Read the quotes and see whose voices are heard in Part II of Camp: Notes on Fashion.
(In Part I, narrations of historical quotes on camp are read by Rupert Everett.)

West Wall

"Camp is the psychopathology of affluence." —Susan Sontag, 1964
Spoken by Mary Katrantzou

"Camp taste is by its nature possible only in affluent societies, in societies or circles capable of experiencing the psychopathology of affluence." —Susan Sontag, 1964
Spoken by Gareth Pugh

"Camp is a great jewel, 22 carats." —Kenneth Williams, 1983
Spoken by Patric DiCaprio for Vaquera

"Camp is tarting up ideas in costume jewelry." —Alan Brien, 1961
Spoken by Mary Katrantzou

"Camp is mock luxurious." —Mark Booth, 1983
Spoken by Phoebe Philo for Céline

"Camp is dandyism in the age of mass culture." —Susan Sontag, 1964
Spoken by Dapper Dan for Gucci

"Camp is the answer to the problem: how to be a dandy in the age of mass culture." —Susan Sontag, 1964
Spoken by Alessandro Michele for Gucci

"Camp is 'the apolitical badge of the consumer.'" —Moe Meyer, 1994
Spoken by Dapper Dan for Gucci

"The essence of dandyism consists of being obsessed with and knowledgeable about the limits of 'how far one can go too far.'" —Philip Core, 1984
Spoken by Amanda Harlech on behalf of Karl Lagerfeld

"Camp taste turns its back on the good-bad axis of ordinary aesthetic judgement. Camp doesn't reverse things. It doesn't argue that the good is bad, or the bad is good. What it does is to offer for art and for life a different —or supplementary —set of standards." –Susan Sontag, 1964
Spoken by Donatella Versace for Versace

"Camp is a means by which cultivated taste is deliberately thrown into reverse so that aesthetic absurdities become desirable." —Scott Byrd quoting John Canaday, 1968
Spoken by Alessandro Michele for Gucci

"Camp is cultural slumming." —Mark Booth, 1983
Spoken by Christopher Bailey for Burberry

"In the cultural sphere, to be camp is to be perversely committed to the trash aesthetic or to a sort of 'cultural slumming,' . . .which, being in theory incomprehensible to non-camp people, becomes fashionably exclusive." —Mark Booth, 1983
Spoken by Christopher Bailey for Burberry

"Camp finds something awfully funny about the musty respectability of suburbia." —Mark Booth, 1983
Spoken by Christopher Bailey for Burberry

"The connoisseur of Camp [finds pleasure] in the coarsest, commonest pleasures, in the arts of the masses." —Susan Sontag, 1964
Spoken by Jeremy Scott for House of Moschino

"Camp demonstrates an exhilaration in identifying with the lowest of the low." —David M. Halperin, 2012
Spoken by Jeremy Scott for House of Moschino

Camp "makes no distinction between the unique object and the mass-produced object. Camp taste transcends the nausea of the replica." —Susan Sontag, 1964
Spoken by Nicolas Ghesquière for Louis Vuitton

"Camp is the artifact past its prime." —Caryl Flinn, 1995
Spoken by Alessandro Michele for Gucci

"Camp has always been fascinated with, and has fashioned itself on, the outmoded, the out of date, the artifact passed its prime." —Caryl Flinn, 1995
Spoken by Alessandro Michele for Gucci

"Camp transforms what was ugly yesterday into today's object of aesthetic pleasure." –Umberto Eco, 2007
Spoken by Richard Quinn

"Things are campy, not when they become old––but when we become less involved in them, and can enjoy, instead of be frustrated by, the failure of the attempt." —Susan Sontag, 1964
Spoken by Richard Quinn

"Camp is granny specs." —Mark Booth, 1983
Spoken by Alessandro Michele for Gucci

"Camp is the rediscovery of history's waste." —Caryl Flinn 1995
Spoken by John Galliano

"Camp is the dada of the disco crowd." —Joyce Haber, 1966
Spoken by John Galliano for Maison Margiela

"Camp sorts through the cultural junkyard with an abjection magnet, seizing upon discarded-but-still-glittering bits of debris." —J. Bryan Lowder, 2013
Spoken by John Galliano for Maison Margiela

