André Leon Talley (1948-2022) American Journalist

André Leon Talley (1948-2022) American Journalist dies at 18 January 2022 ( 73 years). Find a grave André Leon Talley Death and bio. André Leon Talley was an American fashion journalist, and the former creative director and American editor-at-large of Vogue magazine. 

André Leon Talley was an American Fashion Journalist

He was the magazine’s fashion news director from 1983 to 1987 and then its creative director from 1988 to 1995. He authored three books, including two memoirs, and co-authored a book with Richard Bernstein. He was raised by his maternal Grandmother Bennie Francis Davis (1898-1989)

Full Bio

André Leon Talley Biography

Early life and education

Talley was born on October 16, 1948, in Washington, D.C., the son of Alma Ruth Davis and William C. Talley, a taxi driver. At least one of his grandfathers was a sharecropper. His parents left him with his maternal grandmother, Binnie Francis Davis, who worked as a cleaning lady at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina. She raised him, with Talley saying he was given from her an “understanding of luxury,” and of whom he said following her death, “I miss her almost everyday.”

He grew up in the Jim Crow era South, where segregation defined social boundaries. He said, “For a long time my grandmother would not allow white people to come into our house. That was her rule. The only white man who ever came into the house was the coroner.” His love for fashion was cultivated at an early age by her and his discovery of Vogue magazine, which he first found in the local library at the age of nine or ten.

Talley was educated at Hillside High School, graduating in 1966, and North Carolina Central University, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in French literature in 1970. He won a scholarship to Brown University,^[7] where he earned a Master of Arts degree in French literature in 1972. At Brown, he wrote a thesis on the influence of black women on Charles Baudelaire and initially planned to teach French.

André Leon Talley (1948-2022) American Journalist Career

Through the student connections he made in Providence, Rhode Island, he apprenticed, unpaid, for Diana Vreeland at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1974. So impressed by his skills, the Vogue editor connected Talley up with a job at Andy Warhol’s Factory and Interview magazine for $50 a week. He went on to work at Women’s Wear Daily, becoming its Paris bureau chief, and W, from 1975 through 1980. He also worked for The New York Times and other publications before finally landing at Vogue, where he worked as the fashion news director from 1983 to 1987 and then as first African American male creative director from 1988 to 1995. He pushed top designers to have more African-American models in their shows. In 1984 he co-wrote with Richard Bernstein the book MegaStar, with an introduction by Paloma Picasso, which includes portraits of celebrities. He left his role as creative director at Vogue and moved to Paris in 1995 to work for W, and served as contributing editor at Vogue. In 1998, he returned to Vogue as the editor-at-large until his departure in 2013 to pursue another editorial venture.

In 2003, he authored an autobiography titled A.L.T.: A Memoir, published by Villard in 2003. According to Publishers Weekly, the message delivered by the book is that “Style transcends race, class, and time.” Two years later he authored A.L.T. 365+, an art monograph designed by art director Sam Shahid, featuring photos and captions from one year of Talley’s life.

In 2008, Talley advised the Obama family on fashion, introducing Michelle Obama to the Taiwanese-Canadian designer Jason Wu, from whom she bought several dresses, including her inaugural gown. Talley’s later pairings have been with designers Tracy Reese, Rachel Roy, and singer-actress Jennifer Hudson. He also styled Melania Trump for her 2005 wedding to Donald Trump.

From March 2010 to December 2011, Talley served on the judging panel for America’s Next Top Model (from Cycle 14 to Cycle 17). From 2013 to 2014, he served as international editor of Numéro Russia, joining the team shortly after the magazine launched in March 2013 but resigned after 12 issues due to anti-LGBT laws in Russia. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Savannah College of Art and Design since 1995.

In January 2017, he live-blogged the Trump inauguration with New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. In April of that year, Talley began hosting his own radio show principally concerned with fashion and pop culture on Sirius XM satellite station Radio Andy.

Talley is the subject of a documentary film, The Gospel According to André, directed by Kate Novack, which was screened in September 2016 at the Toronto Film Festival and was released in the U.S. on May 25, 2018. Reviewing the film, Variety said: “The documentary is a deeply loving, frequently beautiful testament to the former Vogue editor, who rose from humble beginnings in North Carolina to become arguably the high fashion world’s first major African-American tastemaker, as well as the type of multi-lingual, Russian-lit-citing public intellectual who is perfectly at ease gossiping on TV with Wendy Williams.” Talley was also featured in the documentaries The First Monday in May and The September Issue. In the 2006 film The Devil Wears Prada, the character Nigel Kipling portrayed by Stanley Tucci is widely viewed as a depiction of Talley.

He released The Chiffon Trenches: A Memoir on May 19, 2020. In it, he discusses getting his start in New York City in the 1970s, his tumultuous relationship with Wintour, and his experiences with racism in the fashion world. It became a New York Times Best Seller.

Personal life

In 2007, Talley was ranked 45th in Out magazine’s “50 Most Powerful Gay Men and Women in America”. During his May 29, 2018 appearance on The Wendy Williams Show, when asked about his sexual orientation, Talley stated, “No, I’m not heterosexual; I’m saying I’m fluid in my sexuality, darling.”

Talley was a practicing Christian, attending the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. In 2018, fashion critic Robin Givhan wrote that church attendance was among the chief elements that “influence the way he judges beauty and prioritizes grace.”

In the mid-2000s, Anna Wintour initiated an intervention to get Talley to lose weight. He eventually lost a great deal of weight and continued at the Duke Diet and Fitness Center in the late 2010s.

Talley lived in White Plains, New York.

André Leon Talley Death

Talley died from complications of a heart attack and COVID-19 at a hospital in White Plains on January 18, 2022, at the age of 73.

Talley’s death was met with statements of sympathy and tribute from many of his friends, admirers and organizations. Vogue Magazine Editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, lead the tributes writing, “The loss of André is felt by so many of us today: the designers he enthusiastically cheered on every season, and who loved him for it; the generations he inspired to work in the industry, seeing a figure who broke boundaries while never forgetting where he started from; those who knew fashion, and Vogue, simply because of him”.

In a statement to Entertainment Tonight, his former America’s Next Top Model colleague Tyra Banks stated, “I adored Andre. Before meeting him, I had never experienced such a prolific person serving up a rare mix of fashion ‘fabulousness’ and real down-home southern comfort love. Being in his presence was so magical. He made me smile, laugh and was a masterful teacher – a genius historian, scholar, colleague, effervescent spirit, legend…you are resting now, Dearest Andre. But your spirit, your je ne sais quoi, your iconic voice…I hear it now. And will forever. We all will”.

Many other cultural figures paid tribute to the Talley, including Beyoncé, Michelle Obama, Viola Davis, Diane von Fürstenberg, Bette Midler, Kim Kardashian, Zendaya, Oprah Winfrey, Jeremy O. Harris, and Edward Enninful among others. His memoir The Chiffon Trenches, topped Amazon’s fashion best-sellers chart and sold out at several book stores, following the news of his passing.

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André Leon Talley (1948-2022) American Journalist