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The fashion world suffered some great losses in the last several months. French designer Thierry Mugler passed away several weeks ago, leaving behind a legacy of envelope-pushing, avant garde collectsions. In November, we lost the pioneering American designer and Louis Vuitton artistic director Virgil Abloh far too soon. And on January 18, larger-than-life fashion icon and former Vogue editor André Leon Talley died at the age of 73.
Talley was, simply put, a force. He grew up in North Carolina, raised by his grandmother during the segregated Jim Crow era. Though not of great means, she taught him to appreciate the finer things and encouraged his love of fashion after he discovered Vogue at a local library when he was just nine or ten. He went on to study French literature, earning his masters from Brown. In 1974, he apprenticed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art under Diana Vreeland who then set Talley up with his first connections to the magazine world. He wrote for Interview magazine, worked at Andy Warhol’s Factory, became the Paris bureau chief for Women’s Wear Daily, and penned stories for W, The New York Times, and Ebony before landing at Vogue from 1983 to 2013.
At Vogue, Talley was the first Black man to hold the position of creative director, and was often the only Black man to sit front row at fashion shows. Standing 6 feet 6 inches tall and draped in his signature elaborate capes, he was impossible to miss. With a sharp eye for detail, Talley’s taste was towards refinement and he expressed himself in eloquent, extravagant parlance. Perhaps best summed up by Whoopi Goldberg in the 2018 documentary The Gospel According to André, Talley was “so many things he was not supposed to be.”
He was known to urge designers to cast more Black models in their shows and was often the first to shine a light on POC designers, like LaQuan Smith, in his stories. He entertained us as a judge on America’s Next Top Model, cheered on Rihanna at the Met Gala, dressed First Lady Michelle Obama, and preached the virtues of the art of dressing. We are unlikely to see an editor and fashion figure on the level of Talley again. The fashion world won’t be the same without it, but he left it changed for the better.
