He was not only a fashion journalist, at vogue among others, but also a fashion icon in his striking caftans: he was at all shows front row. Yet André Leon Talley, who passed away on Tuesday, always felt he didn’t quite belong.
He was sensitive, genius, generous and a little bit megalomaniacal. He was literally tall: fashion editor André Leon Talley, who was colorful in every way, measured 2 metres, a height that he emphasized by wearing strikingly colored and shiny caftans. That lavish, all-concealing dress was necessary because Talley had struggled with his weight since the death of his beloved grandmother and no longer fit into his tailored clothes.
Fortunately, Talley was a master at decorating anything that could use a pick-me-up. He made a virtue of necessity and cheerfully declared that wearing a cape or caftan makes you move more stately and even royally. An additional advantage: he could be traced at a glance if he was in the middle of the fashion crowd. For years this was in the front row at the fashion shows, alongside the woman who had long been his boss: the frail Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of the American newspaper since 1988. vogue.
Talley had a love-hate relationship with Wintour. In his 2020 memoir The Chiffon Trenches (which refers to both trench coats and trenches) got Wintour quite a bit. In the book, Talley claims to have been kicked out by her for being too old, too un-cool, and too fat. And with Radio Andy, where he came to talk about his autobiography, he said: “Lady Anna Wintour is a colonial woman, she is British, she is part of a colonial environment. She’s privileged and I don’t think she’ll ever let anything get in the way of her white privilege.”
Unlike Wintour, Talley had to live without a crib in a wealthy neighborhood and without an influential family. He was born while the Jim Crow segregation laws were still in effect, in October 1948. After two months, he moved from Washington to Durham, North Carolina, where his grandmother Bennie Frances Davis took care of the upbringing.
Davis, who worked as a janitor on the men’s campus at Duke University, introduced her grandson to the local church and taught him to behave in an orderly and exemplary manner. Little Talley, meanwhile, dreamed of a life like the Kennedys, delved into the local library vogue and the fashion magazine Women’s Wear Daily and fantasized about traveling to France.
So it made sense that Talley went to study French: first at North Carolina Central University, then a master’s degree at Brown in Rhode Island, where he devoted his master’s thesis to the influence of black women in the works of Baudelaire and Flaubert and the paintings of Delacroix. When he came through a volunteer job at the Metropolitan Museum in New York and met Diana Vreeland there, things went quickly.
Vreeland, the legendary former fashion editor of Harper’s Bazaar and ex-editor-in-chief of vogue, was a master at creating fantasy worlds and recognized that same talent in Talley. In addition, she knew everyone who mattered in the New York creative clique. Through her, Talley got a job as a receptionist at Andy Warhol’s magazine Interview, where he is said to have been the first to answer the phone at all.
When Talley got a job at Women’s Wear Daily and was stationed in Paris, a dream came true. He dressed in posh clothes, went to fun parties with fashion designers Karl Lagerfeld and Yves Saint Laurent and gleefully sprinkled his cultural baggage and language skills. Not enough to fit in completely, he described in his memoirs. He remained that big black outsider, with downright racist nicknames like Queen Kong. He took it without murmuring, he later said, by remaining deaf and blind to these kinds of comments.
In the late 1980s, Talley returned to America to work for the American vogue, where he served as editor-in-chief Wintour of both clothing and work advice. One of the most painful anecdotes: Wintour wanted to know from Talley whether it would snub readers if models of color were depicted. In his years with vogue, first if news director, later as creative director (until 1995) and after a break of three years as editor at large (until 2013), Talley was able to give free rein to his style, taste, encyclopedic fashion knowledge and flair. In addition, he was in a position to make the image of women in and on the magazine more inclusive.
At the end of his career he played starring roles as a villainous jury member in the talent show America’s Next Top Model and as a style advisor to Michelle and Barack Obama. When the Obamas celebrated a birthday party in 2020 despite the corona epidemic, love appeared to have cooled. In return for The New York Times Talley said: ‘I think the Obamas are seriously tone-deaf nouveaux riches who are in a gooey Marie Antoinette-‘let them eat pie’ mode. They must not forget that they come from humble origins.’
Talley’s last highlight was his appointment as a Knight of the French Order of Arts and Letters in 2021, for his services to the arts and literature. The last years of his life, the ailing Talley spent most of his health at home in White Plains, New York, in his Christian Lacroix bed. Entirely according to his own mantra: ‘The most luxurious item is a beautiful bed with beautiful, simple sheets.’