THE CHIFFON TRENCHES

A MEMOIR

ANDRE LEON TALLEY

Fourth Estate, 304pp, £20, ebook £9.99

André Leon Talley’s memoir of betrayal, bitchiness and food addiction at the court of couture was a guilty pleasure. Formerly the devoted bag-carrier for Anna Wintour at American Vogue, Talley, now 70, was cast out after years of loyal service: this book is his revenge. Reviewers squirmed at the horror of the world he depicts but thrilled to it too. As Lisa Armstrong put it in the Telegraph: ‘It is brimful of toxic behaviour and noxious values.’

Raised by his grandmother in North Carolina and damaged by sexual abuse in childhood, Talley dreamed of escape by reading Vogue, ‘a world where bad things never happen’. He became a lynchpin of the fashion world, his 6’ 7” frame costumed outrageously in kaftans and capes. As Armstrong writes, however: ‘Most of his friendships seem highly conditional on him acting as a striking, childlike aide-de-camp [to] Wintour, the ultimate small, great, white woman.’ A secret overeater, he ballooned: ‘If I felt sad, I would eat and keep on eating until I felt better.’

In the Observer, Rachel Cooke wondered at Talley’s lack of selfawareness. ‘For all his plaintiveness, he seems to have not even the dimmest sense that if you spend your life creeping to those who only respond to toadying the people involved are probably not very sincere, and your relationship with them probably not very real.’

But in the New York Times, Rebecca Carroll saw a victim: ‘In America if you are black and aim higher than the reach history has set for you, the white gaze will try to leech your spirit of its racial identity.’