Hilton Als

Summary

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Fashion Neurosis with Bella Freud

Episode: Fashion Neurosis with Hilton Als

Date: January 14, 2026
Guest: Hilton Als (Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, curator, and cultural critic)
Host: Bella Freud

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Overview

In this episode, Bella Freud welcomes Hilton Als to the Fashion Neurosis couch for a deeply personal and wide-ranging conversation about fashion, identity, creativity, queerness, family, and the emotional landscape of style. Through their dialogue, the podcast explores how clothing is intertwined with our lives, histories, and how we move through the world—revealing more than just surface impressions.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Hilton’s Relationship with Clothing and Style

• Outfit Choices & Practicality
  • Hilton describes his attire (white shirt, dark sweater, seldom-worn jeans) as both intentional and circumstantial:
    • “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.” (01:30)
    • His jeans were chosen simply because his favorites were missing: “They were in the closet and I have a favorite pair but I couldn’t find them. So this is what you get.” (02:03)
• Fashion as Event and Company
  • Hilton reminisces about working in fashion and the excitement around the creation process:
    • “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.” (02:38-04:38)
• Impact of Family & Gender on Expression
  • Hilton speaks about wearing his mother and sister’s clothes as a child, the comfort and complexity:
    • “I wore my mother and sister’s clothes when they were not at home. … They were always things that you could hide. So I only got brave enough to wear skirts and dresses in my late 20s.” (12:22-13:38)
  • He resists strict gender divides in clothing, expressing both artistic and personal liberation:
    • “I never felt gender specific about clothing. … By example, they were giving me permission to be an artist or to be queer or to be a humanist.” (13:38-14:10)
  • Family’s silent acceptance gave him freedom for self-invention.

The Connection Between Words, Images & Storytelling

• Short Form Storytelling and Instagram
  • Hilton explains his attraction to short-form:
    • “Stories had a certain intensity and then they disappeared… Instagram really is such a convenient way of carrying on that tradition… you also have to kind of understand the emotional temperature of what you’re doing. It’s like having your own little magazine.” (02:38-05:42)
  • Intent is not to prescribe feelings, but to evoke pause and self-reflection:
    • “I like making people pause... and try to understand how they feel about the images and the text, as opposed to me telling them how to feel.” (05:43-06:10)
• Storytelling as Problem-Solving
  • On the storytelling structure:
    • “Every story begins with a problem… With Instagram, what I like very much is the stop and start of the story… I present the problem and then I go on to the next problem.” (06:47-07:15)
• Arbus Inspiration & Artistic Flexibility
  • He draws a parallel with Diane Arbus’ philosophy:
    • “She didn't arrange the subject, 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.” (07:23-08:46)

Family, Childhood, and Evolving Identity

• Change and Unpredictability in Childhood
  • Hilton reflects on how his family’s unpredictability—especially his sister’s searching—shaped him:
    • “Children really want predictability 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 all the time.” (09:58-09:58)
• On Shame, Disguise, and Liberation in Dress
  • Hilton recalls shame over imperfect shoes as a child:
    • “I remember feeling very put together, except for my shoes, that my shoes were not as beautiful as the rest… I remember feeling enormous shame and anger about not having a complete look.” (16:29-18:09)
  • No significant attempts to disguise himself with clothes, but did remember hiding a magazine instead.

Gender, Community, and Loneliness

• Women as Emotional Center
  • Writes in The Women: “My propensity for identifying with women has been the dramatic center of my life.” (18:09-18:20)
  • This identification gives him a sense of community but also loneliness:
    • “The identification makes me feel comfort at times… 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.” (18:23-19:47)
• Language of Intimacy vs. Culture
  • Explains his mother’s use of “auntie man” as cultural, not personal:
    • “When she’s using words like that, she’s speaking out of her culture, right?… When she’s speaking to Hilton, she’s speaking to Hilton.” (20:05-21:10)

The Role of Exemplars and Inspiration

• Fashioning Identity After Historical Figures
  • As a child, Hilton styled himself after figures like Horace Greeley and Nellie Bly—his way of connecting and expressing admiration:
    • “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.” (22:48-24:21)
    • Mother’s support in these endeavors was nurturing and non-judgmental.

