André Leon Talley and I first met in 1983. Grace Mirabella, the then editor of Vogue, had just hired me as the magazine’s creative director, while André was its fashion news director. He’d arrived at Vogue having been at the Costume Institute, Interview, and the Paris bureau of WWD, where he was the toast of the town.
We quickly became friends, in part because neither of us quite fit in with the no-nonsense and totally beige corporate atmosphere of the office: André had enough volubility to be onstage at the Metropolitan Opera, while I was just the weird Brit. Looking back, I really didn’t help my cause by having the eccentric Isabella Blow as my assistant, who took to cleaning her desk with generous spritzes of Chanel No. 5 at the end of each working day. André applauded—adored—the aristocratic insouciance of it all.
Yet that was only part of the story for André and me. Friendship with him meant being part of his erudite, gilded, and fiercely self-created existence; of being in the orbit of someone who had the incredible gift, one amplified by his immense charm, of always being able to joyfully turn the volume of life up—way, way up. I’d never met anyone who had so many friends known only by their first names: Paloma, Karl, Andy, Yves, Diane. And before long, André had joined their ranks.
André was also an intrinsic part of both my family life and my personal life. He’d stay weekends with us in Long Island; that’s where this portrait of him was taken. He was forever generous with his time, and he was always the most entertaining house guest, critic, and cheerleader. He could lift everyone up. His cameos in our family summer movies were classic. And André consulted on fittings for whatever my daughter, Bee, and I would wear to the Met any given year.
The night before the May 2016 gala, André emailed Bee and me with some thoughts on her hair for the night: “A soft loosely knotted back, and off the neck, clean off the neck. It can’t be messy. But it has to look like you just caught it in a one twist, like a soft figure 8 caught with [the] same color band as your hair. And you can still wear the little tiny band of diamonds. But never too tight, yet never messy, like you came off the tennis court.”
The day after André died, I started going through many, many years of his emails to me. While before this he used to communicate via violently colored faxes, email was a revelation to him, and his—always rendered in different colors and fonts—were brilliant, explosive, funny, opinionated, and exhilarating. People always say that tone is lost over text and email—not with André.
Those emails say so much about him. Here he is writing from Kanye West’s wedding to Kim Kardashian in Florence in 2014:
“I have never seen such organization, such imagination, and a sense of perfection. And such a diverse mix of people. Jaden Smith, 15 years old, went as an albino bat to the ceremony, it was beyond genius. An albino bat, go figure. And apparently he has his own clothing line. Kanye looked so handsome in Lanvin. And Alber Elbaz now really wears shoes, worn, beaten and coming apart, like Charlie Chaplin.”
Unsurprisingly, clothes—his, mine, and those seen in runway shows—made for some of André’s most incisive and hilarious commentary. One collection invoked his ire: “What was all that stuff, Amish uniforms on steroids. Pretentiously artistic! FASHION NUNS Meets The Handmaid’s Tale.” Another, from Marc Jacobs, a designer who André believed in so much, brought an opportunity to rave:
“What I really want to say is that Marc Jacobs as usual is the only great, great show in New York City. Why do we have to sit through a tsunami of crap just to get to him? We have to. It’s life. It was a master class of style, true style. A master class. I was knocked out by the beauty, the sheer brilliance and polish. People must be embraced, loved, and supported. No matter what it takes. I just send missives to Marc. I don’t even go backstage anymore. He prefers the words.”
André clearly had a way with words, but his actions also spoke volumes. Years ago, when my mother died unexpectedly, I had just made it to London, despite a ferocious snowstorm which had gripped New York, and my husband and children couldn’t join me for the funeral. I was so low, which André immediately realized. Being the force of nature that he was, absolutely nothing was going to stop him crossing the Atlantic to be there for me and for my family. Amidst a lifetime of memories of André, I will never forget his kindness, his chivalry, and his friendship.