On this rail, Porter found, somewhat to his excitement, a tuxedo coat by Lang that had been made for the model Stephanie Seymour to wear in his spring/summer 1999 show, in Paris. But whether flashy or not, for Bourgeois clothes were also repositories of memory. “She wrote again and again that she couldn’t bear to part with them,” says Porter. “In the end, she started using them in her work. A van took them all to her studio – an extreme action for her, the cutting of a chord – and this marked the beginning of an incredibly creative period in her career.” A liberation and a joy, beautifully written and brilliantly thought. What Artists Wear is at once a revelatory account of how art is made and an electrifying investigation into the relationship between clothes and autonomy, freedom and power' Olivia Laing

Eclectic, invigorating ... the chapters devoted to female artists make for the most fascinating reading, their clothes liberating them by giving them permission to be different Observer Fashion is cruel to those who are older,” he says. “Which is mad because the population is ageing and older people don’t just stop being engaged in clothing or interested in what it can do for the body.” In the opening chapters, Porter clarifies that his purpose is “not to deify artists…how boring, how false.” So why, then, did he demarcate them as a group worthy of a book?Brilliant and unexpected... What Artists Wear approaches fashion in a wholly different way * Showstudio *

The book starts with Louise Bourgeois, goes on to Georgia O’Keeffe, Frieda Kahlo, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Agnes Martin, and flutters through a panoply of artists up until today. Sometimes going deeper into the matter (as for Bourgeois or Basquiat) sometimes spending just one line on it. The book is eclectic, separated into categories (workwear, denim, paint on clothing, t-shirts, etc.) that are themselves interrupted by little segments on chosen artists.

The average older woman’s clothes are appalling’: sculptor Barbara Hepworth in St Ives, 1957. Photograph: Paul Popper/Popperfoto/Getty Images Hopefully, there’s some sense of liberation that happens when you follow this arc from the one to the other. If you wear a suit, you are engaging in this language of white male power, and that’s for people who wear suits to think about. Why is it that the suit, which is absolutely a male garment, is the uniform of power? But also casual is very problematic in the sense of how it’s been co-opted by luxury fashion from working-class people of colour who have no finance but all this incredible style-signifying knowledge. Is the perfect book to sell in the Tate (*derogatory) and guardian readers (who feel neutral about the aids crisis)

All change: Cindy Sherman’s Untitled 2008 Chromogenic print. The artist often wears wigs and heavy makeup, and dresses up in clothes from charity shops. Photograph: Cindy Sherman/Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth Other female artists in the book use clothes as part of their practice. Porter writes of Sarah Lucas, and the work she has made from worn-in Doc Martens and old tights; of Anthea Hamilton, whose performance piece The Squash, staged at Tate Britain, involved a faceless character in a squash-shaped helmet made in collaboration with fashion house Loewe, and 14 different costumes.Most of us live our lives in our clothes without realizing their power. But in the hands of artists, garments reveal themselves. They are pure tools of expression, storytelling, resistance and creativity: canvases on which to show who we really are. An insightful account ... whether offering visual analysis or social observation, Porter writes with clarity and wit Frieze But his new book was born (initially, at least) of frustration with fashion as much as of fondness for it. “Fashion writing is often seen as fluff – and sometimes it is. But I always felt it was a way of writing about other things, too: the economy, psychology, society, communication, desire.” In fashion journalism, the industry sets artificial limits; those who report on it are, by necessity, obsessed with trends. But most people’s wardrobes have more to do with their emotional life than with some neverending quest for novelty. “Some clothes are utilitarian,” says Porter. “Some are sentimental. Some have to do with the community to which a person belongs, or wants to belong. Hopefully, my book speaks to these things. It’s not interested in best-dressed lists, or in so-called icons, even though many of the artists in it are famous.” Porter captures the various 'archetypes' associated with artists. He emphasises the shift from the 'codification of patriarchy to the breaking of the canon Araba Opoku, The Art Newspaper Why choose artists, though? Is this because he believes their aesthetic sensibilities are more finely tuned than our own? “No, it’s more that artists are better able in their lives to have a deeper understanding of clothing. Most people have to dress a certain way – or we feel that we do. In our working hours, we’re not in real communication with our clothing. We might even feel negatively about them: we might hate our jobs, we might feel constricted. Artists are a good case study because, alone in the studio, they’re freed of those outside forces.” The characters in his book – it is populated by the likes of Frida Kahlo and Andy Warhol, as well as by less well-known names – are, he believes, liberated in a way that we’d all like to be, if only we had the opportunity (or the courage). “Fashion is cruel to those who are older,” he says. “Which is mad because the population is ageing and older people don’t just stop being engaged in clothing or interested in what it can do for the body. But in my book, you’ve got Louise Bourgeois, who doesn’t meet Helmut Lang [with whom she becomes great friends, and whose clothes she wears] until she is in her 80s.”