André Leon Talley - The Eyeful Tower Part I
Vanessa Grigoriadis on the man who has gone clubbing with Karl Lagerfeld and seen Anna Wintour in the dressing room
This is part of Inside the Tent, a series going behind the scenes of Campside’s award-winning podcasts and business.
One of the joys of Campside is working with established writers who have a long history of stories that stand the test of time. Today, we revisit an article by Campside Co-founder Vanessa Grigoriadis, who spent time with the late, great André Leon Talley before his departure from this earth a few years ago.
At a time when fashion has never been more disposable or fast, Talley stands as one of the finest examples of an outre figure who was both “of” the fashion world, and, in some ways, devoured by it.
From the September 2013 issue of Vanity Fair
André Leon Talley - The Eyeful Tower Part I
There is perhaps no more unlikely milieu to observe André Leon Talley than the Scarsdale branch of Balducci's food market, about 30 miles north of Manhattan, but it was there that Talley, one of the top arbiters of the fashion world, arranged to meet for lunch.
Talley, 64, recently of Vogue and now heading Numéro Russia magazine (as well as curating fashion shows at such venues as the Mona Bismarck American Center for art and culture, in Paris, and Little Rock's William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum), is often assumed to be leading a life of glamour amid fresh-cut flowers at the Carlyle hotel or perhaps at a modest Connecticut estate near Oscar de la Renta's.
But instead he has lived in nearby White Plains, a bedroom community with a ring of 1920s homes around an ugly downtown and housing projects, for the last 15 years. He describes his house, though, as a thing of beauty, surrounded on all sides by forest, and with a living room furnished with the sofa that once graced Truman Capote's legendary United Nations Plaza apartment. (Talley bought the sofa at auction, and don't even think about sitting on it.)
Talley spends most of his time on the porch, contemplating the cardinals flying through his garden of tree hydrangeas, white azaleas, and Japanese maples, home to a hooded gnome on a swing, with a squirrel hanging off the bottom. One of his best friends, George Malkemus III, the C.E.O. of Manolo Blahnik, U.S.A., says, "At one point, André could have lived in Manhattan, in a huge loft in Tribeca, or an apartment uptown - but now I don't know where he would put the rooms and rooms and rooms of clothes."
At Balducci's, Talley - who is six feet six inches, with giant brown eyes, a large mouth which reveals a Lauren Hutton-esque space between his front teeth, and a perpetually furrowed brow - wore an XXXL pink polo shirt as he pushed a shopping cart down the narrow aisles. After he had paid for a remarkably restrained list of items that included coleslaw, shredded cheese, and gluten-free cookies, he took a seat in the grocery's cafeteria area, filled with plastic tables and chairs.
“I love, love, love Balducci's," he proclaimed, producing a large container of tomato soup, thick with noodles, and a plastic spoon. "I never cook for myself. You know, I used to eat at a diner near here every day for years, but then Whoopi Goldberg invited me for a holiday. I asked them if I could please have one of their cakes to bring to her house, and they told me I was too late with my order!" He put a gigantic hand on the table, and the plastic trembled a bit. "Can you imagine, saying they could not make one extra cake?"
It was quiet in Balducci's, with only the sounds of cash registers pinging and a few shoppers chatting as they hunched over coffee and croissants. But Talley's voice, with its Pavarotti-like range and unique timbre, rang out at times like a bugle, the kind once used to command soldiers to charge on the battlefield - though Talley tends to use his instrument to tell women what to wear.
For three hours, during which he barely touched his soup, Talley held forth on topics likely of little or no concern to the shoppers around him. In our conversations, he talked about the beauty of the 18th-century-style settings in diamond earrings created by JAR (Joel Arthur Rosenthal), the world's most exclusive jeweler; David Geffen's "ultimate" chauffeur, outfitted in what looked like a Duke of Windsor suit and sent by Geffen to bring guests to his Beverly Hills estate, formerly owned by Jack Warner; and the extraordinary long black lambskin gloves that Kerry Washington bought in Paris for the Met gala this year. "It's about gloves, O.K., darling?" he says, without a trace of irony. "It's about gloves. Listen."
