Southern comfort

Andre Leon Talley is appalled that many fashion commentators nowadays don’t even know “what a martingale back is to a Balenciaga one-seamed coat”. Good Lord! How shocking! (You can look it up on Google if you care). He knows EVERYTHING about fashion. He has been obsessed with it ever since he was a boy growing up in the Deep South, and it became his career in Paris and New York. He was “the highest-ranking black man in the history of fashion journalism” from 1988, when Anna Wintour appointed him creative director of Vogue, until three years ago when Edward Enninful took over British Vogue.

This book will be a must for fashion addicts but I have zero interest in fashion and still found it riveting. It is full of wonderful gossip – Madonna’s first words to him were “Hi, I’m Madonna, you want a blow job?” – but Talley himself is such a complex, fascinating man. He was born in 1948, and raised in South Carolina by his grandmother, great-grandmother and aunts. He loved going to church with them because every Sunday was like a fashion parade (and churchgoing is still a large part of his life). His mother was around but she never took any interest in him. The woman he adored was Jackie Kennedy – he saw her Tour of the White House on television in 1962 and fell in love. She was a Francophile, so he studied French, then won a full scholarship to do a PhD at Brown. His mother told him he was wasting his time – he should join the army for the sake of the benefits – but he went anyway.

Even as a student, dressing from thrift shops, he was a dandy – six foot six tall, thin, handsome, wearing a vintage navy admiral’s coat and kabuki makeup. Some art student friends took him to a party in New York and he decided that he must abandon his PhD, move to New York, and make a career in fashion. He applied for, and got, an unpaid internship with Diana Vreeland of Vogue, and she then found him a job as receptionist for Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine, where the pay was lousy but “the social life was surely priceless”. Warhol proved a kind mentor and sent him to interview Karl Lagerfeld, who immediately became his friend.

His friendships with Warhol and Lagerfeld opened many doors. He was appointed European fashion editor of Women’s Wear Daily and suddenly became “king of Paris overnight”. Everyone was charmed by his looks but also by his southern manners. Anna Wintour said “he could charm the snakes from the trees”. She appointed him creative director of House and Garden, which she briefly edited, then took him with her to Vogue. She found him indispensable for many years because, he says, she “was never really passionate about clothes – power was her passion”.

But while his career was booming, his love life was negligible. He knew he was gay but he had suffered sexual abuse as a child (he doesn’t elaborate) and was scared of physical intimacy. Warhol set him up with a date but “I had no clue as to how to proceed… I was a pathetic excuse for a shag”. Of course, this saved him in the 80s, when all his gay friends were dying of Aids, but he regrets that “sex was not on my radar. Success was. And if I felt sad, I would eat”.

Over-eating became a big problem. He was thin in his twenties but steadily ballooned. Wintour sent him to the gym and then to a residential fitness clinic, where he stayed for three months and lost 55lb. But he soon regained the weight. He tried gastric surgery but it was no good. He eventually gave up even trying to wear normal clothes, but commissioned famous designers to make him kaftans and capes – “Despite sometimes feeling like a manatee, I kept my pride intact.” He looked magnificent but nowadays finds it difficult to walk.

Lagerfeld had food issues too. He told Talley that his mother used to strap him to the bed as a child to stop him eating at night. After his lover Jacques de Bascher died of Aids, he got terribly fat and used to binge on raw frankfurters from the fridge but, unlike Talley, lost 100lb and stayed thin for the rest of his life. He was exceptionally generous – he gave Talley clothes and cash to tip the staff when he came to stay with him, which he often did. But when Talley asked for money to stage a commemoration for a photographer they both knew, Lagerfeld ignored him. Death was his big taboo – he would never attend funerals. “Karl was like a brother to me for 40 years. And then five years before his death he cut me out of his life.” Talley still isn’t sure why – or why Wintour dropped him from Vogue.

There is a strain of sadness running through this book. For all his career triumphs, Talley could never satisfy his emotional hunger. One of his last coups was interviewing Michelle Obama for Vogue and being invited to the presidential inauguration. He went with Diane von Furstenberg, an old friend, who urged him to phone his mother in her care home and tell her where he was. He did – but she refused to take his call. Nowadays, mainly retired, he relies on his church, and a few old friends, to see him through. He admits that he has always been afraid of real life – hence his need to hide himself in The Chiffon Trenches. And what a brilliant title that is for a never less than intriguing book.