“Wearing clothes should be a personal narrative of emotion,” Talley says in a 2012 interview. “I always respond to fashion in an emotional way”
Photo: MediaPunch/Shutterstock The thought of narrowing down André Leon Talley’s contributions to fashion feels challenging and overwhelming. Talley, a Black boy from Durham, North Carolina, came to New York and made his career in the 1970s.
Photo: Randy Brooke/WireImage In 2008, he showcased this while wearing a Tiepolo-red haute couture cape designed by Lagerfeld while accompanying Venus Williams to the Met Gala. He looked like fashion royalty and a superhero at the same time. In this moment, and throughout his career, Talley shows us the power of personal style and how he used clothes to narrate how he wanted to be perceived. Clothes were his armor through the challenges he faced growing up in the segregated South and rising to the top in an elitist industry.