"Camp is defined as that which brings forth accumulations of debris from the recent past to be admired, reproduced and treasured." —Sasha Torres, 1996
Spoken by Jeremy Scott for House of Moschino

"Camp is a scavenger, scrounging history's waste in order to rediscover surplus value from forgotten forms of labor." —Caryl Flinn 1995
Spoken by John Galliano for Maison Margiela

"Camp salvages material otherwise doomed to oblivion." —Gillo Dorfles, 1968
Spoken by Jeremy Scott for House of Moschino

"Camp is the spirit of extravagance." —Susan Sontag, 1964
Spoken by Marc Jacobs

"Camp is a woman walking around in a dress made of three million feathers." —Susan Sontag, 1964
Spoken by Marc Jacobs

"Camp is pink flamingoes." —Philip Core, 1984
Spoken by Stephen Jones

South Wall

"Camp is historicism viewed histrionically." —Philip Core, 1984
Spoken by Ada Kokosar

"Camp is productively anachronistic and critically renders specific historical norms obsolete." —Pamela Robertson, 1996
Spoken by Zandra Rhodes

"Camp takes styles from the past and uses them to sidestep the onward march of history. The historical process is reduced to the ephemeral." —Mark Booth, 1983
Spoken by John Galliano for House of Dior

"Camp people look back on Versailles as a sort of camp Eden, a self-enclosed world devoted to divertissements, to dressing-up, showing off, and scandal." —Mark Booth, 1983
Spoken by Jeremy Scott for House of Moschino

"Camp people are born in a Hall of Mirrors and never find their way out of it." —Mark Booth, 1983
Spoken by Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood

"Camp is by its very nature, political, subversive and even revolutionary." —Bruce LaBruce, 2012
Spoken by John Galliano

"Camp is royalism, diabolism, and British socialism." —Philip Core, 1984
Spoken by Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood

"Versailles stands in camp memory, not, as it was intended, as a symbol of decorative absolutism, but as a symbol of absolute decorativism." —Mark Booth, 1983
Spoken by Ada Kokosar

"Camp is being-as-playing-a-role." —Susan Sontag, 1964
Spoken by Clare Waight Keller for Givenchy

"What Camp taste responds to is instant character, a person being one, very intense thing. This helps account for the fact that opera and ballet are experienced as such rich treasures of Camp, for neither of these forms can easily do justice to the complexity of human nature. " —Susan Sontag, 1964
Spoken by Jeremy Scott for House of Moschino

"Camp is Swan Lake." —Susan Sontag, 1964
Spoken by Clare Waight Keller for Givenchy

"The camp personality reveals itself in the flamboyant gestures, the exaggerated tone, the operatic voice, the inflated role playing." —Karl Keller, 1981
Spoken by Marc Jacobs

"Hollywood was a great haven for camp because it needed to compensate for bad acting, because it was a theatrical community protecting the eccentric, and because it offered the one power the camp personality cannot do without —money." —Philip Core, 1984
Spoken by Alessandro Michele for Gucci

"Camp is Andy Warhol's Marilyn." —Mark Booth, 1983
Spoken by Philip Treacy

"Camp is Marilyn Monroe type-cast as a tartelette extraordinaire . . . unable to break the straitjacket of her own sexuality." —Philip Core, 1984
Spoken by Jeremy Scott for House of Moschino

"Camp is the more feathery romantic ballets." —New Statesman, 1964
Spoken by Stephen Jones

"Camp is Judy Garland." —Philip Core, 1984
Spoken by John Galliano for Maison Margiela

"Camp is a second childhood." —Philip Core, 1984
Spoken by Anna Sui

"Camp can be as elusive as childhood." —Kerry Mallan and Roderick McGillis, 2005
Spoken by Walter Van Beirendonck

"The horror genre, in particular, is susceptible to a camp interpretation. Not all horror films are camp, of course; only those which make the most stylish conventions for expressing instant feeling, thrills, sharply defined personality, outrageous and 'unacceptable' sentiments, and so on." —Jack Babuscio, 1977
Spoken by Jun Takahashi for Undercover

"Camp . . . is very serious—serious about maintaining the freedom to play, which is a way of saying the freedom to live." —J. Bryan Lowder, 2013
Spoken by Manish Arora

"Camp is 'extravagant-play-for-serious-ends.'" —Karl Keller, 1981
Spoken by Christian Francis Roth

