FILE -
André
Leon
Talley,
a former
editor
at large
for
Vogue
magazine,
speaks
to a
reporter
at the
opening
of the
"Black
Fashion
Designers"
exhibit
at the
Fashion
Institute
of
Technology
in New
York,
Tuesday,
Dec. 6,
2016.
Talley,
the
towering
former
creative
director
and
editor
at large
of Vogue
magazine,
has
died. He
was 73.
Talley's
literary
agent
confirmed
Talley's
death to
USA
Today
late
Tuesday,
Jan. 18,
2022.
(AP
Photo/Seth
Wenig,
File) |
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FILE -
Vogue
magazine
editor
at large
André
Leon
Talley
attends
a
post-Fashion
Week
panel
discussion
on the
lack of
black
images
in the
current
fashion
output
Sept.
14,
2007, in
New
York.
Talley,
the
towering
former
creative
director
and
editor
at large
of Vogue
magazine,
has
died. He
was 73.
Talley's
literary
agent
confirmed
Talley's
death to
USA
Today
late
Tuesday,
Jan. 18,
2022.
(AP
Photo/Mary
Altaffer,
File) |
|
André
Leon
Talley,
Editor
and
Fashion
Industry
Force,
Dies at
73
Called
“a
creative
genius,”
he was
the rare
Black
editor
at the
top of a
field
that was
mostly
white
and
notoriously
elitist.
By
Vanessa
Friedman
and
Jacob
Bernstein
nytimes.com
NEW YORK
- André
Leon
Talley,
the
larger-than-life
fashion
editor
who
shattered
his
industry’s
glass
ceiling
when he
went
from the
Jim Crow
South to
the
front
rows of
Paris
couture,
parlaying
his
encyclopedic
knowledge
of
fashion
history
and his
quick
wit into
roles as
author,
public
speaker,
television
personality
and
curator,
died on
Tuesday
in White
Plains,
N.Y. He
was 73.
His
death,
in a
hospital
after a
series
of
health
struggles,
was
confirmed
by his
friend
Darren
Walker,
the
president
of the
Ford
Foundation.
“André
Leon
Talley
was a
singular
force in
an
industry
that he
had to
fight to
be
recognized
in,” Mr.
Walker
said,
calling
him a
“creative
genius”
and
noting
his
ability
to shape
a
persona
for
himself
out of
“a deep
academic
understanding
of
fashion
and
design.”
Called
“The
Only
One” by
The New
Yorker
by
virtue
of his
being
the rare
Black
editor
at the
top of a
field
that was
notoriously
white
and
notoriously
elitist,
Mr.
Talley,
who
stood 6
feet 6
inches
tall,
was an
unmistakable
figure
everywhere
he went.
Given to
drama in
his
personal
style
(he
favored
capes,
gloves
and
regal
headpieces),
his
pronouncements
(“My
eyes are
starving
for
beauty”)
and the
work he
adored,
he
cultivated
an air
of
hauteur,
though
his
friends
knew him
for his
subcutaneous
sentimentality.
He was,
said the
actress
and
talk-show
host
Whoopi
Goldberg
in the
2018
documentary
“The
Gospel
According
to
André,”
“so many
things
he was
not
supposed
to be.”
Mr.
Talley
was the
receptionist
at
Interview
magazine
under
Andy
Warhol;
the
Paris
bureau
chief of
Women’s
Wear
Daily
under
John
Fairchild;
the
creative
director
and
editor
at large
of Vogue
under
Anna
Wintour.
He
helped
dress
Michelle
Obama
when she
was
first
lady,
was an
adviser
and a
friend
to the
designer
Oscar de
la Renta,
and
became a
mentor
to the
supermodel
Naomi
Campbell.
He cast
Ms.
Campbell
as
Scarlett
O’Hara
in a
shoot
for
Vanity
Fair
that
reimagined
“Gone
With the
Wind”
with
Black
protagonists
long
before
fashion
woke up
to its
own
racism.
He was
latterly
a judge
on the
TV
reality
show
“America’s
Next Top
Model”;
artistic
director
of the
online
retailer
Zappos;
an
adviser
to the
musician
will.i.am’s
tech
start-up;
and
deeply
involved
with the
Savannah
College
of Art
and
Design.
Mr.
Talley
was a
fixture
at the
Abyssinian
Baptist
Church
in
Harlem,
where,
according
to the
church’s
pastor,
the Rev.
Dr.
Calvin
O. Butts
III, he
arrived
with
celebrities
like
Mariah
Carey
and
Tamron
Hall but
was
known
for his
serious
faith.
“With
all his
celebrity
and
globe-trotting,
he came
in the
best of
times
and he
showed
up in
the
worst of
times,”
Mr.
Butts
said.
“He
showed
up to
worship.
He
supported
the
church,
he gave
generously,
and his
friends
loved
him.”
Mr.
Talley,
who was
openly
gay,
lived
alone
and had
little
semblance
of a
romantic
life,
left no
immediate
survivors.
Kate
Novack,
the
director
of the
2018
documentary,
said
he was
“a
classic
American
success
story”
but
noted
that his
success
“has
come at
a cost.”
The
designer
Tom
Ford, in
that
documentary,
said,
“André
is one
of the
last of
those
great
editors
who
knows
what
they are
looking
at,
knows
what
they are
seeing,
knows
where it
came
from.”
He
added,
“André
tosses
out all
these
different
words
and he’s
so big
and so
grand, a
lot of
people
think,
‘This
guy is
crazy,’
but it’s
a
fabulous
insanity.”
