Billy Porter Cat-Walks His Way Through Hudson Yards

The actor and star of “Pose” goes shopping without gender boundaries at Forty Five Ten.

Billy Porter wanted to go clothes shopping. “I’ll meet you in front of the beehive thing…?” he texted on a bright Friday afternoon when New York had the jaunty air of summer hours.

The “beehive thing is” the 15-story structure by Thomas Heatherwick that stands amid the glinting cliffs of Hudson Yards. Mr. Porter had visited on opening night, and was keen to explore Forty Five Ten, a fashion boutique based in Dallas that has been described by Business of Fashion as the “millennial generation’s answer to Barneys.”

Standing beneath Mr. Heatherwick’s creation an hour later, Mr. Porter frowned at the zigzag of stairs. “It looks very Star Trek,” he said. He was wearing a white shirt with a deconstructed collar by Trina Turk and a pair of black Commes des Garçons pants decorated with red and white horizontal stripes that fell just below the knee.

“I don’t know what you call them — culottes or drop-crotch,” he said, as he walked into the shopping center to a chorus of cheers from passing fans.

There were, it seemed, a lot of them. By the escalator, a dapper gentleman with oversize sunglasses and a crescent moon mustache introduced himself as Percy. A pin on his jacket identified him as an employee of Related, the real estate firm behind Hudson Yards. “Mr. Billy Porter, you looked…