Journalist André Talley dies at age

NEW YORK — André Leon Talley, a towering and highly visible figure of the fashion world who made history as a rare Black editor in an overwhelmingly white industry, has died. He was 73.

The death Tuesday of Talley, the influential former creative director and editor at large of Vogue magazine, was confirmed on his Instagram page early Wednesday. No details were given as to his cause of death, but he was known to have had health struggles in recent years. Vogue said in its obituary that he died of a heart attack.

Dressed in his signature sweeping capes or colorful caftans, Talley was a regular in the front row of fashion shows in New York and Europe for decades, or atop the famous steps at the Met Gala. At 6-feet-6 inches tall, he cut an imposing and unforgettable figure; a Vogue staffer called him “the pharoah of fabulosity,” the magazine wrote.

But he was celebrated even more by fashion insiders for his deep knowledge, amassed over decades of devotion to the craft that began in his youth in the Jim Crow-era South, when he would walk to the campus of Duke University, where his grandmother cleaned dorms, to read Vogue.

In a 2013 Vanity Fair spread titled “The Eyeful Tower,” Talley was described as “perhaps the industry’s most important link to the past.” Designer Tom Ford told the magazine Talley was “one of the last great fashion editors who has an incredible sense of fashion history. … He can see through everything you do to the original reference, predict what was on your inspiration board.”