Consider This from NPR - BONUS: The Beauty, Style, And Life Of André Leon Talley

Episode Date: January 23, 2022

A towering figure of the fashion world, André Leon Talley was impossible to ignore. His influence extended well beyond the runway — during his time at Vogue, he was a rare Black editor in a largely white industry, and also a major figure in the LGBTQ+ community.In this episode of It's Been A Minute, host Sam Sanders discusses Talley's influence and legacy with Saeed Jones and Zach Stafford. Listen to more It's Been A Minute with Sam Sanders via Apple, Spotify, or Google.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, Consider This listeners, it's Sunday, which means we've got a bonus episode for you about one of the most influential people in American fashion. Andre Leon Talley died this week at the age of 73. And over his career, Talley worked for a number of fashion publications, but most prominently for Vogue. He was a queer black man working in an exceedingly white industry. And at 6'6", he was pretty hard to miss in the front row of fashion shows in New York and Europe. But his towering influence extended way beyond those places. What you're about to hear is a reflection on his influence across fashion and culture in an episode from our friends at NPR's It's Been a Minute with Sam Sanders.

Sam is your host for this one, and he will take it from here. You're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR. I'm Sam Sanders. This week, the Andre Leon Talley. There aren't enough words in the English language to fully describe him. But we can try. I don't live for fashion. I live for beauty and style. Fashion is fleeting. Style remains. This is Andre Leon Talley in the 2017 documentary, The Gospel According to Andre.

I think that beauty comes in many forms. It could be a flower. It could be a gesture. It could be so many things, so many things. Andre was a fashion editor, most notably at Vogue magazine. And he was also larger than life. A phrase I have seen used in almost every story and every interview I've read about him. But really, Andre was larger than life.

He was a six foot six, queer, loud black man who towered literally and figuratively over the fashion world, usually while wearing a very dramatic cape. But this is not a shirt to sleep in, okay? This is a shirt to go to Karl Lagerfeld's house in Ramatuel in Saint-Tropez to have lunch on the terrace. Then you change at night into another color. Perhaps in silk. This is not a nightshirt.

Do not get this mixed up with a Grandpapa nightshirt. Not at these prices. Andre's story is kind of a fairy tale. He grew up in the Jim Crow South. He discovered Vogue magazine in segregated Durham, North Carolina at the public library when he was just a kid. And that changed his life. When I was ripping pages out of Vogue, putting the pictures up on my wall in my room with thumbtacks, and I just had a room wallpapered from head to ceiling, floor to ceiling, with images from Vogue. Flash forward a bit, Andre goes on to become one of the most defining and recognizable voices in fashion for decades. He also had a master's degree in French literature. I know. Andre was poetic.

He was lyrical. He was dramatic. He had impeccable taste, better than mine and yours too. But above all, he was nice and generous with his gifts. I never showed my insecurity. I just rose to the occasion. I stood up straight and tall, like a tall, tall sunflower. And I just radiated the light and the beauty of my mind in relationship to the world of fashion. There was simply no one else like him. And Mr. Lagerfeld does not like to see you in his house on a vacation all day in the same outfit. You have to change at least twice, if not three times a day. It's part of the rule. And it's right.

Andre Leontali died earlier this week at the age of 73, after a past few years of finally revealing all the bad stuff he went through as a black queer man in the very white world of fashion. Andre had said the two most important people in his life were his grandmother and his mentor, fashion editor Diana Vreeland. He said those two women were very much alike because both of them, among other things, gave people joy. In the gospel According to Andre, he quoted back something Diana Vreeland once said, For a lot of us, Andre was that spark. But also for a lot of us, myself included,

we didn't recognize that spark until way later. Even though Andre Leon Talley had been around for decades, most of my friends and people my age, we didn't really appreciate who he was until he was cast as a judge on America's Next Top Model. America's Next Top Model is when he became part of the zeitgeist, I think, for all of us, especially millennials. This is Zach Stafford. He's a journalist and columnist at MSNBC. He brought such a different energy. And I just remember in particular him saying, you know, that's just too much fashion.