Gloves, gloves, gloves. He cites Michelle Obama with her seagrass-green gloves at the first inaugural, and Beyoncé with the sequined gloves zipped to the shoulder of her Givenchy dress at last year's Met gala; Jackie O and her elbow-length opera gloves; churchgoing black women, like Talley's grandmother, who emulated Jackie's style and kept a drawer just for their glazed kidskin gloves; and of course his own gloves, the black crocodile ones and Prada alligators. "Just last night, I went to dinner with my friend Gloria von Thurn und Taxis, and she had her gloves on, because her husband taught her to wear them," declared Talley. "She has drawers and drawers of gloves, some in leather, some in cloth."
In fact, he explained, he had just met with Ms. TNT, a German princess, giggling with her over dessert at a Manhattan restaurant. He told her about Singapore, where he had been a few days prior, at the Chanel cruise show. "I flew 22 hours," he boomed, "for a 12-minute show of brilliance!" Carine Roitfeld, the former editor of French Vogue and currently at the helm of CR Fashion Book, was his companion. "She came to the airport in wraparound sunglasses from Rick Owens, trench coat, little black sweater, red satin Prada skirt, and beige-and-black Chanel sling-backs like your mother would wear," he recalled.
"Then, on the plane, she changed into Uniqlo leggings, and that was fabulous, too." In Frankfurt, they exited the plane for an hour and a half for the crew to sweep up. "But Ms. Roitfeld did not get off the plane in those leggings - she put on the whole outfit, the Prada pencil skirt and the Chanel slings," he said. "I said to her, 'My God, you are incredible. This is why you are a fashion icon.' And she said, Darling, take me to the duty-free. I need some Chanel No. 5.'
"Now, I'm not saying we have to go back to that," said Talley. "But the world has become too casual, and people have become too lazy." He stared at his tomato soup. "There was a time when people went on the airplane with gloves."
For the blogging, Instagramming, Pinteresting, Pose-apping fashion troops, their heads turned by the new and novel, Talley may be little more than the curious, tall, striking figure often seen alongside Vogue editor Anna Wintour at premieres and in the front row of fashion shows. For top designers, though, Talley is perhaps the industry's most important link to the past.
"André is one of the last great fashion editors who has an incredible sense of fashion history... He can see through everything you do to the original reference, predict what was on your inspiration board," says Tom Ford. "My God, when he sits in the front row, to know that he understands what you're saying, what you're trying to put into pop culture - that is what you work for as a fashion designer."
Marc Jacobs says that he's not sure if there are "even a dozen" individuals like Talley left. "André was at the 'hooker' collection of Yves Saint Laurent, the 40s-inspired collection, the Ballets Russes collection," says Jacobs. "I feel he has seen and absorbed [fashion history] firsthand. Thus, the character - the invention - that he is is made up of so many real, incredible moments."
"Moments" is a word those at the tippy-top of fashion often use. It's code for the minute that a dress, or an element of design, becomes an image held aloft in the minds of the few individuals whose opinions in fashion matter. Talley talks about the "moment" that Lady Amanda Harlech wrapped the white suede Manolo Blahniks that he had given her as a present with some bandages of black jersey; the "moment" that model Carolyn Murphy is having right now as she engineers her comeback, since models in their 30s and 40s with personality are now popular; and the "moment" of Pauline de Rothschild's funeral, in the mid-1970s.
"Pauline was the ultimate in American style," says Talley. "When I arrived on vacation at the Rothschilds' home for a week with my Louis Vuitton trunk, two people from the staff had to carry it up the stairs... Eric de Rothschild [Pauline's nephew by marriage] once said to me, which is the highest compliment I've ever had from a person, 'You're as much Rothschild as I am.' " He purses his lips. "And Pauline always had gloves."
Talley has had many such extraordinary moments, and he has created more than a few of them. At all times il a du chien, which means he makes his presence deeply felt by a certain deportment and expression of style. In the 70s, Talley dressed as a New Romantic, wearing Karl Lagerfeld hand-me-down crêpe de Chine oversize shirts with the three-ply matching mufflers in black and grass green and Ultrasuede jackets Halston handed to him. In the 80s, he was about Perry Ellis tartan coats and Miuccia Prada custom-made alligator ones in nearly every color - before turning in the 90s to Chanel jackets made for him, with the same weighted chains a woman has in hers.