Art and Language as Keys to Self

• The Closet of Thinking—Experiencing Art as Liberation
  • On seeing a Robert Rauschenberg exhibition as a child:
    • “When you're given language, it sets you free… The docent gave me a way of deciphering what I was looking at so… I would be able to see the thing and come out into the light of my thinking.” (26:33-27:52)

Power, Criticism, and Love

• Matriarchal Influence and Power
  • Skepticism toward power stems from witnessing how power ‘misshapes’ people in a matriarchy:
    • “Growing up in a matriarchal society makes you suspicious of power because you see how power works on actual bodies and people, that it’s not an abstraction…” (30:16-31:10)
• Criticism as Loving Engagement
  • Hilton’s brand of criticism is “critical love,” aiming to bolster rather than simply judge:
    • “I think criticism and love should go together because how do we know if we're getting any better, if there's not a loving person to tell us… I was trying to enter into the world of the production and tell the artist what I felt and saw… in a way to bolster the production. So that was critical love.” (31:19-33:56)

Emotional Responses to Art and Fashion

• Physical Sensations and Artistic Response
  • Describes the somatic nature of criticism:
    • “When it’s something that is going to lift you up and free you, you feel it immediately in your heart and your head… It’s a blushing relationship to the truth.” (34:04-34:55)
  • Bella relates with color and emotional resonance:
    • “It almost goes into a color scheme in my system…” (34:55-35:34)

Maternal Kindness, Otherness, and Culture

• Mother as Model for Kindness
  • Believes familial kindness was a subtle form of rebellion:
    • “Our kindness… it was a very aberrant thing in that world… my mother didn't do that to people. She didn't other people. …I think that my kindness and sensitivity was something that my mother had and … that was the weirdness of us in that culture.” (35:45-37:17)

Fashion Fetishes and Observations

• Garments Hilton Loves on Women

  • “I’m always a sucker for fringe… Also very susceptible to really good men’s shoes in women… a pleated skirt and Peter Pan collars, a tie, a jacket that gives you a kind of misshapen look.” (37:39-38:47)
  • Fondness for uniforms and ‘misshapen’ tailoring, stemming from West Indian and British influences.

• Obsession with Reinvention

  • Enjoys how fashion continually renews itself:
    • “I like that it keeps going on and that even if you’re not directly involved, there are always wonderful legions of young people who are out there reinventing things, making new stories, new scenarios…” (40:06-41:03)

• On Attraction and Awkward Taste

  • Preference for authenticity over perfection:
    • “If you fancy someone and don’t like what they’re wearing… I just want to style that… The erotic part of it is undressing them to dress them.” (41:51-42:46)

Celebrity, Gender, and Performance

• Meeting Prince
  • Hilton describes his brief relationship with Prince as surreal and deeply affecting:
    • “Friends is too strong a word… What a beauty, you know? Just an extraordinary kind of head. Something marvelous washed up from another planet onto our shores.” (44:17-45:08)
  • Prince’s sense of self and gender fluidity fascinated Hilton:
    • “He was such an admixture of straight, gay, queer, hetero... you would have to tap into your own feminine... to really be a feminist, which is what Prince was, I feel, which is to say humanist.” (46:50-47:40)

Language, Literature, and Lightning-Bolt Moments

• Favorite Lyricists and Writers

  • Hilton admires Elvis Costello, Hal David, Burt Bacharach, and lyrics that read like philosophy:
    • “Hal David… wrote the most incredible lyrics. They were like philosophy to me. A chair is still a chair.” (50:15-50:37)

• First Books as Crucial Key

  • Electrifying early reads: Eleanor Roosevelt’s biography (“She was such a beautiful person”) and Bella’s own experience with Jack Kerouac (“It was like a key to something”). (51:27-52:52)

Personal Histories: Bella’s Journey

• Bella’s Childhood and Adolescence
  • Recounts a peripatetic childhood: Morocco, traveling in gypsy caravans, and the regularity she craved as a child:
    • “I had a regularity to my lunchtime and bedtime and there was like this little cupboard on the back of the horse drawn cart that had food in…” (53:04-54:37)
• Relationship with Her Father
  • Found comfort and power in shared silences:
    • “We would just stay on the phone in silence… years later I thought it didn’t matter that we didn’t say anything. It was just this… to and fro in silence and breathing. … It gave me force, it gave me power.” (56:19-57:26)

