner dressing,” and this sense that when you get up in the morning, you should put on something and be able to wear it for the rest of the day. Now that fashion has really become this place to explore identity and self-representation, this sense of occasional dressing is returning with a political kind of stance to it.
And I was so surprised by you contacting me because, one, I’ve read GQ for a long, long time. It’s really honestly where I learned styling to begin with…. Even seeing the progression, where we’ve gone, specifically in menswear, specifically for a magazine like GQ, I remember back in the day, embellishments and even specific colors—they were considered “too gay” for men to wear. And now it’s kind of what we see down the runway, right?
We’re seeing all these fascinating shoes, and even the hemlines are getting shorter. I just remember a time where you would wear something like that, and people would call you a faggot. And now it’s in every magazine. And to me, it’s just wonderful because it even goes back to that notion of: it’s really just clothing.
It’s just like why I put Billy in those Gucci shoes at the Golden Globes and with the white stockings. I just wanted to remind people Louis XIV was wearing pumps. So why is it specifically when I put heels on him, it’s such an ordeal? I’m like, “Why? People have been doing this for ages.” Jesus wore dresses. You call it a robe, but it’s a dress.
Well, and also he wore them because they were more comfortable. That’s the other thing, too.
That’s something that we’re learning too. Billy is just living his life because he’s like, “Nobody told me that it was so cool to wear a dress.”
It’s really, once again, a matter of convenience. Does that make you feel wonderful? You like that kaftan? Wear it. I give you that power to do so because we have people constantly telling us what to do all the time. And it’s really deeper than that for me. It’s really allowing people the space to just express themselves and be who you are. And if you go to the store and if you like that, honey, buy it and wear it.
I remember around Oscar season, the New York Times chatted with Billy at a party. And he said that when the two of you were first reaching out to fashion houses and asking for male and female clothes, the fashion houses were like, “Whoa.”
They’re still not having it. Some of them are. Some people have been extremely gracious to us, people like Michael Kors is wonderful. The Blondes have been amazing. Specifically, the more highbrow brands are very, very conflicted about their brands being affiliated with something that’s not their customer base. And then it becomes an aspect of money. But no: I’m not putting a black suit on my client. He doesn’t want to wear that. He wants the women’s collection. And generally it’s a corporate response, but it pretty much means we don’t want you to wear the ladies clothes because it’s too girly.
My thing is always like, well, you can’t keep me from buying the clothes. So fine. We’ll wear them anyway, and we’ll wear them however we buy them. And we’ll just wear them and not bug you. I think if you’re a person that lives in that truth, then all of a sudden, you don’t have that availability. You just have to kind of lobby for those things. We still haven’t gone to Chanel. It doesn’t mean that we won’t go there. It’s just a different kind of ask. You know what I mean?
You work with the people who want to work with you. And it doesn’t mean that I can’t go to a major house. Sometimes I don’t even try, because I already know the response, and I let them come to me because it’s much easier to do it with an emerging designer who’s excited and hungry. And it is more important [for a brand] to give me all of these parameters than for me to go to a fashion house. And then even generally, sometimes it’s like then they’ll talk to us, but then we have to wear the full look. Well, then what am I doing? Am I a shopping assistant? What is he, a fit model?
I would say about 80% of the time we reach out, people have been extremely lovely. It’s just now that’s kind of our next barrier, to really hit up these massive fashion brands and couture. We’ve kind of done everything else, but at this point, I only want to do it if we’re going to do it the right way and if he’s going to feel comfortable. We just have to be in a safe space for him. And so that’s kind of where we’re at. And I’m very, very excited. He’s never been to Paris for fashion week before or London or Milan. So the next leg for us is really pretty much to go out there, build relationships. There’s so many of them who have been so amazing.
As you’re talking about this brand mix, obviously you are working with some big places like Michael Kors. But a lot of the brands that you’re talking about are much more under the radar, and it’s so interesting that you’ve been able to create this interesting conversation around men’s red carpet fashion, and red carpet fashion in general, without using those kind of major names. It was not that long ago that if you wanted to do anything on the red carpet, you had to wear these specific brands. And essentially what you’re saying is that actually you don’t.
We come from theater, and it really comes from there for me. And I’m really trying to go back into what styling means. During Fashion Week, Billy was like, “It’s really styling, isn’t it, that makes a lot of this work.” And it’s not that I’m tooting my own horn or people like me, but the clothing is clothing. Putting it together, it’s a completely different job. And people have to do that every single day, and that comes from within.
And how would you summarize the style that you guys have developed together?
It’s genderless. It’s genderless fashion to me. Clothes, they don’t have an assigned gender on their own. We apply that to them. So it’s really us. We can say that it’s womenswear or that it’s menswear. But once again, it’s going back to somebody’s deciding that. Somebody’s telling you that that scarf is only for women. Well, who are you to say that? And I don’t mean that disrespectfully. But, well, why can’t it be for a man? Are we saying that based on this pre-constructed notion of what we have, of what it means to be a man and a woman? Somebody decided that, too.
Billy was the red carpet star to follow this past season. And we just wrapped up men’s fashion week. And you saw a lot of dresses and a lot of skirts and a lot of gender-fluid and genderless clothing. Obviously there were a lot of designers who were doing that before. But why are people changing their minds about this now?
I think people are changing. The ball is in our court now. [The customers] get to pay your bills. I decide if I want the product or not. So where’s the demand? The demand is: we want to wear whatever we want. We want to wear dresses. We want to wear cool things. So that’s what you need to go and make. And I think the audience is informing the person that’s making the product
The other thing, when you really think of it: gay guys. We have money, and we don’t have children.
Give me a pump, and I’ll buy it. We’re losing out on a whole market of people who actually would wear heels, like gay men or people who are androgynous or gender-nonconforming. But we don’t make shoes for them. I have the hardest time finding shoes for Billy because they’re literally ... Most women’s shoe brands make shoes to about, let’s say, 11, 12. A 13 in women’s sizes, they don’t exist. They have to be custom made, usually overseas if you want a really good shoe. They don’t get here for a month. By that point, there is no point. You’ve lost the opportunity, so then we just move on.
So are high heels the next big thing for Billy to tackle?
Billy and I are thinking about coming up with a shoe line together. You start thinking about sizing. Is it one size fits all? Do we have sizing for women and men? But what if you’re gender-fluid? Then what is your size? Do we get a gender-fluid sizing for you? We just live in such a world where it’s just been one or the other. And now we have options, and I think people want options. They don’t want to be told that they’re limited. And I think that’s also the other aspect of it. It’s limitless fashion, if you want to call it. I don’t want to be limited with what I have to wear based on what you tell me. Who are you?
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.