Style Points is a weekly column on how fashion intersects with the rest of the world.
What you need to know about André Leon Talley is that he contained multitudes. He was equally at home in the front row of a couture show as he was sitting on the couch. Live, Watch What Happens He was just as comfortable in the hot center of a party as in his own home, surrounded with his books. He could go from ranting on an obscure point of French court history or French art history to seamlessly transitioning into lighthearted gossip.
Everyone belonged in his world, and he championed people whose greatness fashion didn’t always recognize in time. At the height of the industry’s exclusivity, the legendary journalist, who died yesterday at the age of 73, was a conduit for those who felt like outsiders. A talent-seeking missile, he was loyal to the people he supported, particularly when it came down to advocating Black designers and models. When you look at s of him, he’s usually throwing his head back laughing or embracing everyone in his general vicinity, pulling everyone together. This was who he was.
The world probably knew him best through the monologue where he laments the “famine of beauty” afflicting the fashion world, and it’s not a bad summation of his approach to life. He needed even tiny things to sing with beauty, the kinds of elements most people might not even notice—for example, when he put together his Oscar de la Renta retrospective at the SCAD Museum of Art, he insisted the mannequins’ feet be decked out with ribbons. When you walked into the exhibit, you were greeted by a wall full of flowers. It was almost obscene beauty.
But beneath the obsession with surfaces, there was an unacknowledged level of depth. Unacknowledged pain. It was right there in his memoir. The Chiffon Trenches, where he wrote candidly about the exclusion and racism he’d faced in the industry, and in every frame of his documentary, The Gospel According to André. The joy wasn’t in any way a façade, but it sometimes hid the ruminative, introspective side of his personality. What he did in the face of those experiences, though, might have been the most important choice he made: he channeled his energy into supporting others, as though to ensure that the next generation wouldn’t face the obstacles he’d had to overcome.
I gained insight into his mind the first time I spoke to him. I was interviewing him as part of a fashion historian project I was leading. New York magazine. The ostensible topic of conversation was John Galliano and the spring 1994 collection, known as the São Schlumberger show, that brought the designer back from the brink of bankruptcy when he was sleeping on the floor of his studio. Talley secured Schlumberger’s location and Manolo Bluchnik provided shoes. Because they believed in the vision, Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss signed up to walk free. It was a typical André moment: bring everyone together in the service of something beautiful.
As he resurfaced 20-year-old memories, those trademark digressions were already starting: he waxed poetic about going on McDonald’s runs and serving as an usher at the show. Then he wanted to know what else I’d be covering. I said I was working on a punk story, talk turned to Vivienne Westwood, and he said I ought to come down to Savannah, where he’d be presenting the designer with the Lifetime Achievement Award. It was all unbelievable. But, I was there months later, on a podium asking them questions. After that, I went to dinner with the punk legend, Miss J Alexander, and we did a round of runway walk. (Impression included Naomi, Kate, and “Naomi when she has a plane to catch.”) A group of strangers had gelled together as a fashion family. I’d felt like an awkward, jagged puzzle piece, but suddenly I realized I fit in. A great editor knows how to put things together in precisely the right way—including people—just as Talley did that night.
Source: elle