October 16, 1948—January 18, 2022
Early Life
André Leon Talley was a fashion journalist, creative director, author, and former editor-at-large of Vogue magazine. Talley was born in Washington, D.C., to Alma Ruth Davis and William Carroll Talley in 1948. When he was two months old, his parents took him to live with his maternal grandmother, Bennie Francis Davis, and great-grandmother, China Johnson Roberson, in Durham, North Carolina.
Talley lived in Durham during his early life. Bennie worked as a custodian for the men’s dormitories on Duke University’s West Campus. While living with Bennie and China, Talley regularly attended church at Mt. Sinai Missionary Baptist Church in Orange County. In his memoirs, he said he enjoyed watching people arrive in their best church clothes every Sunday. Talley also credited seeing Sunday church fashion as an early inspiration for wanting to work in the fashion industry. He recounted that Black churches were one of the few places where he and his family felt truly comfortable during his youth in the Jim Crow era. As an adolescent and young adult, Talley found comfort in books, magazines, and records, stating that his escape from reality was
Vogue
magazine.
Talley regularly visited the city library in downtown Durham and discovered Vogue magazine there. Talley was inspired to pursue a career in fashion because of Black Vogue models like Naomi Sims and Pat Cleveland.
Talley attended Hillside High School in Durham, a racially segregated school for Black students. There, he held a seat on student government, performed in plays, and served in other student organizations. Talley graduated from Hillside in 1966 and attended North Carolina Central University. In 1970, he graduated with a bachelor of arts in French literature. He then received a scholarship to attend Brown University and earned a master’s in French literature. While at Brown, Talley regularly socialized with students from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and contributed to the school’s student paper. With the RISD students, Talley explored fashion modeling and design. Talley concentrated his master’s thesis on Charles Baudelaire and the influence of Black women on his poetry and prose. In 1972, Talley graduated from Brown University and intended to teach French.
Talley and Fashion
Instead, Talley ultimately moved to New York City to pursue fashion. With a letter of introduction sent from a classmate’s father, Talley became an apprentice to Diana Vreeland at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He worked under Vreeland on the exhibit Romantic and Glamorous Hollywood Design show. Vreeland employed Talley as her administrative and fashion assistant after he successfully created and showcased a Lana Turner costume. Vreeland supported Talley’s career aspirations and recommended him to Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine, and Talley began working at Interview magazine in 1975. While at Interview, Talley orchestrated his first high-profile interview titled “Karl Lagerfeld: In a Cloud of Chloë” (1975). After the interview, Lagerfeld gifted Talley a collection of designer clothes, and the two became close friends. Talley and Lagerfeld maintained their friendship for about forty years.
From 1975 until 1980, Talley wrote and served as the Paris Bureau Chief for Women’s Wear Daily (WWD) and W magazines and lived part-time in Paris. During this time, Talley also experienced racial discrimination from fashion industry colleagues. While working with Yves Saint Laurent (YSL), Paloma Picasso (daughter of Pablo) informed Talley that Clara Saint, a YSL publicist, regularly and secretly referred to him as “Queen Kong.” According to Talley, Saint coined the name as a slur directed towards Talley’s race, size, sexuality, and masculinity. Later in life, Talley referred to this moment as representative of the discrimination he experienced while working in the fashion industry. In 1979, Talley’s boss at WWD, Michael Coady, accused him of using sexual relationships to secure interviews with fashion designers all over Paris. This baseless accusation was made in front of other magazine staff. In response, Talley immediately resigned from WWD magazine with a notarized letter from the American Embassy. Talley wanted an official record of his letter to deter any negative reports that could have been fabricated or misconstrued. After the incident at WWD, he stayed with his friend Karl Lagerfeld and returned to New York months later.
After he returned to New York, Talley received a call from Eunice Johnson of Ebony Magazine, offering him a position as fashion editor. Talley’s family did not subscribe to the magazines for which he had previously written. However, members of his church and family did read Ebony, as it was tailored to Black fashion and lived experiences. Talley accepted the position with Ebony and completed his job duties while residing in New York. His experience working with Ebony was unlike any of his previous employers because he felt included and cared for by Johnson. Talley stated this was the only time during his career he felt this type of inclusion from an employer in the fashion industry. Talley worked with Ebony as a fashion editor for only one year, though he remained friends with Eunice Johnson afterwards.