Women, Silence, and Encouragement

• Championing Women’s Voices
  • Fiercely committed to amplifying women’s voices and breaking silences:
    • “I never want to replicate that in my lifetime as an adult male. I don’t want to contribute to a woman's silence. I want to contribute to her speaking.” (58:31-59:36)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Stories had a certain intensity and then they disappeared.” — Hilton Als (02:38)
• “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.” — Hilton Als (05:43)
• “By example, they were giving me permission to be an artist or to be queer or to be a humanist.” — Hilton Als (14:10)
• “I present the problem and then I go on to the next problem.” — Hilton Als on storytelling (07:15)
• “Children know even before adults that things will be changing. They're changing all the time. The interior self is changing.” — Hilton Als (10:30)
• “Every story begins with a problem. And if you think about it, it’s true. Something has to be solved.” — Hilton Als (06:47)
• “I never felt gender specific about clothing. … We're saying that we're humanist.” — Hilton Als (13:38)
• “I was like her weirdness, her weirdness realized.” — Hilton Als, on himself and his mother (35:45)
• “I don't want to contribute to a woman's silence. I want to contribute to her speaking.” — Hilton Als (58:31)
• “Criticism and love should go together because how do we know if we're getting any better if there’s not a loving person to tell us…” — Hilton Als (31:19)
• “If you fancy someone and don’t like what they’re wearing, does it kill your attraction?”
  Hilton: “Oh my gosh. I have a... it's perverse, but I just kind of want to style that.” (41:51)
• “He just looked like a beautiful turtle. Just had this huge head and this little body and… what an amazing creature.” — Hilton Als on Prince (44:48)
• “The silence that I was taught as a means of survival no longer fits me now.” — Bella Freud referencing Hilton Als (57:42)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:24] Hilton’s outfit and the meaning behind it
• [02:38] Magazine culture, storytelling, and Instagram
• [07:23] Adapting to subject, Diane Arbus’ influence
• [12:22] Wearing mother’s/sister’s clothing and family acceptance
• [16:29] Shame and hiding, stories from childhood
• [18:09] Emotional identification with women
• [22:48] Styling oneself after historical figures
• [26:33] Rauschenberg exhibit and the liberating power of language
• [30:16] Growing up in a matriarchy and views on power
• [31:19] Criticism as an act of love
• [34:04] Emotional/physical sensations triggered by art
• [35:45] Kindness as familial “weirdness”
• [37:39] Clothes Hilton loves to see women wear
• [40:06] Fashion as a continually renewing force
• [41:51] Attraction, awkward taste, and wanting to “style” lovers
• [44:17] Experience meeting Prince
• [46:50] Gender fluidity and the artistic self
• [50:15] Favorite lyricists and writers
• [51:27] Lightning-bolt first reads
• [53:04] Bella’s unconventional upbringing and stability
• [56:19] Father-daughter silences and connection
• [57:42] Overcoming silences and giving voice to women

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Final Thoughts

This episode is a poignant, generous, and artfully meandering conversation between two creative souls. Hilton Als’ reflections on family, gender, and the subtle signals of clothing provide a unique lens through which to see fashion as lived experience, not mere surface. Bella Freud’s gentle probing and openness add warmth and depth, making this a rich exploration of how fashion, art, and selfhood intertwine.

For anyone interested in what happens when the language of clothing meets the language of the heart, this episode is both insightful and inspiring.

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Transcript

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[Bella Freud]

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[Bella Freud]

Hi, come up. Welcome to Fashion Neurosis Hilton Alls well.

[Hilton Als]

Thank you for having me.

[Bella Freud]

Can you tell me what you're wearing today and why you chose these particular clothes?

[Hilton Als]

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 that's there was some thought put into this.

[Bella Freud]

And how about your jeans? Where are they from?

[Hilton Als]

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.

[Bella Freud]

And 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?

[Hilton Als]

I do. I think that like many of us who grew up during the great age of magazines like I D 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 there was a marvelous woman. I can't remember her name, but she was the fashion director of Mademoiselle under Gaby Dopelt when Gabby was the editor there. And 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 ID and Jane and all of those great places. So I've always just been very drawn to this idea of word and text being equal and also finite, that stories had a certain intensity and then they disappeared. Do you remember her name? She was a. She had white hair. Emma.

[Bella Freud]

Something from Mademoiselle.

[Hilton Als]

Yes.

[Bella Freud]

I didn't know that.

[Hilton Als]

I think you're too young.

[Bella Freud]

I don't know. I'm saying I think I'm. I think we're the same age.

[Hilton Als]

No, but I think. Well, you're younger in spirit. Emma something. But Gabby had all those great girls there.

[Bella Freud]

Yeah.

[Hilton Als]

Camilla was such a force. And I was at Vibe magazine, and we would write fan letters to each other.

[Bella Freud]

Oh, my God, that's so great.

[Hilton Als]

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. So the Instagram really is such a convenient way of carrying on that tradition, because 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.

[Bella Freud]

Yeah.

[Hilton Als]

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.

[Bella Freud]

Yeah. Well, it really. It's very effective and very evocative because there's a lot of tension in these. The posts you do, and a lot of intensity.

[Hilton Als]

Yes.

[Bella Freud]

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.

[Hilton Als]

Yes.

[Bella Freud]

With all the setup, which is your. Is a real talent. It's. Hate that word storytelling, because it's. But it is. It's like, you know, it's like the beginning of a thriller. It's great.

[Hilton Als]

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 that I present the problem and then I go on to the next problem.

[Bella Freud]

That's so genius. It's exactly it. I love that. That's so good.

[Hilton Als]

Yes. And I think also working at the New Yorker, you're working in a short form that's long. And I think I feel very much like Diane 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 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, they don't contribute to it. And again, it's a sort of feeling. That's what Billie Holiday said about her music and the blues, that it was a mixed up thing that you have to feel.