And this is poet Saeed Jones. You know, he was totally bringing a different spirit to, frankly, kind of mean-spirited show. And then I just just i had to learn about this person i keep thinking about this one moment uh of andre on america's next top model that kind of just proves his spirit so like a lot of those judges were kind of mean to the girls and the boys on the show but there was one black model alaysia who um was a little rough around the edges and she had a shoot and was showing the photos to the judges and all of the judges clowned her let's take a look at

your best shot with your vest never seen a photo like that before. Nor have I. There's a reason. Okay. Okay, so which fashion magazines have you been studying? Except for Andre. And he was like, no, I get it. I like it. I see her potential. I call you for the boldness of having the imagination

to take the jacket and put it on backwards and put your arm where it was and take that pose. I think it's a very raw, beautiful photograph. She goes on to place in the top six. She has a career modeling after that. And she was saved because Andre took the time to actually see her. And that was also present throughout his entire career.

He was nice to the girls. He was nice to the boys. He really made it a point to be kind also present throughout his entire career. He was nice to the girls. He was nice to the boys. Like, he really made it a point to be kind in a way that other folks just weren't doing. Yeah. I think that's why, as Zach said, Andre Leontali, ALT, became such an important part of the zeitgeist because he enters the public conversation in the 2000s at a point where I think we see the high fashion industry, Anna Wintour, that world, trying to bridge the gap with pop culture. And the thing is, black people are culture. Like, you know, my essay about him, you know, he was comfortable in Milan and he could do Paris and he could talk to you about all of these different fashion eras. And he would throw out French terms that I still can't say.

But he was raised by his grandmother, a church-going woman in Durham, North Carolina. He had vivid memories of, you know, the segregated South and black women in church hats. And so I think when he then appears on a show like America's Next Top Model, it's funny to see someone like Tyra Banks or Nigel Barker kind of parroting this arrogant, snobby, empty judgment. Yes, yes. And then here comes Andre, and he's like, uh-uh-uh,

we are not just gonna dismiss this. And he very eloquently, you know, he's not just like defending her just to defend this black model. He actually has a really substantive, long-lasting perspective on that moment. Yeah. And he, I mean, and the clip is incredible. If you haven't seen it, I think it's trending on Twitter still. But what he also says at the end is Tyra Banks, who is one of the most famous black supermodels ever.

When she challenges him saying like, what, you really like this? He not only says yes, he says, yes, I would also buy this photo in a gallery and I would hang it in my salon. And he goes to this incredible monologue. Yes, a salon is a place where you do this. Not in my living room, my salon. A salon is a room where you go and you converse and you serve beautiful drinks and you talk about politics, religion, art, love, sex, beauty, wine, roses, and that fabulous girl and her fabulous derriere butt. And I think it's a wonderful photograph. Thank you. And what he's

saying in that moment is, you know, not only do I have taste, but I think this was worth us coming together in community and talking about its importance and bringing this person in. And that's why Andre was so incredible, because throughout his whole career, he was about reaching out and bringing you in, whether you were Black, white, Asian, whatever. It was about you being part of his family. And that's why he had such a familiar relationship with Yves Saint Laurent, Karl Lagerfeld, so on and so forth. And also why he and Anna Wintour have such a complicated family, I guess, history with

each other. I want to get to Anna Wintour. But first, I want to talk a little bit about his amazing journey. So we kind of mentioned a bit of it, but his story is almost a fairy tale. His parents have him in Washington, D.C. As soon as he's born, they drop him off at his grandmother's in Durham, North Carolina and say, you raise him. His grandmother is a maid at the men's dorms at Duke University. But as a kid, around nine or 10 at the Durham Public Library, he discovers Vogue Magazine and it changes his life. He ends up going to Brown, getting a master's

degree in French literature. And then through his intellect and ability to make these really big connections very easily, he goes from Interview Magazine to Women's Word Daily to Vogue. I mean, that trajectory is so remarkable. But I'm wondering, for the two of you, what part of that life story and the climb stands out to you most? For me, I was rereading a lot of things the last few days since he died. And something that is so shocking, and I'm sure we'll talk about this, is the economic disparity of Andre Leon Talley compared to other white editors in the industry. And from the beginning, and it may have to do with the fact that he comes from a low-income background and was creating luxury and fashion with little resources ever since he was a child. So he was used to this, but he was not getting paid anything. Yet he kept pushing through. And I think all of us have been in situations where we have not been paid to other people. And we kept pushing through and