André
Leon
Talley
was born
on Oct.
16,
1948, in
Washington
to Alma
and
William
Carroll
Talley.
From the
time he
was 2
months
old, he
was
raised
by his
grandmother
Bennie
Frances
Davis in
Durham,
N.C.,
where
she
worked
as a
maid at
the
men’s
campus
of Duke
University.
He grew
up
schooled
in the
Southern
church
and good
manners,
idolizing
the
Kennedys
and
obsessed
with
France
and the
escape
it
seemed
to offer
from a
town
where
college
students
sometimes
stoned
him when
he
crossed
campus
to buy
Vogue —
and
where,
he said,
he was
sexually
abused
as a
child.
He
majored
in
French
studies
at North
Carolina
Central
University
and
received
a
master’s
from
Brown
University,
where he
wrote
his
thesis
on the
influence
of Black
women in
the
writing
of
Baudelaire
and
Flaubert
and the
paintings
of
Delacroix.
A chance
meeting
with the
editor
Carrie
Donovan,
then
working
at
Vogue,
convinced
him that
he had
to move
to New
York,
and in
1974 he
volunteered
to help
Diana
Vreeland
at the
Metropolitan
Museum
of Art’s
Costume
Institute.
It was
through
Mrs.
Vreeland,
he wrote
in his
memoir,
“The
Chiffon
Trenches,”
published
in 2020,
that “I
learned
to speak
the
language
of
style,
fantasy
and
literature.”
It was
also
through
Mrs.
Vreeland
that he
entered
the
magazine
world,
and
through
Interview
that he
met
Warhol.
“He was
constantly
trying
to grab
my
crotch,”
Mr.
Talley
later
told The
New York
Times.
“It was
not a
Harvey
Weinstein
moment.
Andy was
a
charming
person
because
he saw
the
world
through
the
kaleidoscope
of a
child.
Everything
was ‘gee
golly
wow.’”
At
Interview
he also
met Karl
Lagerfeld,
the
Fendi
designer
whose
omnivorous
cultural
tastes
and
intellect
became
Mr.
Talley’s
lodestar,
especially
once he
joined
Women’s
Wear
Daily
and
moved to
Paris.
There,
he
enjoyed
glamorous
evenings
with
Yves
Saint
Laurent
and his
acolytes,
moving
from the
chateaus
of
aristocrats
to
nouveau
nightclubs.
Through
it all,
Mr.
Talley
wrote in
his
memoir,
he
navigated
in his
“armor”
—
specifically,
“Banana
cable
knee
socks
and
elegant
moccasins”
and
“Turnbull
& Asser
shirts.”
For him,
fashion
was both
inspiration
and
disguise,
camouflage
against
the
racist
barbs he
experienced,
such as
being
referred
to as
“Queen
Kong.”
It was
only in
hindsight,
he
wrote,
that he
realized
“the
blinders
I had to
keep on
in order
to
survive.”
In the
late
1980s,
his
flamboyant
tastes
and deep
fashion
knowledge
caught
the eye
of Ms.
Wintour,
for whom
Mr.
Talley
became
adviser,
friend
and
foil, a
link to
an
older,
more
romantic,
less
corporate
and less
bottom-line-oriented
age. He
even
advised
Ms.
Wintour
on her
Met Gala
outfits.
“What I
recall
is that
I was
not so
much his
protector,”
Ms.
Wintour
said in
the
documentary.
“My
fashion
history
is not
so
great,
and his
is
impeccable,
so I
think I
learned
a lot
from
him.”
As
fashion
monstres
sacrés
like Mr.
Saint
Laurent
and
Alexander
McQueen
gave way
to more
technocratic
9-to-5
designers,
Mr.
Talley
found
himself
on the
outside.
There
were
“many in
that
industry
who
really
did love
André
for his
talent,”
Mr.
Butts
said. It
was also
the
case, he
added,
that
“there
were
others
who
exploited
his
talent
and used
it to
their
advantage,”
who
“never
really
gave him
respect
as a man
and were
condescending.”
After
“The
Chiffon
Trenches”
was
published,
Mr.
Talley
fell out
with Ms.
Wintour,
whom he
accused
of
abandoning
him. (In
the
memoir,
he
suggested
that she
had
played a
somewhat
parasitic
role in
his
life,
feeding
off this
energy.)
Mr.
Talley
had
struggled
with his
weight
since
his
grandmother’s
death in
1989,
and in
recent
years he
was
largely
isolated
in the
house in
White
Plains
where he
lived,
sleeping
in a bed
that Mr.
de la
Renta
had
given
him. The
home
became
the
subject
of a
lawsuit
last
year,
when the
owner,
his
former
friend
George
Malkemus,
attempted
to evict
him.
(Mr.
Talley
had a
history
of bad
financial
decisions.)
Yet, for
all his
complaints
and
disillusionment,
Mr.
Talley
continued
to
believe
in the
power of
the
well-placed
seam and
the
perfectly
polished
shoe,
the way
the
shallowest
of
objects
can
transform
our
deepest
aspirations
into
reality.
“To my
12-year-old
self,
raised
in the
segregated
South,
the idea
of a
Black
man
playing
any kind
of role
in this
world
seemed
an
impossibility,”
he wrote
in his
memoir.
“To
think of
where
I’ve
come
from,
where
we’ve
come
from, in
my
lifetime,
and
where we
are
today,
is
amazing.
And,
yet, of
course,
we still
have so
far to
go.”
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