It’s not often you have the good fortune to meet a six-foot, six-inch fashion scholar and man-about-town, with the regal bearing of a 19th-century prince—and who could pull off wearing a cape. André Leon Talley, who died this week at White Plains Hospital north of New York, was all that and so much more. He was also a wit, a style icon, a deft critic, and a man of extreme passions and loyalties. André was always cooking something up, and indeed he was planning projects right up to the very last minute.
I got the news of his death late Tuesday evening from Jonathan Becker, the photographer. He and André met at Interview magazine but first really worked together on a portrait sitting they did for W of former Vogue editor Diana Vreeland, who was by then organizing exhibitions for the Met’s Costume Institute, where André had interned for her a few years earlier. André worshipped Mrs. Vreeland, as she was called by those around her—and she saw the unique brilliance in her young protégé. André and Jonathan struck up a friendship on that shoot—and maintained it for the next 45 years. Indeed, he was godfather to Jonathan’s daughter—as am I godfather to his son.
