André Leon Talley: Photo: Squire Fox/August

‘I don’t live for fashion. I live for beauty and style.’
Andre Leon Talley

On the death earlier this year of fashion journalist, editor and stylist Andre Leon Talley, I watched the 2017 documentary ‘The Gospel According to Andre’ (directed by Kate Novack).

'People need to be edited. Life needs to be edited. I need to be edited.'

Talley was a tastemaker, a raconteur, a permanent fixture at catwalk shows for more than four decades. He was the creative director of US Vogue, a close confidant of Yves Saint Laurent, Karl Lagerfeld and Paloma Picasso, a style consultant to Michelle Obama. He had an encyclopaedic knowledge of fashion history and he drew on an extraordinary breadth of cultural references. He was a rare Black man in a predominantly white world.

‘Andre is one of the last of those great editors who know what they’re looking at, know what they’re seeing, know where it came from.’
Tom Ford
We can learn a great deal from Talley’s journey to the top of the fashion runway.

1. ‘You Can Be Aristocratic Without Having Been Born into an Aristocratic Family’

‘It was an amazing life based on narrative and anecdotes.’

Born in Washington DC in 1948, Talley was raised by his grandmother, Binnie Francis Davis, in Durham, North Carolina. Davis, for 50 years a cleaner at nearby Duke University, was a stylish woman with exacting standards.

‘My grandmother taught me about dignity and values and striving for excellence; rigour, discipline, maintenance; cleanliness next to godliness. It’s aristocratic in the highest sense of the word. You can be aristocratic without having been born into an aristocratic family.’

Highlight of the week for the young Talley was the fashion parade that he witnessed at his local church.

‘Going to church was the most important thing in life. Getting up and getting dressed to go to church on Sunday.’

Aged nine Talley discovered Vogue in the Durham public library. The magazine opened the door to a romantic world of elegance, taste and invention. He read it avidly, tore pages out and stuck them on his bedroom walls.

‘My escape from reality was Vogue magazine… It made me think about style, culture, poetry, music, beauty.’

2. ‘Success is the Best Revenge’

Growing up in the segregated South, racism was a daily reality. Talley remembered how at Jo Belles store in Durham only the Black women were asked to wear protective veils when they tried on the hats. On one occasion, walking to collect his copy of Vogue from a newsstand on the white side of town, he was pelted with stones by a group of students.

At all-Black Hillside High School, Talley was taught that ‘success is the best revenge.’

‘Excellence without an excuse.’
‘You couldn’t be good. You had to be better.’

Enchanted by the way chef Julia Child said ‘Bon appetit!’ on her TV cookery show, Talley gravitated towards French culture. He studied French Literature at North Carolina Central University and went on to earn a scholarship in the same subject at Brown University, where he graduated with a Masters in 1972.

‘I knew I had to get out of Durham… Brown gave me a freedom, a liberation and propelled me into the world that I know.’

3. ’The Past Is Always In the Present'

While at Brown, Talley socialised with students from the Rhode Island School of Design and wrote about its vibrant fashion set for the college magazine.

‘Luxury is in your mind.’

Through his new connections, in 1974 Talley attained an apprenticeship with Diana Vreeland, legendary former editor-in-chief at US Vogue, who was then curating exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute. The two struck up a close rapport.

‘She taught me the language of clothes, the language of style.’

At the Costume Institute Talley learned that an understanding of history is the foundation for an understanding of fashion. In years to come his commentary on catwalk shows was embroidered with diverse references: Beau Brummell, Oscar Wilde and Lady Ottoline Morrell; Josephine Baker, Madame Gres, Visconti and Dorothy Dandridge; Tsarist Russia, Belle Epoque Paris and Swinging London.

'I take my story with me wherever I go. The past is always in the present.'

4. ‘Dare to Be Daring’

Soon Vreeland had secured Talley a receptionist’s job at Andy Warhol's Interview magazine. He found himself at the heart of ‘70s New York’s decadent social scene.

‘The word promiscuous doesn’t begin to touch it. We thought sex was good for you – like orange juice.’
Fran Lebowitz

Talley’s role at Interview gave him access to a galaxy of creative stars: Calvin Klein, Gianni Versace, Stephen Burrows, Anna Piaggi, Pat Cleveland.

‘I was inspired by people who dared to be daring.’

5. ‘See the World through the Kaleidoscope Eyes of a Child’

In 1975 Talley interviewed Karl Lagerfeld and impressed the designer with his knowledge and research. He subsequently secured a job at Women's Wear Daily, becoming in 1978 its Paris bureau chief.

6ft 7in tall, poised and elegant, Talley cut a dash on the Paris scene. He made extravagant gestures and dressed flamboyantly in shorts, seersucker jackets, sable coats and fedora hats; pinstripe suits, silk scarves, turbans and trenchcoats.

Talley: Fashion should have more joie de vivre.
Interviewer: But why don’t we see it on the street?
Talley: Darling, it depends on which street you’re walking on…and what time of day it is.

Admitted to the inner circle of Yves Saint Laurent and fluent in the local language, Talley thrived in the French capital.

‘You have to see the world through the kaleidoscope eyes of a child and just be in awe of everything.’

6. ‘Make People Feel the Dream’

In 1983 Talley joined US Vogue where he soon established a decades-long partnership with editor-in-chief, Anna Wintour. He was promoted from news editor to creative editor to editor-at-large.

Wintour recognised the value of Talley’s familiarity with fashion heritage.

‘My fashion history is not so great, and his is impeccable, so I think I learnt a lot from him.'
Anna Wintour

Talley wrote articles, arranged shoots, brokered interviews and negotiated covers. He had an instinct for the zeitgeist and a natural ability to communicate his love of clothes to a broader public.

‘No one really needs another handbag or another sweater or another coat. It has to be emotional. And Andre could always make people feel that dream and feel that emotion.’
Anna Wintour

After his grandmother’s death in 1989 Talley struggled with his weight. He increasingly wore the theatrical capes and kaftans that became his trademark. In 2013 he finally left Vogue and withdrew to his home in White Plains. Believing that he had been frozen out by Wintour - for being ‘too old, too overweight, too uncool’ - he hit back in a 2020 memoir, ‘The Chiffon Trenches’. He died of a heart attack aged 73.

‘You have to hydrate yourself with beauty and luxury and style.’

Andre Leon Talley rose to the top of his profession through prodigious talent and mental toughness. He was a luminous character - funny, intelligent and bold - a passionate advocate for the power of fashion to uplift the soul.

‘Voltaire says one must cultivate one’s own garden… You must cultivate your own aesthetic and your own universe. Create your own universe and share it with people you respect and love.’

Above all Talley teaches us that, even in the most cutting edge contemporary spheres of work and life, the past sheds light on the present.

As author Michael Crichton has observed:
'If you don't know history, then you don't know anything. You are a leaf that doesn't know it is part of a tree.'

'My mama told me, she said, "Son, please beware
There's this thing called love, and it's everywhere."
And she told me it can break your heart
And put you in misery.
Since I met this little woman I feel it's happened to me,
And I'm tellin' you
It's too late to turn back now.
I believe, I believe, I believe I'm falling in love.
It's too late to turn back now
I believe, I believe, I believe I'm falling in love.’

The Cornelius Brothers & Sister Rose, 'Too Late to Turn Back Now’ (E Cornileus)

No. 365