[Bella Freud]

Yeah.

[Hilton Als]

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.

[Bella Freud]

Yeah.

[Hilton Als]

And that life doesn't take us down a narrow path to anything.

[Bella Freud]

It's so interesting, your description, 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. 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.

[Hilton Als]

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 she. When I saw hideous. When I read and saw hideous Kinky, I was so moved by the mother 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. She didn't know how to be one thing. And I think children really want predictability 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 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 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 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 might present something else because of events, because of a wound or someone kissing you in a nice way. It's going to change the atmosphere.

[Bella Freud]

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 going out when you were growing up. And you say you wanted to have her near you always. And you said, I. I wore my mother and sister's clothes when they were not at home. And I wondered, which clothes did you like wearing best?

[Hilton Als]

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, a sort of undergarment. But they were always things that you could hide. So 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.

[Bella Freud]

Wow.

[Hilton Als]

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 humanist.

[Bella Freud]

Yeah.

[Hilton Als]

And so I think my siblings, and my mother in particular, gave me that by example. My mother was a very kind woman. My 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 getting. 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.

[Bella Freud]

Yeah.

[Hilton Als]

Because then you're free to kind of invent Right. If you make clothing. I remember a Vogue story, a Bella Freud folk story that Camilla styled. And I was so moved by these young girls and 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.

[Bella Freud]

Gosh. And do you ever.

[Hilton Als]

I think that was. Was that Jurgen Teller?

[Bella Freud]

No, I think. Was it. I think.

[Hilton Als]

Was it Corinne?

[Bella Freud]

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. It was so wonderful.

[Hilton Als]

Oh, Michael. Wow.

[Bella Freud]

Oh, it was so. He was just fantastic. Do you. Do you ever remember feeling shame about something you wore? And have you ever been motivated to disguise yourself with clothes?

[Hilton Als]

I think it's a sort of two pronged answer. The 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. I 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 a magazine.

[Bella Freud]

Oh, God. Because in the women. You say my propensity for identifying with women has been the dramatic center of my life.

[Hilton Als]

Yes.

[Bella Freud]

What does that feel like?

[Hilton Als]

I 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. 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 that is not the same as a woman's life. But the identification makes me feel comfort at times.

[Bella Freud]

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, and I wondered, does she ever refer to you as auntie man?

[Hilton Als]

I think that one of the things that. 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?

[Bella Freud]

Yeah.

[Hilton Als]

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.

[Bella Freud]

Yeah.

[Hilton Als]

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.

[Bella Freud]

Yeah. So it's more like a kind of different end of the telescope when she uses that.

[Hilton Als]

It would be a tantamount to your father saying something in Germany that you don't understand.

[Bella Freud]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Hilton Als]

But it's his culture.

[Bella Freud]

Yeah.

[Hilton Als]

You know what I mean?

[Bella Freud]

Yeah, I do.

[Hilton Als]

And then he's speaking to Bella.

[Bella Freud]

Yeah. He never actually spoke German because he hated it so much.

[Hilton Als]

Oh, really?

[Bella Freud]

What happened? Yeah.

[Hilton Als]

Oh, wow.

[Bella Freud]

I mean, the only thing. We talked a bit about Brecht and things, and I was obsessed with some of the songs.

[Hilton Als]

Yes.

[Bella Freud]

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.

[Hilton Als]

Yes.

[Bella Freud]

So it was suddenly intimate.

[Hilton Als]

Did he feel odd about having an accent?

[Bella Freud]

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.

[Hilton Als]

Yes.

[Bella Freud]

That kind of European accent. It seemed like.

[Hilton Als]

Yes, yes.

[Bella Freud]

But then sometimes if he'd be booking a table or something on the. Doing. 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.

[Hilton Als]

Yes, yes.

[Bella Freud]

R. R, Like. And 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.

[Hilton Als]

Oh, my goodness.

[Bella Freud]

Such a good idea.

[Hilton Als]

It is true. And I just thought of them the other day. There was a newspaper editor of the New York Tribune. This is many. 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.

[Bella Freud]

Oh, yes.

[Hilton Als]

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. And I. 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, a quill, almost a quill.

[Bella Freud]

One of those ink pens.

[Hilton Als]

Yeah. You know, you dip it in.

[Bella Freud]

Yeah.

[Hilton Als]

Because I wanted to be in the 19th century, like Horace Greeley.

[Bella Freud]

Yes.

[Hilton Als]

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. It 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. Oh, God, that's so good. 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 Laurence Dunbar. And I used to read to my mother and 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. I 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 why is my child reading poetry aloud? She was just present for it.

[Bella Freud]

So. So wonderful. That's such a. So encouraging.

[Hilton Als]

Yes, very.

[Bella Freud]

The first exhibition you went to as a child was Rauschenberg moma.

[Hilton Als]

Yes.