that's where i think black boys like us see a lot of ourselves in him is that he said my dream is bigger than that dollar than that house it's worth fighting for yeah you know something that's heavy on my mind this morning is that and i'm not exactly sure where they line up in age but they're pretty close you know representative john le John Lewis just passed away, right? Like just a couple of years ago. Around the same, they are of the same era. They're around the same time that Representative John Lewis has told the story as a kid of going into the public library where he lived in the South and trying to get a public card and being denied his library card because he was black. That is within a decade of someone like Andre Leontali walking into his public library in North Carolina

and picking up his first issue of Vogue. And the reason they are both on my mind so much is like, look at the arc of their lives. And to me, you know, the only institution in our country, perhaps wider than politics, is fashion. And so it's so interesting to think about what it means for someone like Andre Leontali who loved the institution of fashion, who loved its possibilities, its fantasies, what that joy provided us. He loved it more than fashion ever loved him. And here we are watching senators refuse to honor Representative John

Lewis's legacy when it comes to voting rights. You know, another white institution that refuses to substantively honor the contributions of a Black person who survived the Jim Crow South and contributed everything they could to our country. And so, yeah, I think it's heartbreaking. It's really difficult to have these icons, these heroes who were so good to us. And I say us as black people. They were good to everybody, but they were really good to us. And to see that they didn't perhaps always in their lifetimes, you know, always receive that in turn. Yeah, yeah. So he did a lot in his career, but Andre Leon Talley was perhaps most well-known for being the creative director at Vogue for a very long time.

What does it mean to be a creative director at a place like Vogue magazine? I mean, I have a great example that someone shared just yesterday. One of my favorite designers is Rick Owens. We love his gothy, a lot of leather, a lot of black, asymmetrical, genderqueer fashion. He shared that when he was a young designer, I believe he was based in LA for the time. This is 2000. He said he just got a call on his landline out of the blue and he picked up the phone and it was a loud person. And it was Andre Leon Talley. And Andre said, I saw your stuff like on the window, like passing it on the street. You've got to meet Anna Wintour. And now Rick Owens is like a staple in the industry. I think people who don't even know Rick Owens know his look.

You know what I mean? And I think that's an excellent example of the work that Andre was doing at Vogue. Yes. And another thing that also comes to mind for me is his 1996 cover he did for Vanity Fair, which is part of the Condé Nast family. And he did this cover with Naomi Campbell. Yes. Oh, sorry. I wanted to talk about that.

Yes. Where he made her Scarlett O'Hara from Gone with the Wind. And he said, you know what, girl, we're going to make you the white woman in this and all the black people wealthy and white people the opposite. And that was John Galliano and Manolo Blahnik, who was a dear friend of his for a long time. But that's 1996. He's like flipping one of the most famous films on its head and books and saying, no, black people are reclaiming this in the pages of white women's homes, where they're like, what the hell? Scarlett O'Hara's not Black. She's not Nomi Campbell. Incredible. Coming up, more on Andre Leon Talley and his tumultuous relationship with Anna Wintour. This message comes from NPR sponsor CarMax. Imagine buying a car the way you want.

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CarMax. Car buying reimagined. Support for NPR and the following message come from the Showtime documentary series, We Need to Talk About Cosby. A revealing four-part series directed by W. Kamau Bell offers the chance to reconsider Cosby's mark in a society where rape culture, toxic masculinity, capitalism, and white supremacy are shaping how we reevaluate sex, power, and agency. What do we do about all we knew about Bill Cosby and what we know now? We Need to Talk About Cosby premieres Sunday, January 30th, only on Showtime. So I want to talk about the relationship between Anna Wintour and Andrew Leon Talley

and all of the gender and racial complications it contains. Wintour. Okay. Let's do it. You sure? Let me get my vaseline real quick so winter admitted so winter admitted that andre knew more about fashion and fashion history than he did and tally towards the end of his career in life called their relationship parasitic anna being the parasite.

