André Leon Talley talks Paris, the future of fashion magazines and his new documentary.

Legendary editor André Leon Talley is quick with the sound bite. A new documentary sheds light on where that bite comes from.

One of my favourite “Mondays with André” on Vogue.com is a 2013 interview André Leon Talley (ALT) did with designer Tom Ford. It was shortly after Ford’s son was born, and when the designer mentions changing diapers, Talley’s eyes widen with shock— not disgust (OK, maybe a little disgust) but shock. “Are they made of broadcloth?” he asks, referring to the cotton fabric often used to make shirts, dresses and sleepwear. It’s a funny and cerebral exchange all in one.

Though Talley was a rarefied editor for fashion bibles like Interview, Women’s Wear

Daily and Vogue, it’s the camera that brought him mass fame as the judge with the scathing tongue on America’s Next Top Model for four seasons. Now 68, he’s the subject of filmmaker Kate Novack’s documentary The

Gospel According to André—in which Ford also appears—which tracks Talley’s rise from proud yet humble beginnings in racially divided South Carolina to the runways of Paris, Milan and New York.

While in Toronto for the Toronto International Film Festival, where the documentary premiered ahead of its spring release, Talley was resplendent in a gold lamé Ralph Rucci caftan and Gucci horsebit slip-on loafers, but he was also slightly daunting: I’d just overheard him yelling at someone on the phone while waiting for my interview slot to come up. But after watching this powerhouse tear up on camera as he reflected on his personal brushes with racism when he was a young man and then an established editor, I now have a new view on ALT. He made it look easy, but it wasn’t.

In the documentary, you say you couldn’t be

good—you had to be better. “It came from my upbringing and my public school training. I had the best teachers—it was an excellent education. We were taught that we had to be the best. It was a great public high school. It had fabulous teachers who’d had fabulous experiences. That helped me a great deal. As a young person, I had role models I really looked up to. My English teacher, my French teacher…. My English teacher is in the film. I’m happy she’s in the film.” You went to Brown University and then, in 1974, moved to New York. Which was more significant: going to Brown or moving to New York? “Both were very significant.” »