[Bella Freud]

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.

[Hilton Als]

Yes.

[Bella Freud]

And she gave me enough information to know what know. My intuition was correct. And I wondered, how would you describe the closet that you were in?

[Hilton Als]

I think. I think that when children. When you're given language, It sets you free. I don't think I had any. I didn't have any critical language then. I was a teenager. And 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 express self expression. And then when you're given this language, it's like a key, a light goes off because suddenly you're not in the morass of your feelings, but you're in the light of critical inquiry. Yeah. And that's what happened. I just remembered who was in your shoot, by the way. It was Stella.

[Bella Freud]

No, Stella Tennant.

[Hilton Als]

Mm. And she had on a white shirt and a black tie and her hand was resting on something and the nails were chipped a little bit to varnish.

[Bella Freud]

Was that the Steven Meisel shoot? We're going all over the place.

[Hilton Als]

It was in Vogue.

[Bella Freud]

Yes. And it was styled by Izzy Blow.

[Hilton Als]

There was another one that Camilla did then after that. But Isabella Blow did do it. Yes.

[Bella Freud]

Yeah. Yeah. That was amazing.

[Hilton Als]

Yes.

[Bella Freud]

So I remember she. She said, darling, theme is christening dresses. Can you make a christening dress? So I said, okay. And 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. The whole theme changed. But that's what I'd made.

[Hilton Als]

Yes.

[Bella Freud]

And it was incredible.

[Hilton Als]

I tried for a little bit of time to make a. I wanted to make a documentary about Isabella. I didn't know her, but then it was kind of preempted by this film that's coming out.

[Bella Freud]

Oh, yeah. I wonder what that will be like.

[Hilton Als]

Me too.

[Bella Freud]

God, you would have done a great documentary about her.

[Hilton Als]

Yes.

[Bella Freud]

She was amazing.

[Hilton Als]

Yes.

[Bella Freud]

And do you think growing up in a matriarchal family plays havoc with our idea of men and their power?

[Hilton Als]

That's a great question. I think growing up in a Matriarchal society. Makes 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 my skepticism about power. Absolutely.

[Bella Freud]

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?

[Hilton Als]

I think criticism and love should go together because 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. 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 artist 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. I think part of what makes regular reviewing so exhausting for me anyway, is this or my tendency to. Again, 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, that you can't capture something so fleeting as a performance, but you can capture the experience of feeling for three hours.

[Bella Freud]

And when you have that feeling, where does it occur in your body? And how does it travel up into your language?

[Hilton Als]

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 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. It's almost sort of a feeling of being almost slightly shy around it. Embarrassed. Stripped a little bit bare.

[Bella Freud]

Yeah.

[Hilton Als]

Blushing. It's a blushing relationship to the truth.

[Bella Freud]

Oh, that's great. Yeah. It's sometimes when I think about or I feel it, and it's almost like goes into a color scheme in my system, kind of the discomfort is one way and in. 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.

[Hilton Als]

Yes, Yes. I think that's. That's certainly a viable thing.

[Bella Freud]

You said about your mother. I was like, her weirdness. Her weirdness realized. And what did that look like? Literally? What was the look that you were. That connected you both?

[Hilton Als]

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.

[Bella Freud]

Yeah.

[Hilton Als]

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. Being a queer kid. You're carrying secrets, and when something is. When a culture is othering, you're so afraid of being found out. And 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.

[Bella Freud]

Right. Gosh, that's so remarkable, because all it takes is a mismatch, and then it's just terrifying, really, isn't it?

[Hilton Als]

Yes. Yes.

[Bella Freud]

To be stranded.

[Hilton Als]

Yes.

[Bella Freud]

God, how amazing. She sounds so much.

[Hilton Als]

Oh, you would have loved her.

[Bella Freud]

She sounds amazing.

[Hilton Als]

Yes.

[Bella Freud]

Because you also talk brilliantly about clothes worn by women. And you said my sister wore pencil skirts to play handball.

[Hilton Als]

She did.

[Bella Freud]

And it's so vivid.

[Hilton Als]

And. Yes.

[Bella Freud]

Do you have a favorite garment you like to see a girl wearing?

[Hilton Als]

Oh. Oh, 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 and Peter Pan collars, a tie, a jacket that gives you a kind of. Oops, did I. A jacket that gives you a kind of misshapen look.

[Bella Freud]

Misshapen, Yes.

[Hilton Als]

I don't necessarily want the torso to look up and down. I like it when there's a little bit of an errant feeling. I also love a uniform, school uniforms. I wish I was straight sometimes, because then there's lots of naughty schoolgirl porn. Yes. But it doesn't appeal to me. I sort of like it in the world.

[Bella Freud]

It's charming, isn't it?