First question on this for you both, how would you two describe the relationship between these two people? I'm trying to choose my words very carefully. Let it out, let it out. Someone a bit too close to some of this. I mean, I do think, I mean, Andre says it's parasitic, and I think that's right. And I think that can exist in Anna Wintour, not be the devil incarnate, even though the movie is called The Devil Wears Prada. I think there is a way in which black people,

through every institution and every expression of creativity, have been used and abused and left to the side. So it's really nothing that different. Angelina Talley is just probably the most famous example of white women or white people, specifically white women a lot. I mean, Sam, you said this to us the other day, cheer and Monica and her black queer folks.

We can get into that if you want. But there is a relationship in an American history of white people using black people's labor to build empires. That's just fact. So Angelina Talley is the best example of how the fashion industry has built its future self off his back and now we're seeing kind of the fruits of his labor or the seeds he planted where we are seeing you know lots of black people in editorial roles

leading fashion houses but that's because andre leontali told them to do that and they finally just now listened yeah um there's so much to say i mean one because we keep referencing the devil wears prada which obviously is a work of fiction inspired by the fashion industry inspired by a lot of these people but it is striking that like stanley chucci's character clearly is supposed to be andre leontali yeah 100 so for those of you listening you know many people know that movie but may not know Andre Leontali. Like, think about what that means.

Think about the fact that they didn't even cast a black gay actor or a black gay character. It's played by a straight Italian-American man. So just, like, process that, that erasure. You know, the problem is gender and misogyny in this country is still so retrograde that we can't even get to these higher level complexities. But I will say I think gay men, gay black men, and cisgender women in this country have a very complicated relationship. And it's all because we're living under the foot of white patriarchy. I want to make it very clear. But yeah, I mean, I think when drawing from,

let's just say film tropes, since I guess Devil Wears Prada is on my mind. I mean, when I think of the trope of the magical Negro, I think that informs, for example, a lot of how black gay people are treated in media and often in the workplace. We're the girlfriend. We're the sassy dispenser of advice. We're loud. We're a character. We're not an expert. We're not more qualified than our peers, right? We're like kind of lucky to be there and tolerated. And they'll tell us that. They'll say you should be grateful to be here. And they'll say it to our face.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I think we see that a lot in their dynamic and also how their dynamic is depicted. Yeah. And we also know from our own experiences and history, I'm just going to say a lot of this. I feel like lately in media,

we have to like root things in historical contexts to be like, hey, this has happened before. But I think a lot about, and this person is not queer, so no one tweet at me that i'm queering someone that's not queer but frederick douglas versus susan b anthony that story can tell you a lot about the the relationships of power and whiteness and blackness and gender in america through a straight person's lens though black straight man but susan b anthony when she found out black men were about to get the right to vote before white women she got hella racist and went on a tour in the South. And that's what Andre Leon Talley kind of hints to us in so many interviews of like, if I speak too loud, if I name this how it is,

they will destroy me. And at the end, his life was pretty destroyed. He died in destitute. Let's not forget that today. Yeah. You know, I keep thinking about this dynamic between Anna and Andre and the long history we've seen of white people and straight people harnessing queer culture or harnessing black culture for their own ends, but never fully empowering those queer people or those black people or giving them all that they deserve in the process. And you want to say, oh, it's getting better. But then, as you mentioned, I watched Cheer Season 2, the hit Netflix show, and you've got this white presenting coach, Coach Monica, whose team is really built on the backs of these handful of strong, beautiful black queer men who are immensely talented and creative. And it feels like the same parasitic dynamic that Andre described with Anna is happening in that situation too. And I get sad when I think that I'm watching this show and this dynamic in 2022 and I'm like, how much has changed? Well, I think something that is really frustrating is – and everything is complicated.

I keep having to say that. Everything is complicated. say queer men, you know, we gravitate towards the world of fashion and theater and style because perhaps other spaces and other career paths dominated by men, white men in particular, are made to feel unwelcome to us. Or even threatening. Meanwhile, exactly. They're often literally dangerous, right? Yeah.

