Some memories about André Léon Talley
I allowed myself to ask him if it wouldn't be easier to start the interview inside. André Léon Talley stiffened, then. It was out of the question, he fumed. What was on the other side of the door was his secret. The person he was at home, with his furniture and his family memories on the walls, his habits in the kitchen and in front of the television, belonged only to him. He didn't seem to want to be seen as a solitary old gentleman. For me, for passing visitors, he had to remain the incredible André Leon Talley, proud as a peacock in his royal caftan, with his legend-like stories. So I sat down opposite him, also on a bench, but without a cushion for my bottom. It was the beginning of summer, and the shade of the steps protected us from a sun which was already very hot.
We talked for two hours. André Léon Talley was tired, you could tell from his gaze which sometimes wandered over my shoulder, but that didn't stop him from rewinding the thread of his life in a striking way. Over the course of deliciously theatrical exclamations and pouts, backing the slightest of his answers to a corpus of encyclopedic references, André Léon Talley showed the hero that fashion had long celebrated during this interview.
There was no order in this interview. Everything burst forth, a bouquet of colors, images and emotions. André Léon Talley explained that contrary to what many people thought, he found church vestments particularly inspiring. As such, it did not surprise him at all that the famous Cristiano Balenciaga was inspired by the monks represented in the paintings of the Spanish painter Francisco de Zurbaran to imagine one of his collections.
About his childhood in the Old South of a still racist and segregated America, he spoke of the beauty of his grandmother. A woman who liked to dye her hair a pretty lavender blue. "It was the Gods who gave it that color," he whispered. On Sundays, at church, young André looked enviously at the faithful who, for the occasion, liked to show off in their best clothes. To her eyes, round and shining, they were like mannequins. “The men had this particular, falsely nonchalant way of wearing their hats on the top of their heads. I recognized in them this dance combining the fluidity of the materials and the discipline of the style. »
He also recounted how his arrival at the university had the effect of an epiphany for him. Far from the poverty and conservatism of his native south, he discovered on Brown's northern campus a world of freedom he had never seen before except in books and magazines. He became friends with white people. He began to dance in the evening and he forged a pace. In his memory, everything was there: “I put Vaseline on my eyebrows to make them shine, and pink on my cheeks. I liked sailor pants that ended above the ankles, like Sonia Rykiel's. One day, I even found a superb navy blue coat that looked like a gigantic cape. »