[Hilton Als]

It is. And it's also because it was West Indian culture, there were lots of things borrowed from the UK in terms of fashion. So I had an Eton cap, I had a Chesterfield. I'm very fond of those objects in fashion.

[Bella Freud]

Yeah. I bet you'd look great in an Eden cap.

[Hilton Als]

Yes. I'll try to find a photo for you.

[Bella Freud]

Yes. And the fashion world is very aware of you. And do you have any obsessions about fashion on top of the ones you've just described? But like fashion?

[Hilton Als]

I like that it keeps going on and that even if you're not directly involved, there are always wonderful legions of young people who are out there reinventing things, making new stories, new scenarios out of, you know, self styling. There was a woman I saw in the New York Times. It was so breathtaking, and it was just her makeup. And then there was, you know, there's you or Comme des Garcons, or people who have been at it, but who get refreshed by these new storytellers. So to me, it's really been such a wonderful continuum and I really do love looking.

[Bella Freud]

Yeah, well, we like you, too. You get it. You see. You see us. And that's really something.

[Hilton Als]

Yes.

[Bella Freud]

In, you know, in all the ways you've described you. You bring new language to fashion, and it's something that is. Is strangely absent. And.

[Hilton Als]

Yes, I think it. You know, Bella, I think that that's what happened with when magazines, sadly, like, the language went. Yeah.

[Bella Freud]

It's just that sort of. The language stays the same. So people forget to look for other things when there's so much.

[Hilton Als]

Yes, and.

[Bella Freud]

But not everybody.

[Hilton Als]

Yes.

[Bella Freud]

And if you fancy someone and don't like what they're wearing, does it kill your attraction?

[Hilton Als]

Oh, my gosh. I have a. It's perverse, but I just kind of want to style that.

[Bella Freud]

That's crazy.

[Hilton Als]

I sort of love and awkwardness. You see it a lot in Eastern Europe, Right. Where the guys are in these sort of Sergio Valenti jeans and a big sweatshirt with a big gold chain. And I think it's adorable. And I just want to get them out of all those things, put them in a nice tunic and a jacket. I think the Erotic. Part of it is undressing them to dress them.

[Podcast Host (Sponsor Announcer)]

Yes.

[Hilton Als]

Yeah, yeah.

[Bella Freud]

Very satisfying, isn't it, when someone just allows you in. I remember having this boyfriend who wore such appalling thing. I mean, really sort of shockingly like the internal system went completely mad.

[Hilton Als]

Yes.

[Bella Freud]

And. And then when I suggested things, he was really resistant and it made it slightly better that it wasn't just utter kind of sort of terrible heat seeking missile, that he had some sort of feeling of pride about these awful things he'd chosen, which. But they were still, you know, there was like an almost an allergic reaction that I had to get over.

[Hilton Als]

That's so funny.

[Bella Freud]

And I gradually did a bit of styling.

[Hilton Als]

It's good. And I think that I would feel more put off if I didn't like their art. Yeah, I suppose that's the thing that you can't change.

[Bella Freud]

No, it's true.

[Hilton Als]

And you know, if they were terrible writers or something.

[Bella Freud]

Yeah.

[Hilton Als]

I mean, how do we cope?

[Bella Freud]

I know.

[Hilton Als]

You know, you walk into their studio and say yuck every day.

[Bella Freud]

Yeah. There's nothing you can do about that except you have to leave. You can't. There's nothing you can crush, to tolerate to make it okay.

[Hilton Als]

That's right.

[Bella Freud]

There's no future.

[Hilton Als]

That's right.

[Bella Freud]

And you were famously friends with Prince.

[Hilton Als]

Oh, well, I mean, friends is too strong a word. But he was someone that I had a few days experience with when I was trying to write about him for the New Yorker. And what a beauty, you know?

[Bella Freud]

Yeah.

[Hilton Als]

Just an extraordinary kind of head. Something marvelous washed up from another planet onto our shores. And I don't know how much experience you've had with rock people, but like actors, they don't actually know what they look like.

[Bella Freud]

I'd never thought of it like that.

[Hilton Als]

So they always. They wear. They wear strange combinations of things. But I think that one of the reasons that they're so powerful as performers is that they're completely porous to the idea and reality of the audience telling them what they look like. I think that people like you and myself have a fairly good idea of who we are when we walk out on a stage to give a talk or whatever. But I think that the performer is such a fascinating creature because they actually don't have that sense. They have a sense of wanting to be loved and appreciated, but they don't really have a great sense of who they are. So he was. I mean, he was the head of the whole gestalt and at the same time you felt this incredible tininess, like a child Waiting to be told what to feel or think.

[Bella Freud]

God. Extraordinary.

[Hilton Als]

Yes.

[Bella Freud]

Because you wrote that he'd said the males. You asked him about journalists and he said, the males are not so nice to me. Not as nice as the females.

[Hilton Als]

Yes.