And then meanwhile, because of women and the, you know and the glass ceilings that they deal witharchy work, you know, it's not a kumbaya kind of moment. You know, it's not people suddenly coming together and supporting one another based on their outcast status. Instead, it's unfortunately, you know, just as toxic and competitive often as other spaces. Yeah. I want to talk about the tail end of Andre's career and life. And you both have kind of referenced this. Towards the end, he just began to spill the tea. You know, after decades of being fashion's biggest booster and brand ambassador and working for Vogue and being in the highest parts of the world of high fashion, he began to talk about how badly he had been treated during his career. There was his memoir and other long interviews where he talked about all of it. He talked about once being called Queen Kong. He talked about being underpaid compared to white peers. He talked about a dinner party where the hostess in jest called him the N-word in front of the entire party, and he just had to roll with it.

He spilled all the tea. They were saying I was a gay ape Queen Kong, and that went on, and I knew this from very close friends. I never confronted her because these things, I internalized and kept them bottled up. And, uh... Do you know how much I wish my grandmother had been alive to have seen this? My grandmother was dead.

People always say, how do you do it? How have you put up with this world for so long? Um, what did it feel like for you to see that happen when it happened? There's so many lessons. I mean, and I saw Roxane Gay point this out. You know, these institutions are never going to love us no matter how much we love them. That does not mean give up your passion or your dream. You know, I would never tell someone, like, my dream is to be a fashion designer.

I'm not going to tell you, oh, just walk away. You know, but I think we learn from people like Andre Leontali. And listen, there are so many other peers, unfortunately, who have been through similar experiences in different industries. You need to understand the system and you need to understand that you're going to have to make some difficult choices. And none of them are easy, but they will have to be made. I think you need to hold on to the love. Because at the end of the day, Andre, the two things I know about Andre Leon Talley, actually three, I know he loved himself. I know he loved beauty. And I know he loved black people. He never let go of that, you know? And I think those are lessons.

Yeah. You know, one thing I kept thinking as he died and as he spent the last few years of his career and life talking about the hardships he endured, I said to myself, OK, you being confessional now towards the end, is that an act of bravery or an act of cowardice or a certain kind of savvy or something else because part of me says andre you were the most powerful black queer man in fashion for decades you could have maybe spoke out earlier and i don't know if i should be mad at him about that or just say you know what this man had to do what he had to do to survive. I'm choosing not to be mad. I have the same dilemma. I've been thinking about this a lot. And I think some of, in my own career, probably all of our careers,

people could say the same thing to us. But I want to be giving of grace today and know that at his heart, he did always love black people. People do gloss over the fact that he was an editor at Ebony Magazine a lot back and forth. He invested in black media in real ways and tried to build bridges between Vogue and Ebony in very real ways. And he would have made Ebony the equal to Vogue if the world

was listening. So just like Andre was good at reading the room and reading the future of fashion, he also knew what it meant to be a big black man in America and knew when it was the right time to say something in a bigger way. Andre did love the hierarchy of the world. We cannot ignore that. But I do think in the later parts of his life, he wanted more equality. He wanted more decentralization to happen, more people to have chances. Because black people at the very beginning, like Andre Leon Talley, growing up in North Carolina, have the vision and they have the passion.

They just need the access. So I think we're becoming more accessible. It's just not Vogue. Yeah, because if Andre was a kid now, to go back to the beginning of this conversation, I think he would have walked into that public library in Durham

and looked at Vogue and picked up his phone and started making a TikTok. And he would have read the house down and we would have lived. What I do want to say, though, is, you know, the ideas,

the potential, the commentary is out there. I want to see these young black queer people also get to become gatekeepers because that was also a part of Andre's legacy. Well, yeah, I want the next Andre to not be Anna Wintour's number two. I want the next Andre to be number one. That's what I want.

Edward Enningful. Which, by the way, Edward, we should know that the editor of British Vogue is a black gay man who's openly queer and is incredible, and even Andre has said some incredible things about Edward's work. And, you know, British Vogue right now is running circles around American Vogue. Let's talk about that.

Let's go deeper. The fact that there were conversations throughout Conde Nast about a need for change in leadership, both because of all kinds of structural inequities that all go back to, like Anna's been in charge for a very long time now and thus is responsible for things

like unpaid internships, paid discrepancies. Colorism. Colorism. I mean, you know, just pick an issue, right? And so I think there is actually something really substantive there because it's not just Andre. There's someone like Edward running British Vogue.