In 1983, Talley secured a position as fashion news editor with Vogue magazine. Five years later, when Anna Wintour became editor-in-chief, she named him creative director, making him the first Black man to serve in this role at Vogue. That year, Talley bought his grandmother a home in Durham. She stayed in the house for less than a year before her death from leukemia in 1989. Talley’s original mentor, Diana Vreeland, also died that same year.
In 1995, Talley left Vogue and moved back to Paris to work for W magazine, retaining the title of contributing editor at Vogue. In 1998, Talley returned to Vogue as editor-at-large, a role he held until 2013.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, Talley became a supporting figure at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). He served as a mentor to aspiring fashion students, taught graduate courses, and curated exhibitions. To help support students’ research, he donated media such as photos, artwork, and memorabilia. By 2001, Talley was serving as a member of the Board of Trustees, a position he would hold for over twelve years. That year, the school awarded Talley the Lifetime Achievement Award. A year later, SCAD renamed this award the “André Talley Lifetime Achievement Award.” At SCAD’s request, Talley presented the award each year for the next ten years. During this time, Talley also maintained a friendship with the former president of SCAD, Paula Wallace. At SCAD, Talley taught master’s classes, mentored students, and curated exhibitions. Talley was a trustee for SCAD and curated several notable exhibitions like High Style (2011), Little Black Dress (2012), Antonio Lopez and the World of Fashion Art (2013), and Oscar de la Renta: His Legendary World of Style (2015), which was a tribute to his friend Oscar de la Renta, who died in 2014.
Talley’s prominence in American pop culture increased in the early 2000s. In 2007, Out Magazine selected Talley as one of the “50 Most Powerful Gay Men and Women in America.” Talley also advised the Obama family on fashion and styled Michelle Obama for her first Vogue cover in 2008. He appeared in Sex and the City: The Movie (2008) in a non-speaking role as himself. From 2010 to 2011, Talley served as a judge on America’s Next Top Model for cycles fourteen through seventeen.
After leaving his role as Vogue’s editor-at-large in 2013, Talley briefly worked as an international editor-at-large for the magazine Numéro Russia. Several of Talley’s close friends, like Pat Cleveland and Naomi Campbell, were featured in the magazine. He ultimately resigned from Numéro Russia in March 2014 due to Russian legislation enacted in June 2013 that targeted the civil rights of LGBTQIA+ people. Talley’s issue cover from December 2013 was banned by the June legislation. Talley created twelve issues for the magazine but was not paid for his last three issues (December 2013, January 2014, February 2014). Talley stated that there are no civil rights for people there. That's one of my reasons for departing....
Talley was a regular attendee at the Met Gala and conducted interviews of celebrities on livestream for Vogue from 2013 to 2018, when he was abruptly replaced. According to Talley, a publicist at Vogue, at the behest of Wintour, informed him that those interviews [were] beneath you,
and that he would no longer be doing them. Talley believed he was replaced because of his age, weight, race, and declining popularity. Afterwards, when he attended the Met Gala as a guest, he stated that he didn’t feel comfortable and thus left early. On his way home, Talley said, I will never attend another Anna Wintour Met Gala for the rest of my life.
While he didn’t attend the 2019 Met Gala, he did attend all of Wintour’s dress fittings for the event.
Fashion-Adjacent Work
Talley also created media about his life and works. Talley published his first autobiography, A.L.T: A Memoir, in 2003. In 2005, he partnered with Sam Shahid to create A.L.T. 365+, his first art monograph collection. A documentary about Talley’s life was released in 2017. It was titled The Gospel According to André. Talley’s second memoir, The Chiffon Trenches: A Memoir, was released on May 19, 2020 and became a New York Times bestseller.
Talley had a longtime friendship with Naomi Campbell, whom he mentored in the 1980s. In 2019, Campbell invited Talley to Lagos, Nigeria, to attend Arise Fashion Week. Campbell arranged for a screening of Talley’s documentary with a question-and-answer session.