[Bella Freud]

And after you asked him why, he said, oh, afraid of their feminine side, I guess.

[Hilton Als]

Yes.

[Bella Freud]

And I wondered what you thought he meant by the feminine side of men.

[Hilton Als]

Because he was such an admixture of straight, gay, queer, heteronor. I mean, he was just a kind of incredible mixture of all those things. You would have to tap into your own feminine. I'm talking about male journalists.

[Bella Freud]

Yeah.

[Hilton Als]

You would have to tap into your own feminine side to be really a feminist.

[Bella Freud]

Yeah.

[Hilton Als]

Which is what Prince was, I feel, which is to say humanist. And so he didn't. I don't think that you could really sort of understand him if you were writing a profile or an in depth piece about his music. Not go there in your own soul.

[Bella Freud]

Yeah.

[Hilton Als]

In terms of saying, I'm an amalgamation of all these things. And you couldn't. If you were just going to approach him as a sort of male journalist, you were only going to get one side of the story and you were going to be frustrated by the other parts of the story that were distinctly woman identified, for want of a better term. You had to open your whole soul to that work. And this person, because he had done that, he could imagine himself as many different characters, you know.

[Bella Freud]

Yeah.

[Hilton Als]

So you couldn't just be writing a review that didn't mention all those worlds that he contained.

[Bella Freud]

Because there's that song where he says, would you come and tell me everything?

[Hilton Als]

Oh, if I was your girlfriend?

[Bella Freud]

Yeah.

[Hilton Als]

Amazing. No.

[Bella Freud]

When. If someone had hurt you, even if that person was me, which you just. That's exactly as you described that. He understood everything from every one's. Every point of view. So compelling and so seductive as well.

[Hilton Als]

Yes. I think there was also a lyric. Oh, it's such a beautiful. If I was your one and only friend Would you come to me?

[Bella Freud]

Yes.

[Hilton Als]

If somebody hurt you? Even if that somebody was me.

[Bella Freud]

Yeah.

[Hilton Als]

Amazing. No.

[Bella Freud]

Yeah. Just so touching. And in that piece that you wrote, you talked about, you described this thing that Jamie Foxx said about. Don't look in his eyes.

[Hilton Als]

Yeah.

[Bella Freud]

So, so good.

[Hilton Als]

Oh, my God, Bella, you would have given up fashion neuroses and gone off with friends.

[Bella Freud]

I would have so done that.

[Hilton Als]

He was so beautiful. He just looked like a beautiful turtle. Just had this huge head and this little body and. What an amazing creature.

[Bella Freud]

Yeah. Yeah. He really affected everything. And Changed the world. He really. He was so remarkable.

[Hilton Als]

Yeah. Yes.

[Bella Freud]

And who writes your favorite lyrics, apart from Princess?

[Hilton Als]

I used to be a long time ago. Elvis Costello was incredible.

[Bella Freud]

Gosh.

[Hilton Als]

I think Hal David, working with Burt Batkrock, wrote the most incredible lyrics. They were like philosophy to me. A chair is still a chair.

[Bella Freud]

Oh, God, yeah. I love. I know that one song by Sugar Minors.

[Hilton Als]

Yes.

[Bella Freud]

Yeah.

[Hilton Als]

A chair is still a chair even when there's no one sitting in there But a home, A house is not a home, is not a home. And then also so good.

[Bella Freud]

A room is just a room and a house is a home.

[Hilton Als]

They were mind blowing songs for a kid to hear. And then, of course, Elvis wrote that beautiful song with Britt Bachrat. God give me strength. Do you know that song?

[Bella Freud]

No.

[Hilton Als]

Ah, extraordinary.

[Bella Freud]

I must listen.

[Hilton Als]

Yes.

[Bella Freud]

And do you remember the first thing you read, the first book you read that sort of was like a lightning bolt in terms of.

[Hilton Als]

Yes. It was a biography of Eleanor Roosevelt. Really? Yes. And she was such a beautiful person. I loved reading about the Roosevelts. For some reason, I was very interested in their story, I think must have been redolent of my parents in some way because they were together and not together really. My father lived with his mother.

[Bella Freud]

Right.

[Hilton Als]

My mother lived with us, but they were in constant communication. And I think Eleanor Roosevelt's goodness. My father was very handsome. So there were just loads of parallels in terms of unconventional relationships. Yeah, that was something that I understood.

[Bella Freud]

I remember reading Jack Kerouac when I was 15.

[Hilton Als]

Yes.

[Bella Freud]

And thinking, I had no idea that there was all this language or you could use it like this. And then writing an essay for my English class and getting an A. And I mean, it was sort of incredibly mawkish and everything, so I was just copying all this kind of free flow, but it. It was like a key to something.

[Hilton Als]

Yes. Were you back in England then?

