Jalen Rose and Billy Porter talk fashion and catwalk shows

Broadway star Billy Porter She won a Tony, a Grammy, and an Emmy Award, and she also had the distinction of bringing an evening dress to the red carpet.

At the 2019 Academy Awards, Porter changed the fashion conversation, as he showed up in a velvet evening gown by Designer Christian Siriano.

He called his “antebellum tuxedo” his biggest style moment.

“Because it was he who changed everything,” he told me on “Renaissance.”

the picture was. That was the moment when the zeitgeist would forever be the thing that changed the face of fashion forever.

“And I must speak it. And I speak without conceit. It is just the truth.”

naturally, Other male stars like Harry Styles I embraced the dresses but Bailey was the first – and undoubtedly the most dramatic.

“Call me whatever you want, conceited. Call me arrogant, call me whatever,” indicating that the look was risky.

“As a gay black man my whole life, to sit in the fullness of my authenticity, going to the Oscars in a ball gown could have gone horribly wrong for me.

“And I’m going back to Pittsburgh to teach at my Carnegie Mellon University now.”

Instead, here he is, still making waves and blazing trails all over showbiz.

Most recently, he played the choreographer on “80 for Brady,” and he’s releasing a new song this month and launching a multi-city tour on April 28.

“I wanted to be the Whitney Houston guy when I grew up. My first album, an R&B album, came out in 1997,” Billy said.

“The business was very homophobic. They kicked my black gay ass. I came back on my own terms.”

He also narrates “Black + Iconic: Style Gods,” part of a BET documentary series on various aspects of black culture.

“When I got the phone call, I was so touched,” he said of the project. “One of the hardest things for me as a black queer person is being rejected by you. I’ve come to a space, blessedly, where I’m rejected and ignored and my exclusion is to make you look like an idiot.

“So, there were smart people out there at BET who said, ‘You know what? We might need to start embracing our gay brothers and sisters.’”

He grew up admiring people like Lena Horne, Sammy Davis Jr., Quincy Jones, Oprah Winfreyand Houston and Gladys Knight, to name a few. But Billy’s hero is his mother.

She has a neurological condition that has “made her immobile”, yet she still struggles to get out of bed and “engage with the world”.

But mostly he loves his mother because she loved him.

I was raised in the Pentecostal Church. The dogma of religion really taught her to reject me as a gay man. I refused, and chose me anyway. “It’s what a true Christian looks like,” Bailey said.

“And to see that evolution. And to know because it was an evolution. Not from where we started. But to watch her go through that and come out the other side next to me. I know a lot of people don’t have that.”

He is also infatuated with another woman. her name? Rihanna.

“I think she’s a genius. And maybe one day she’ll see me, maybe one day she’ll put me in one of these Savage Fenty shows,” he said, adding,

“I think she knows I love her. I just want to sit and have some tea with the bitch.”

Detroit-born Jalen Rose is a member of the University of Michigan warrior’s Fab Five who rocked the world of college hoops in the early ’90s. He played 13 seasons in the NBA before transitioning into a media personality. Rose is an analyst on “NBA Countdown” and “Get Up,” and co-host on “Jalen & Jacoby.” He is the executive producer of “The Fab Five” for ESPN’s “30 for 30” series, is the author of the bestselling book “Got To Give the People What They Want,” is a fashion tastemaker and co-founder of the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy, a public charter school in his hometown.