Talley received recognition in North Carolina during his lifetime. In 2019, the city council of Durham, North Carolina presented Talley with the Key to the City, and Mayor Steve Schewel declared February 15 Andre Leon Talley Day. Overseas, the French Republic awarded him the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2020. An in 2021, the NC Awards Committee also granted Talley the North Carolina Award for Literature.
Personal Life and Death
Talley experienced a disordered psychological relationship with food, eating, and weight during his lifetime. Talley wrote in his memoir, food was always a part of my life… [and] I always associated food with love.
Talley first identified eating as a coping mechanism after his grandmother and Diana Vreeland both died in 1989. Several years after their deaths, in 1998, Talley was approached by Anna Wintour about his weight change. She prompted Talley to “hit the gym” more often. Talley obliged and hired a personal trainer, but because of his disordered eating it did not impact his weight. Sometime in the late 2000s and before Talley left Vogue in 2013, Anna Wintour arranged an intervention to discuss his weight. The intervention was held in a conference room at Vogue. The participants included Wintour and her boyfriend, Shelby Bryan; Talley's pastor, Dr. Calvin Butts III; and Oscar and Annette de la Renta. At the intervention, Anna declared that Talley’s weight was “out of control,” and that he needed weight “rehabilitation” immediately. Anna paid for Talley to be enrolled in a weight loss program at the Duke Diet and Fitness Center in Durham. Talley initially declined. Talley continued suffering from disordered eating after the intervention and tried to fix [his] dietary problems
himself. After a year, he agreed to attend the program at the Center that was suggested at his intervention. He initially lost fifty-five pounds but gained it all back. This started what Talley described as a yo-yo battle I long ago realized I will never win.
He visited the center three more times without result. Talley later underwent lap band surgery under the assumed name “Dolly Longstocking” to protect his identity. The surgery did not yield the desired results, and Talley eventually stopped pursuing weight loss. About his weight and health journey, Talley stated that up or down, my confidence and sense of self never wavered.
Talley never married. In The Gospel According to André, Talley stated that he prioritized his career for most of his life but somewhat regretted never becoming romantically involved with someone else:
I was busy, doing my career… I never have fallen in love, or have never experienced love. I wish I could have found someone to live with as Tom Ford has found someone to live with… but I love the world of fashion, I love the world of the runway... But as for falling in love, I don’t know about that.
According to his words in The Chiffon Trenches, although romantic love was not in [his] life in any degree,
he still found love in little interludes of innocence or wonderful, life-enhancing bonds, and friendships that grew out of respect, affection, and admiration.
Talley also attributed his lack of a romantic life to past emotional and physical traumas. Talley expressed that his mother or grandmother had never offered physical touch as a sign of love during his youth. Talley was also sexually assaulted as a child; he stated that the experience kept [him] from ever knowing how to respond to romance,
and that the dark zone of trauma consumed [him], and stunted [his] emotional evolution….
According to Talley in his Chiffon Trenches memoir, a neighbor sexually assaulted him. After the first incident, other older boys in the community also sexually assaulted Talley. Talley remained silent after the series of sexual assaults out of fear that he would have been shamed
by his family and members of his community. Fearing censure and exile, he stated, I simply pushed through the pain and betrayal in silence, never having counsel or psychiatric help.
Talley also expressed difficulty in maintaining adult romantic relationships due to his traumas, stating that my childhood nightmares had rendered me inept with my sexuality.
Talley had many health issues throughout his life, some of which intensified later in his life. He died at age seventy-three from complications related to a heart attack on January 18, 2022, in White Plains, New York. Many of Talley’s peers fondly remembered him after his death. Naomi Campbell remembered Talley by writing an obituary in The Guardian:
André lit up rooms, seized every opportunity, and made sure everyone around him understood they could do the same. It’s that legacy, that love for every moment, that will endure longer than the years he spent on this Earth. He will always be my chosen family, and I miss him dearly.
Michelle Obama shared after his death that André Leon Talley was a one-of-a-kind presence who changed the face of fashion and beauty for a generation of girls just like me. He will be missed, but I know his legacy will continue inspiring people for years to come.