"Camp is girls who wear starched maternity dresses without being pregnant." —The Realist, 1962
Spoken by John Galliano for House of Dior

"Since camp involves the refusal to grow up, it sees aging as a particularly unattractive process which it is important to carry out with good humor." —Mark Booth, 1983
Spoken by Anna Sui

"Camp is a playfulness with epiphanal states that are half-serious because therapeutically high and half-comical because deliberately overblown." —Karl Keller, 1981
Spoken by Edda Gimnes for EDDA

"Camp is more than another passing cult of the cute." —Richard Sullivan, 1966
Spoken by Jean-Charles de Castelbajac

"Maturity, it infers, must not be taken seriously. 'Experience is a fraud,' says the Spirit of Camp, 'Strive for innocence.'" —Mark Booth, 1983
Spoken by Anna Sui

"All her life, the camp person remains a naughty child cheeking her elders." —Mark Booth, 1983
Spoken by Anna Sui

"Camp is outrageous aestheticism." —Susan Sontag, 1964
Spoken by Pam Hogg

"The simple, bold colours of camp are ice-cream colours: camp's favourite colour is pink: nursery pink, sugary pink, screaming pink." —Mark Booth, 1983
Spoken by Molly Goddard

"Camp is démesuré in the quality of the ambition." —Susan Sontag, 1964
Spoken by Pam Hogg

East Wall

"Camp is a mode of perception." —Fabio Cleto, 1999
Spoken by Virgil Abloh for Off-White c/o Virgil Abloh

"Irony is the subject matter of camp." —Jack Babuscio, 1977
Spoken by Jeremy Scott for House of Moschino

"Camp confers legitimacy on what it pretends to ridicule." —Hilton Kramer, 1982
Spoken by Jeremy Scott for House of Moschino

"Camp see everything in quotation marks." —Susan Sontag, 1964
Spoken by Virgil Abloh for Off-White c/o Virgil Abloh

"Camp is a question mark that won't let its line be straightened up into an exclamation mark." —Fabio Cleto, 1999
Spoken by Jeremy Scott for House of Moschino

"The word "camp" "deserve[s] the freedom of the English language without the commas which [have] long seemed so appropriately inverted." —Alan Brien, 1967
Spoken by Viktor Horsting for Viktor & Rolf

"The camp attitude is a mode of perception whereby artifacts become the object of an arrested, or fetishistic, scrutiny. It does not so much see everything in quotation marks as in parentheses. It is a solvent of context." —Andrew Britton, 1978
Spoken by Jeremy Scott for House of Moschino

"Camp is a double sense in which some things can be taken." —Susan Sontag 1964
Spoken by Natacha Ramsay-Levi for Chloé

"The camp sensibility is one that is alive to a double sense in which some things can be taken." —Susan Sontag 1964
Spoken by Alessandro Michele for Gucci

"Camp is the difference between the thing as meaning something, anything, and the thing as pure artifice." —Susan Sontag 1964
Spoken by Natacha Ramsay-Levi for Chloé

"Camp can be taken on two completely separate levels, and make perfect sense on each." —Evelyn Satz, 1983
Spoken by Natacha Ramsay-Levi for Chloé

"The talent for making a virtue out of duplicity is a mark of camp." —Mark Booth, 1983
Spoken by Thom Browne

"Camp is a lie that tells the truth." —Philip Core, 1984
Spoken by Alessandro Michele for Gucci

"Camp is those ideas held in a special playful way." —Susan Sontag 1964
Spoken by Natacha Ramsay-Levi for Chloé

"Camp is things-being-what-they-are-not." —Susan Sontag 1964
Spoken by Jeremy Scott

"Camp is tongue-in-cheek." —Sasha Torres, 1996
Spoken by Jeremy Scott

Camp is "a 'guilty' pleasure." —Pamela Robertson, 1996
Spoken by Christian Lacroix

"Camp is the inherent funniness of leftovers." —Andrew Ross, 1988
Spoken by Jeremy Scott for House of Moschino

"Camp aims to transform the ordinary into something more spectacular." —Jack Babuscio, 1978
Spoken by Deirdre Hawken

"Camp is a comic vision of the world." —Susan Sontag 1964
Spoken by Johnson Hartig for Libertine

"Camp is a holiday for consenting adults." —Philip Core, 1984
Spoken by Johnson Hartig for Libertine

