André Leon Talley

André Leon Talley was born on the sixteenth of October 1948 at Washington, D.C., the son of William Carroll Talley — a taxi driver — and Alma Ruth Davis Talley. He was raised primarily by his maternal grandmother Bennie Frances Davis in the segregated Black community of Durham, North Carolina.

He completed the bachelor's degree in French literature at North Carolina Central University at Durham in 1970 — and the master's degree in French studies at Brown University at Providence, Rhode Island in 1972.

He was hired in 1973 at the New York Andy Warhol Factory and Interview magazine as a junior receptionist and editorial assistant under the principal Warhol editorial direction.

He was hired in 1974 at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art at New York as a volunteer assistant to the principal special-consultant curator Diana Vreeland — and was the principal Vreeland personal assistant across the principal Costume Institute special exhibitions of 1974 to 1978.

He was hired in 1978 at Women's Wear Daily and W magazine at New York as a junior fashion reporter — and was promoted in 1980 to Paris bureau chief of W magazine. He held the principal Paris bureau chief position from 1980 to 1983.

He was hired at French Vogue at Paris in 1983 as a senior fashion editor and was named in 1988 fashion news director of American Vogue under the principal incoming editor Anna Wintour.

He was named in 1995 editor-at-large of American Vogue at New York — the principal title was created specifically for him by Anna Wintour. He held the principal editor-at-large position from 1995 to 2013.

He was the principal Black-American fashion-industry authority of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries — at a period in which the principal American fashion-industry editorial leadership was overwhelmingly white. He was the principal Black-American interpreter of the principal Parisian-and-Italian high-couture tradition for the principal American fashion-publication audience.

He published the principal 2003 memoir A.L.T.: A Memoir at the Villard Press at New York — and the principal 2020 memoir The Chiffon Trenches at the Ballantine Books at New York.

He was the principal subject of the principal 2017 documentary The Gospel According to André under the principal director Kate Novack.

He died at White Plains, New York on the eighteenth of January 2022 of complications of a heart attack, at seventy-three.

He is honored here as the principal Black-American fashion-industry authority of his generation.