Pharrell Williams and More Remember André Leon Talley in Full Splendor at SCAD’s “Style Is Forever”
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André Leon Talley was sui generis. In Style Is Forever, now open at SCAD Atlanta, there unfurls a moving odyssey of his life—told through his clothes, pictures, and photographs (many showing him alongside the great and the good)—assembled by Rafael Brauer Gomes. Walking in, one is confronted by a battalion of Andrés, proud and erect (with brilliant faces sculpted by SCAD alum Stephen Hayes), dressed in pinstripe, seersucker, and plain suits, classic eveningwear, a red eiderdown coat by Norma Kamali from the early ’80s, and Karl’s reimagined Chanel jackets.
He was raised in the Deep South, in North Carolina, at a time when Black people lived under the daily threat of discrimination. Brought up not by his mother but by his beloved grandmother—who worked as a maid at Duke University—André’s childhood was complicated, despite her exemplary care. She always starched and ironed his shirts; Sunday worship was a given, with its rituals of dress and faith. Despite his impoverished beginnings, André studied at North Carolina Central University and went on to earn an MA in French Literature at Brown. From there, he came to New York, where he secured an internship at the Costume Institute. It was here that he came under the mentorship of Diana Vreeland—the eminence grise of the Metropolitan Museum—who saw in him a young man passionate about fashion, its history, and its many iterations.
Diane von Furstenberg recalls her unforgettable first sight of him: “I met André when he came to New York,” she says. “Very, very early on—at the time he was interning for Diana Vreeland. I was in my apartment on Park Avenue having a party, so it must have been 1974 or ’75. He was downstairs taking pictures of people arriving. He was this long, skinny thing; he had on a pink satin cape! That was my first image of him. And then he and I became very, very good friends—especially when he was in Paris.” Although it was love at first sight for Diane—the first of her Black friends and intimates—it was a friendship that endured through the rough times as well as the swellegant ones.
After Vreeland and the heady world of the Costume Institute, André was swept into Andy Warhol’s Factory, through her introduction. He was hired to answer the phone—a mundane task, perhaps, but chez Warhol this meant a conduit to the great and the good. For someone as diligent as André, it was an instant entrée to Jacqueline Onassis, Rudolf Nureyev, Elizabeth Taylor, and Liza Minnelli—the list goes on and on.
From the Factory, André was snapped up by John Fairchild to run the Paris office of Women’s Wear Daily. “To this day, I really give a lot of credit to John Fairchild,” says Diane, “for making him the correspondent of Women’s Wear Daily in Paris. That was a huge, huge deal. Around the same time, Givenchy had all these beautiful Black girls doing the show. I used to stay at the Plaza Athénée before I had an apartment in Paris. André would come visit, and we’d have tea in the hall downstairs, pretending he was an African king. We had a lot of fun! There was that famous Friday night at Maxim’s when you had to wear black tie. He was at a show—Karl Lagerfeld or whatever—and he came to dinner wearing a cashmere robe over a beautiful white shirt and black tie. Just beautiful. So elegant and so divine.”
Few clothes from this period survive (though the photographs are intoxicating), but among them is a dashing formal suit by Huntsman—the ne plus ultra of London tailors—in which André was photographed by Warhol. There’s also a seersucker suit (with matching shirt, tie, and a fetching boater) in which he cavorted with Linda Evangelista backstage at the Paris shows.
From this overwhelming start, the exhibition turns even more dramatic. One enters a vast circular room—black, with walls covered in leopard-spot carpet—where his more recent wardrobe is displayed. There are Prada coats in soft green alligator and dove gray ostrich, and then his endless caftans: chiffon and embroidered antelope and cheetah caftans by Tom Ford for Yves Saint Laurent; a slew of impeccable moiré and stiff silk imperial caftans by Ralph Rucci; and marvels from Vivienne Westwood, Dapper Dan, Valentino, and Diane von Furstenberg. Nearby hangs a Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel dove-gray silk faille, 18th-century-inspired coat worn to the Met’s Dangerous Liaisons gala (2004), next to a Givenchy cape with a thirty-foot train. Casual. It quite takes the breath away.
As time passed, André’s silhouette became even more monumental; his caftans grew more hieratic, his shoes—once Manolo Blahniks or Bruno Frisonis for Roger Vivier—gave way to Uggs. The effect is imperial.
“The most beautiful souvenir of André was when Obama was inaugurated,” says Diane. “Nancy Pelosi invited me, and of course I invited André. She gave us wonderful seats, but it was really, really cold. At the time, you could still wear furs, and he was in sable—sable coat, sable hat, everything!” There are fur hats and vast stoles here too (when one could still wear them).