"Camp is a form of vintage humor, it sometimes goes into caustic remarks." —Geoffrey Beene, 1965
Spoken by Stella McCartney for Chloé

Camp is "Josephine Baker." —Philip Core, 1984
Spoken by Stephen Jones

Camp is "Carmen Miranda." —Philip Core, 1984
Spoken by Stephen Jones

"Camp [is] a third stream of taste, that encompasses the curious attraction that everyone —to some degree at least —has for the bizarre, the unnatural, the artificial and the blatantly outrageous." —Thomas Meehan, 1965
Spoken by Tomo Koizumi

"Camp is a retreat from the fascism of usefulness." —J. Bryan Lowder, 2013
Spoken by Pam Hogg

North Wall

"Camp is gender without genitals." —Philip Core, 1984
Spoken by Thom Browne

"Camp is the triumph of the epicene style." —Susan Sontag, 1964
Spoken by Thom Browne

"The androgyne is one of the great images of camp sensibility." —Susan Sontag, 1964
Spoken by Thom Browne

"Camp is masculine-feminine." —Jack Babuscio, 1978
Spoken by Thom Browne

"CAMP is cross-dressing in a Freudian slip." —Philip Core, 1984
Spoken by Marc Jacobs

"Camp is "going against the grain of one's sex." —Jonathan Dollimore, 1991
Spoken by JiSun Park for Blindness

"Camp renders gender a question of aesthetics."
Spoken by Alejandro Gomez Palomo for Palomo Spain

"Camp is concerned with what might be called a philosophy of transformations and incongruity." —Esther Newton, 1972
Spoken by Thom Browne

"Camp is gender with genitals." —Philip Core, 1984
Spoken by Walter Van Beirendonck for Wild and Lethal Trash

"Camp is corny flamboyant femaleness." —Susan Sontag, 1964
Spoken by Jeremy Scott

Camp is "exaggerated he-man-ness." —Susan Sontag, 1964
Spoken by Walter Van Beirendonck for Wild and Lethal Trash

Camp is "a clenched fist on a limp wrist." —Richard Dyer, 1977
Spoken by Jeremy Scott

"Camp is a lifeboat for men at sea." —Philip Core, 1984
Spoken by Jeremy Scott

"Camp is a mode of seduction." —Susan Sontag, 1964
Spoken by Stephen Jones

"Camp can rise to the occasion." —Caryl Flinn, 1995
Spoken by Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood

"Like fornication, camp is an irresponsible and slightly dangerous pleasure." —Mark Booth, 1983
Spoken by Christopher Kane

"Camp is a theatricalized piece of come-on." —Karl Keller, 1981
Spoken by Christopher Kane

"Camp is uncritically affectionate." —Robert Kiernan, 1990
Spoken by Stephen Jones

"Camp is a mode of enjoyment." —Susan Sontag, 1964
Spoken by Viktor Horsting for Viktor & Rolf

"Camp is a tender feeling." Susan Sontag, 1964
Spoken by Ashish Gupta for Ashish

"Camp is 'those men and women…leaking laughter and tears while reliving their favorite nuances from…Off-key strains of Somewhere over the Rainbow.'" —J. Bryan Lowder, 2013
Spoken by Luke Sales for Romance Was Born

"Camp is the heroism of people not called upon to be heroes." —Philip Core, 1984
Spoken by Christopher Bailey for Burberry

"Camp taste is a kind of love, love for human nature." —Susan Sontag, 1964
Spoken by Viktor Horsting for Viktor & Rolf

"Camp [is] . . . the gaieté de coeur." —Andrew Ross, 1988
Spoken by Anna Plunkett for Romance Was Born

"Camp taste is a mode of enjoyment, of appreciation––not judgment. Camp is generous. It wants to enjoy." —Susan Sontag, 1964
Spoken by Jeremy Scott for House of Moschino

"Camp is happiness." —Christopher Isherwood, 1970
Spoken by Philip Treacy

"Camp 'isn't a natural mode of sensibility, if there be any such. Indeed the essence of Camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration.'" —Susan Sontag, 1964
Spoken by Molly Goddard

"Camp introduces a new standard: artifice as an ideal, theatricality." —Susan Sontag, 1964
Spoken by Pam Hogg

*Statements have been edited for readability.