A front row seat at the André Leon Talley auction, please

André Leon Talley changed the way the world looks. As once the creative director of Vogue, Diana Vreeland’s protégé and the very definition of a public fashion editor, Talley’s personality and passionate love of fashion cemented his place in the cultural canon. (Pop culture, too — in the late 2010s, he served as a judge America’s Next Top Model.) Often the only black editor in the room—a 1994 The New Yorker the profile referred to him as “the one”—he urged the industry to change its lily-white image, though his attempts to use fashion fantasy to push that vision into reality were not always fruitful. But as a walking encyclopedia of fashion traditions and a living advertisement for the industry’s transformative promise, Talley proved that a black man of humble origins and a loud gay man who dressed like one could make the world listen. . When he died in 2022, his absence was felt seismically.

On January 27, Christie’s will launch a series of live and online auctions of the André Leon Talley Collection following a selection of tour offerings in Palm Beach and Paris. There are, of course, Talley’s signature capes and caftans, including an incredible number of gold brocades from Dapper Dan. (Many years ago I worked as a researcher in vogue, and while fact-checking one of Talley’s shipments to Paris, he showed me how a caftan should rest on the shoulders. “You have to curtains,he told me, arranging a midnight blue confection around his frame. “Otherwise it’s curtains for the poor!”)

Talley lived flamboyantly. His house, the story goes, had four bedrooms and three of them were used as closets. In 2017 he said of New York Times that he only used 2 of the 11 rooms in his house. “I don’t have things because they are of a certain quality,” he said. “It’s just because I like them as beautiful objects. I’m trying to do an eclectic mix of references and influences.” Those influences, in typical style, were learned and subtle; as he said After Christ in 2014, “My strong point is that I learned from the best: Marella Agnelli, Sister Parish and Henri Samuel!”

And so the art and decor Talley collected to make his house a home are of special interest. A 1984 Andy Warhol portrait of Diana Vreeland as Napoleon is absurd; The portrait of Talley by his long-time nemesis Karl Lagerfield, who presents her as “La Tsarina on her way back to the Winter Palace,” is much more emotionally and politically ambivalent. Both pale in terms of effective portraiture next to the set of three 1990 Louis Vuitton hard-sided suitcases. Each is painted in yellow, red and black letters: ALT. There he was, wherever he went.

As for the furnishings, two pairs of very shiny Baccarat candlesticks, one of gilt parcels and the other with a base of leaping dolphins, are the over-the-top height, sparking visions of Talley exchanging heated gossip between them. vibration. A collection of glassware can tell the complicated story of the design relationship between Europe and Africa: the Hermès drinking set, consisting of white and translucent cobalt pots and tall, old-fashioned shot glasses and water, is a classy model. in Tunisian crafts; the accompanying quartet of translucent green Dior glasses offer what could be Saharan landscapes, complete with giraffes and other creatures. Did Talley see these as evidence of African beauty? Cross-cultural aesthetic exchange? Colonial kitsch? If only he was around to argue over drinks.