I don't know how Anna Wintour sleeps at night with those beautiful covers that Edward is pulling out for British Vogue, honey, because it's damning. It's an issue. It's an issue. I hope Andre haunts her. That's what I hope. With that cape. Imagine the ghost of

Andi Leon Talley with one of them capes just running up in her room at night. Anna. Anna. Alright, last question for you two on this. This is how I know Saeed is Southern. Saeed always likes to evoke a ghost on people. Southern Gothic. I live foreed is Southern. Saeed always likes to evoke a ghost on people.

Southern Gothic. I live for it. The wash comes out in the rinse. Woo woo! Now come on. Talk about that. That's the name of this episode. Alright, last question for you both. I listened yesterday

to Terry Gross' Fresh Air chat with Andre from 2018. He was promoting his latest documentary, The Gospel According to Andre Leontali. And in this beautiful interview, he told her something that just hurt my heart. About 25 minutes in, he told her that he lives in a gold-plated, gilded hell. And I think about it almost every day because as I get older, it's very, very lonely. I have to live a lonely life. I live in my own guilt, gold-plated hell.

As Tennessee Williams says, I know the gold-plated hell I'm going to. And I invented this gold-plated hell, and now I must live in it. He said his whole life and career, he never got close to people. He'd never really been in love, never had a serious relationship. And he just didn't take care of himself or build a life for himself while he was becoming the biggest black man in fashion. That hurt me. But I'm also wondering if there is a lesson that

Andre is giving us even in that conversation right now. And I think hearing him say that, the biggest lesson for me in seeing his life and his death is to just take care of yourself in the process. Don't let your career keep you from your life and do not let the performance of joy for other people keep you from your own joy you know and i don't know i i love this man and i just hope that he found some peace and some love for himself while he was here and i hope he finds some wherever he is now you know no he i've been thinking about this for the past few years because he has been in the media a lot with his documentaries and all this media and everything that comes through these interviews is that he is incredibly lonely and has been for a long time.

And so I just look at his long life of 73 years and to know he never felt that he never had someone that wanted to go to bed with him and be in love with him and build a life with him. And he definitely, it weighs on him and you can see it in these interviews. And I think that is something a lot of ambitious people should take is that, yeah, the career is a big thing and having all this money and power is great. But at the end of the day, it's you at home. Yeah. Just yesterday, I was texting a friend because the two of us went to see the documentary, The Gospel According to Andre. And when we left the theater, we're both gay men, we were shaken because of the absence of love in his life. And we both then and again yesterday had a conversation about how it kind of woke

something up in us respectively that we both separately in our lives realize like love has its demands too you know i i love poetry i love literature and art but there was just like a moment when i walked out of that theater like spending time with andre's story i realized i was like oh i need to take love as seriously as i take art you know and i think that's a it's a hard lesson. And it's heartbreaking that it feels like Andre is almost a martyr for us to learn this lesson, but we would do well to learn it. Take love seriously. Yeah. And it's also something you look at his life now and you have to question how much did he really love fashion if fashion wasn't loving him? What type of relationship is that? And how do we all have those types of relationships in our lives in many ways? And at the end of the day, are they worth it?

A dear friend and mentor once told me something that I have never forgotten. She said, the company cannot hug you back. Doesn't matter what company, doesn't matter what job. You got to live your life. And I don't know. There's so much that Andre is an inspiration on. But I don't even know how to end this conversation besides saying I miss him. I miss him.

I miss him. I miss him. And I hope that people look at him and his life and hold on to all of this beauty that he brought to us for decades. That's all. I think that's a great place to end. Love.

Zach, Saeed, thank you both so much for this chat. Andre, we love you. We love you. Thank you. We love you, Andre. And we love you, Sam Sanders. We do, Sam Sanders. Oh, my God. Look at this sister circle. Sister circle. Sister circle.

Thanks again to my two guests, Zach Stafford, journalist and MSNBC columnist and host of the iHeart podcast, In the Deep, Stories That Shape Us. And also thanks to poet Saeed Jones. His book is called How We Fight for Our Lives, and you can read Saeed's essay all about Andre Leon Talley on his sub stack. Also, make it a point to check out the film The Gospel According to Andre on HBO Max. And also Andre's interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air from 2018.