It was his favorite photograph of himself, taken by Arthur Elgort, 1988: André Leon Talley, in a wash of sunlight, striding up Fifth Avenue in a gray panel-checked suit by the tailor Morty Sills. He has his hands in his pockets; the jacket is neatly buttoned; his face is in profile; and the rest of the street is sunk into shadow as if André is a star on a stage, which of course he was, wherever he went. That was what made André so incredible: his instinct for self-presentation. He understood that, especially as a Black man, what you wore told a story about you, about your history, about self-respect. And so, for André, getting dressed was an act of autobiography, and also mischief and fantasy, and so much else at once. The suit fits him beautifully, by the way. No wonder The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute has included it in the exhibition “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.”
As the show’s curators, Monica L. Miller and Andrew Bolton, have been busy preparing “Superfine,” we at Vogue have been hard at work on a parallel effort: a tribute to the exhibition and a celebration of its themes of menswear, identity and history, the Black dandy in fashion, and his many expressions and forms. We’ve featured the Gala’s four co-chairs on covers this month—Pharrell Williams (painted by Henry Taylor), A$AP Rocky, Colman Domingo, and Lewis Hamilton—and we gathered a host of Black artists, actors, models, athletes, and more for a bravura shoot with Tyler Mitchell, one of many photographers, fashion editors, and writers of color who lent their creativity to the May issue. (Denzel Washington is in the issue, too; André boasted to me that he looked just like him in the Elgort.)
I have thought of André so many times—happy and bittersweet memories mixed together. I thought of how even when he was doing something one might have found slightly over the top—playing tennis in full Vuitton, for instance—it was, for André, an act of supreme confidence, of total self-possession. André knew who he was, and I know how much he would have adored “Superfine,” every aspect of it: the planning, the press conferences, an issue of Vogue dedicated to it, the exhibition catalog, how many outfits he would have planned for the parties to come—and not just for him but for me, for everyone in my family, his friends, my friends, muses, fashionable acquaintances, anyone at hand.
André was a dandy among dandies and he radiated joy. The brilliant playwright Jeremy O. Harris, something of a dandy himself, wrote an essay for Vogue about his upbringing and what dressing up means to him. Jeremy writes, so eloquently, that to be a Black dandy is “to dress as though you know you’re loved and therefore have no use for shame.” André never had an ounce of shame. I’ll be thinking of him on the night of the Met Gala, an evening made for him—and one I can scarcely believe he will miss.