Always there are brilliant accessories—Maltese crosses, sable Cossack hats and muffs by Fendi, a jewel-encrusted medal of a Russian order, a 1920s diamond tiara in a Greek motif that he wore as a necklace, though he won't decorate himself with many jewels in the future. "I don't like it," he says. "If you don't have the money to buy new jewelry, there's no point in wearing it."
About five years ago Talley began to change his style yet again. He is not as thin as he once was. Now it's about African robes, caftans, and capes. He says that Marc Jacobs's wearing a black lace dress to the 2012 Met gala was a "release" that allowed him to feel good about wearing flowing garments, even in the daytime. Talley estimates that he owns about 35 capes, all made for him by designers. "André is very clever with the way he dresses, when you are that scale," says Tom Ford. "He's turned himself into an icon for those gigantic flowing robes, which he has the physical height and scale to pull off."
For the Met this year, Ford made him a Chinese empress coat inspired by one worn by model Liya Kebede in his February show. In 2008, Lagerfeld created a Tiepolo-red haute couture cape for him to accompany Venus Williams to the Met gala, as well as a grayish-blue one to introduce Grace Jones onstage at the annual Red Cross ball in Monte Carlo. From Nicolas Ghesquière he received a bright-royal-blue cape, as well as a few short ruffled Spanish ones in silver, black, and a "fabulous emerald green," says Talley. "Then I had Manolo make matching emerald-green boots for Christmas, but I've never worn them, because I haven't had anywhere to wear them for Christmas."
This look of being swathed in acres and acres of gazar may be inspired in part by a desire to feel comfortable in his clothes, but it has given the grandiose Talley the appearance of what one can only call a "fashion warlord."
This terrifying image is enhanced when he begins an exegesis on fashion collections, manners, and funerals, his three favorite topics, unspooling lengthy stories about the clothes worn to Andy Warhol's funeral, or Isabella Blow's favorite hat, by Philip Treacy, shaped like a Spanish armada and placed on her coffin with a tiny battery-operated fan underneath to keep the plumes moving ever so slightly.
During the course of our conversations, he scolded me more than once for inaccurate statements about fashion history, and it has to be said that these times were a bit scary. He can be a screamer. "When Vera Wang and I get together, we're like two barking dogs," he says. Carolina Herrera laughs when I ask her if he has ever told her he doesn't like one of her collections. "Of course!" she says. "When he likes it, he says it very loud, and when he doesn't like it, he says it very loud, too, which I think is fun...
“André likes extremes. He's either a volcano or an iceberg. To keep the water metaphor going, he is either boiling or freezing. In between is nothing for him. But when he is on top of that volcano, with his passion, you never forget it."
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, a friend with whom he stayed during the last presidential inauguration (Talley is a fan of Michelle Obama's style and mentions that her signature is a "nice waist belt"), calls Talley a "fashion sniper." In an e-mail she describes her relationship with him as a "cultural collision. He is high-fashion and I'm no-fashion.... My taste is highly dubious, and my wardrobe is mostly vintage stuff that tends to fall apart while I'm wearing it."
During the inauguration, Talley fell ill with the flu, "which did take on a bit of a Devil Wears Prada vibe when he demanded the upcoming season's DVDs of Downton Abbey to go with his chocolate milk." Nevertheless, he made time to inspect Dowd's outfits before she left the house. "Do you have anything else?" was his refrain. "He was very disturbed one night when I was leaving for a party in a bronze cocktail dress that was somewhat wrinkled," she says.
"Arms folded stubbornly, he told me I could not go out looking like 'a road-show Rita Hayworth,' and said I had to either iron the dress or change. I changed. He rolled his eyes when I wore some [stylish] dark-green booties with a black dress to a reception with the Obamas, noting that booties were for going to Starbucks, not the White House... When we went to [a] Met opening I wore a long dress a friend had given me that she found on eBay, a Reem Acra mermaidy-looking seafoam-colored dress. I felt very ethereal until André took one look, picked up a bit of the skirt, and murmured ominously, 'Tulle. Blanche DuBois.'"
"Fashion changes so radically so often that I think you need the messenger of what's going on to be someone who's quite extreme," says Marc Jacobs. "It's like ketchup and hamburgers - it goes together well and tastes good.
Stay tuned for Part II next week, exploring Talley’s childhood, career trajectory and what Vanessa meant when she wrote that, “If Talley is not exactly a king, few would argue with characterizing him as an icon.”
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