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For ‘Vogue’ Titan André Leon Talley, Fashion Was A ‘Gateway To The World’

Growing up in his grandmother’s home in Durham, N.C., in the era of Jim Crow, former Vogue magazine editor André Leon Talley often felt like a misfit. Bullied for his clothes — which he describes as beautiful, but not overly flashy — he remembers feeling alone.

Then, when he was around 9 or 10, he stumbled onto an issue of Vogue at the public library. Paging through the magazine, he was captivated — it was was like traveling down a “rabbit hole,” he says, into “a world of glamour.”

“[Vogue] was my gateway to the world outside of Durham,” Talley says. “It was the world of literature, what was happening in the world of art, what was happening in the world of entertainment.”

Talley went on to study French literature at Brown University. Afterward, he headed to New York City, where he met and worked for Andy Warhol in his “Factory” studio and eventually landed a job at Vogue.

Though he was nervous to work at the iconic magazine, Talley tried not to show it. “I just rose to the occasion,” he says. “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.”

Talley took over as Vogue’s creative director in 1988, and served as editor-at-large from 1998 until 2013. Director Kate Novack profiles Talley in the new documentary The Gospel According to André.

Your weekend listen. -Emily