[Bella Freud]

Yeah, I lived in England most of the time. We lived in Morocco when I was six and came back when I was eight.

[Hilton Als]

Okay. And what part of London were you in?

[Bella Freud]

Well, when we came back from Morocco, we moved to East Sussex. My mother wanted us to go to the STEINER school, so she looked for somewhere for us to live. And then in that time, I went traveling around England with these upper class hippies in gypsy caravans with horses and stuff, which sounds like very disorganized, but actually it was very ordered because the person who looked after me was the person who I loved so much. She was called Penny Cuthbertson. And even though we were, you know, going around in These caravans and all this stuff and I had a regular, you know what you were saying about children loving predictability. I had sort of a regularity to my lunchtime and bedtime and there was like this little cupboard on the back of the horse drawn cart that had food in like the pantry and we had Jaffa Cakes and something called sandwich spread, which I was completely obsessed with, so I was really happy. And then. And then when we went to the Steiner school, my mother didn't have the money to pay the fees but she worked in the kitchens and anyway, I don't know why she was so keen on this place, but we went there, lived there and then stayed there until.

[Hilton Als]

I was 15 and did you leave home then or.

[Bella Freud]

I left home then, yeah. And I moved to London and. Yeah.

[Hilton Als]

How are you supporting yourself?

[Bella Freud]

Well, I went to college for a bit and then I started working in seditionaries for Vivian Westwood.

[Hilton Als]

Yes, that's right.

[Bella Freud]

And yeah, I kind of worked in. There was this cafe in Edgware Road called the Regent Cafe that served ice cream and like it was sort of American diner style. So I worked there a bit. I kind of lived a bit hand to mouth.

[Hilton Als]

Was your father helpful?

[Bella Freud]

Yeah.

[Hilton Als]

Did he have no money at that point?

[Bella Freud]

No, he had money and I started sitting for him then too.

[Hilton Als]

Yeah.

[Bella Freud]

So I would. I would earn a little bit of cash from that and I started getting to know him like that.

[Hilton Als]

Yes.

[Bella Freud]

So I made my life work around being free for him and it was a wonderful beginning of our relationship. Yeah.

[Hilton Als]

Do you think that he. A lot of men don't understand children and they feel more connected to their children when the children have language.

[Bella Freud]

Yeah.

[Hilton Als]

Do you think that's the case?

[Bella Freud]

Well, he. My mother said we always got on and he did a painting of me when I was a baby too actually. So I felt like he had. He was well disposed to me from the start, which is such a nice feeling.

[Hilton Als]

Yes.

[Bella Freud]

And then. And then he did this wonderful thing which I didn't realize was wonderful at the time. When I was about. When I was 11, he would ring up. We lived in a house where they had a telephone and he'd ring up and very quickly we didn't have anything to say to each other because I didn't really know how to talk to him or what would interesting interest him or entertain him. So we would just stay on the phone in silence and I'd be thinking, why can't I think of something interesting to tell him? And he just stayed on the phone and then years later I Thought didn't matter that we didn't say anything. It was just this kind of just to and fro in silence and breathing. Yeah. And I appreciated that so much. And it gave me. It gave me force, it gave me power. And I was incredibly unhappy around that time.

[Hilton Als]

Yes.

[Bella Freud]

And it was his somehow. His way of, you know, letting you be. Yeah. And holding onto me.

[Hilton Als]

Yes. And that you didn't have to be on in any way.

[Bella Freud]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Hilton Als]

Wow.

[Bella Freud]

And you. You wrote this thing. The silence that I was taught as a means of survival no longer fits me now. And I wondered what makes you immediately vocal now?

[Hilton Als]

Cruelty if I see it or feel it. Love, if I see it or feel it.

[Bella Freud]

Yeah. And you champion, and you also hold a high bar for women. And you've created exhibitions in for Joan Didion and for Jean Reese. And you also shine a light on a friend of mine, the painter Celia Paul.

[Hilton Als]

Oh, yes.

[Bella Freud]

And I wondered, what do you want for women? And you clearly want us to be our best selves.

[Hilton Als]

What do women want? What does Hilton want?

[Bella Freud]

Yes.

[Hilton Als]

I think, Paola, when you grow up as I have, and you see brilliant people who are not given an opportunity because they don't, this goes back to not getting the information or knowing something. It makes you very fierce about making sure that people have their or get their due. And I think that I'm very fierce about women having their say or getting their due because I saw too many not. And I never want to replicate that in my lifetime as an adult male. I don't want to contribute to a woman's silence. I want to contribute. Contribute to her speaking.

[Bella Freud]

Oh, that's really great. Thank you, Hilton. And thank you so much for being on Fashion Neurosis.

[Hilton Als]

Oh, my gosh, it's been such a. What a wonderful session.

[Bella Freud]

I've been looking forward to this for ages.

[Hilton Als]

Thank you, Sa.