André Leon Talley

Talley was born on October 16, 1948, in Washington, D.C.,[3] the son of Alma Ruth Davis and William C. Talley, a taxi driver. At least one of his grandfathers was a sharecropper. His parents left him with his maternal grandmother, Binnie Francis Davis, who worked as a cleaning lady at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina. She raised him, with Talley saying he was given from her an "understanding of luxury,"[4] and for whom he has expressed, since her death, "I miss her almost everyday."[5]

He grew up in the Jim Crow era South, where segregation defined social boundaries. He has said, "For a long time my grandmother would not allow white people to come into our house. That was her rule. The only white man who ever came into the house was the coroner."[6] His love for fashion was cultivated at an early age by her and his discovery of Vogue magazine, which he first found in the local library[7] at the age of nine or 10.[8]

Talley was educated at Hillside High School, graduating in 1966, and North Carolina Central University, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in French Literature in 1970. He won a scholarship to Brown University,[5] where he earned a Master of Arts degree in French Literature in 1972.[9] At Brown, he wrote a thesis on the influence of black women on Charles Baudelaire[9] and initially planned to teach French.[10]

Through the student connections he made in Providence, Rhode Island, he apprenticed, unpaid, for Diana Vreeland at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1974.[5] So impressed by his skills, the Vogue editor connected Talley up with a job at Andy Warhol's Factory and Interview magazine[5] for $50 a week. He went on to work at Women’s Wear Daily, becoming its Paris bureau chief,[5] and W, from 1975 through 1980. He also worked for The New York Times and other publications before finally landing at Vogue, where he worked as the Fashion News Director from 1983 to 1987 and then as Creative Director from 1988 to 1995. He pushed top designers to have more African-American models in their shows.[9] In 1984 he co-wrote with Richard Bernstein the book MegaStar, with an introduction by Paloma Picasso, which includes portraits of celebrities.[11] He left Vogue and moved to Paris in 1995 to work for W, and served as contributing editor at Vogue. In 1998, he returned to Vogue as the editor-at-large until his departure in 2013[9] to pursue another editorial venture.[8]

In 2003, he published an autobiography entitled A.L.T.: A Memoir, published by Villard in 2003.[12] According to Publishers Weekly, the message delivered by the book is that "Style transcends race, class, and time."[13] Two years later he authored A.L.T. 365+, an art monograph designed by art director Sam Shahid. 365 features photos and captions from one year of Talley's life.[14]

In 2008, Talley advised the Obama family on fashion, introducing Michelle Obama to the Taiwanese-Canadian designer Jason Wu, from whom she bought several dresses, including her inaugural gown. Talley's famous recent pairings have been with designers Tracy Reese, Rachel Roy, and singer/actress Jennifer Hudson. He is a friend of pop diva Mariah Carey, fashion designer Kimora Lee Simmons, and tennis star Venus Williams.

From March 2010 to December 2011, Talley served on the judging panel for America's Next Top Model (from Cycle 14 to Cycle 17).[15] From 2013 to 2014, he served as international editor of Numéro Russia, joining the team shortly after the magazine launched in March 2013 but resigned after 12 issues. He has been a member of the Board of Trustees of the Savannah College of Art and Design since 1995.[16]

In January 2017, he live-blogged the Trump inauguration with New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd.[5] In April of that year, Talley began hosting his own radio show principally concerned with fashion and pop culture on Sirius XM satellite station Radio Andy.

Talley is the subject of a documentary film, The Gospel According to André, directed by Kate Novack,[17] which was screened in September 2016 at the Toronto Film Festival and was released in the US on May 25, 2018.[18][19] Reviewing the film, Variety said: "The documentary is a deeply loving, frequently beautiful testament to the former Vogue editor, who rose from humble beginnings in North Carolina to become arguably the high fashion world’s first major African-American tastemaker, as well as the type of multi-lingual, Russian-lit-citing public intellectual who is perfectly at ease gossiping on TV with Wendy Williams."[4] It was available on Disney's Hulu in 2020.

He released The Chiffon Trenches: A Memoir on May 19, 2020. In it, he discusses getting his start in New York City in the 1970s, his tumultuous relationship with Wintour, and his experiences with racism in the fashion world.[10]

In the mid-2000s, Anna Wintour initiated an intervention to get Talley to lose weight.[17] As seen on The Oprah Winfrey Show, he eventually lost a great deal of weight, and was eating more healthfully. He continued again at the Duke Diet and Fitness Center in the late 2010s.[5]

In 2007, Talley was ranked 45th in Out magazine's "50 Most Powerful Gay Men and Women in America".[20]

During his May 29, 2018 appearance on The Wendy Williams Show, when asked about his sexual orientation, Talley stated, "No, I'm not heterosexual; I'm saying I'm fluid in my sexuality, darling." [21]

Talley fielding questions at New York book signing, June 10, 2013

• With Richard Bernstein, MegaStar, with an introduction by Paloma Picasso, Indigo Books, 1984, ISBN 978-0-394-62305-4
• A.L.T.: A Memoir, Villard, 2003, ISBN 0-375-50828-7
• A.L.T. 365+, designed by Sam Shahid, powerHouse Books, 2005, ISBN 1-57687-240-8
• The Chiffon Trenches: A Memoir, Ballantine, 2020[10]

• 2003: Eugenia Sheppard Award for Fashion Journalism, Council of Fashion Designers of America
• 2008: Honorary Doctor of Humanities, Savannah College of Art and Design[22]
• 2011: The André Leon Talley Gallery opened in the SCAD Museum of Art.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to André Leon Talley.

Wikiquote has quotations related to: André Leon Talley

• André Leon Talley at IMDb
• Quotes from André Leon Talley
• A.L.T. 365+ Review
• Hilton Als, "The Only One", The New Yorker, November 7, 1994.
• Robin Givhan,"‘Race does define me,’ says André Leon Talley — and now the fashion icon is ready to talk about it", The Washington Post, June 8, 2018.