Race defines icon André Leon Talley
Fashion icon André Leon Talley speaks out in frank documentary
In an early scene from The Gospel According to André, the star of the documentary sits on the porch of his home in White Plains, N.Y., with a hat perched jauntily on his head as he surveys a team of tree trimmers.
André Leon Talley has spent a lifetime in fashion — reporting on it, critiquing it, admiring it and wearing it. But in that moment he looks less like a fashion grandee and more like a southern gentleman overseeing his acreage — a man just home from Sunday service who would politely nod and tip his hat at any neighbour who happened past.
Talley is a tall, stately African-American man. He is a southerner. And he’s a churchgoer. More than anything else, these are the things that have shaped the way he has moved through life. They influence the way he judges beauty and grace. They fuelled the ambition that put him so close to the summit of the fashion mountaintop — that peak from which the great editors-in-chief rule. And they explain why he didn’t reach it.
Talley has always cut a striking figure, draping his 6-foot-6 frame with silk caftans, crocodile coats and abundant fur. The clothes, he has always said, are armour: He used them to “navigate through these chiffon trenches,” he said in a recent interview.
“Fashion is a cruel world. The clothes I put on are very deliberate.”
His decision to collaborate with filmmaker Kate Novack came after The First Monday in May, a documentary about the annual Met Costume Institute exhibition and gala, directed by her husband and frequent collaborator, Andrew Rossi, which featured interviews with Talley. It was the latest in a series of film projects that have shown fashion in a more humane and realistic way.
While many film studios, Rossi said, are still skeptical that “fashion is worthy of this kind of analysis,” it’s now clear that fashion documentaries, with the right marketing and support, can appeal to audiences beyond the fashion community.
Novack was drawn to Talley because she had seen him so many times as a supporting character in these documentaries, and each time he was the most memorable personality.
Every public figure has a personal history, as well as an origin story. The latter is a bit of mythology that may or may not be laced with truth. The Gospel According to André is more of a personal history as told in anecdotes and snippets of conversation.
The woman who offers the most insight into Talley — and serves as the only other narrative voice aside from Talley himself — is not another fashion editor or designer. It’s Eboni Marshall Turman, an assistant professor of theology and African-American religion at Yale University Divinity School and a friend. She is the person who places Talley into a social context, considers how he has extended the definition of black manhood and makes plain that race matters in his life. She asks what it means be so singular in fashion — to be, as a 1994 New Yorker profile put it, The Only One.
Race is no longer subtext in today’s fashion conversation. It has moved into the spotlight. And in the documentary, Talley unburdens himself, not fully but emotionally, when he recalls the insulting way in which a French publicist referred to him behind his back: “Queen Kong.”
“That’s probably one of the most important moments in the film,” Novack said in an interview. The fancy suits and silk shirts are no protection. Neither are his fluency in French, his deep knowledge of fashion history or his work ethic.
“Race does define me,” Talley said. “It feels more relevant now to bring it to the forefront.”
One of his proudest moments, he said in an interview, is the 2009 Vogue cover story of then-first lady Michelle Obama.
Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour “took me to lunch in the Condé Nast boardroom. She said, ‘We’re going to meet (presidential adviser) Valerie Jarrett to convince her to let Michelle Obama be on the cover. Let me do the talking; you’ll just sit there,’” Talley recalls. Wintour arrived with a stack of notebooks featuring all the first ladies the magazine had photographed in the past. “I sat there and smiled. And (Wintour) said, ‘André would do the story.’ That was a very important moment in our relationship and one of the most important assignments.”
Talley is no longer “the only one,” but he has yet to become one of many. “The industry has shifted in diversity, but not necessarily in terms of black people. We have models that are Muslim, transgender.
“I’m ever hopeful,” he said. “I think the world moves slow.”
But Talley has done his part to push it along.
The industry has shifted in diversity, but not necessarily in terms of black people.