TheIf you’re in the market for a pair of size 13 Manolo Blahnik snakeskin evening slippers with crimson satin ribbon, then February 15 could be your lucky day. At an auction at Christie’s in New York of the personal estate of André Leon Talley, the former creative director of American Vogue who died last year, they could be yours for a guide price of £400. A Chanel navy silk opera coat can be snapped up for around £3,000 (note the scattered ‘sun damage’), while two oversized Birkin bags look like a steal at £4,000. There are no fewer than 29 Louis Vuitton trunks up for grabs (including one that was featured in the 2008 film Sex and the City), along with a Prada coat in white crocodile and a black Hermès bicycle orange, which Talley never rode but kept. storage at the Ritz in Paris.
When Talley died, the strange inventory of his estate and stories of unpaid rent and a painful exile at the hands of Anna Wintour seemed to paint an operatic, bitter portrait of an overdressed and overwrought figure. But Talley was a more creative, interesting, clever and kind person than anything else. After growing up poor and black in the still-segregated US South, he won a full college scholarship and graduated with a master’s degree in French from Brown University. He pioneered a path to becoming the first black person to reach Vogue’s top ranks, and his death at the age of 73 left a huge void on the front row. And, in a stylish twist that Talley would have adored, it’s the lavish wardrobe on which he splashed his wealth that will serve to portray him in a more flattering light.
Proceeds from the sale of his estate, which are expected to reach $1 million, will go to two historically black churches close to Talley’s heart: Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York and Mt Sinai Missionary Baptist Church in his hometown of born in Durham, North Carolina. The gift reflects Talley’s deep faith and generosity of spirit, which was not always evident in a lifestyle stamped with logos and monograms.
Scratch beneath the surface of the auction’s most eye-catching pieces and you’ll discover a collection that speaks to his support of black talent (a gold-brocade kaftan by influential Harlem designer Dapper Dan, which he wore to a show last week of New York fashion by Carolina Herrera) and his love of art (a bunch of Warhols, a portrait of former Vogue editor-in-chief Diana Vreeland by photographer Horst P Horst and a signed portrait of Karl Lagerfeld by Helmut Newton). The auction is set to be an elegant nod from a man who fervently believed in the transformative power of fashion.
Talley was a complicated, contradictory character. Cathy Horyn, fashion editor of the New York Times when Talley was in his Vogue era, remembered him last year as “a mix of Southern front-porch grandeur … and Beaton’s bloodthirsty observer.” The grandson of a stockholder, he was raised by his grandmother, Binnie Francis Davis, whose high standards of elegance and aesthetics he credited with fostering his interest in fashion. Their laundry was done “in a big iron kettle in our yard,” he wrote in his 2003 memoir ALT, but “until I left home, I never used a towel that wasn’t ironed.”
By the time he joined Vogue in 1983 and became a semi-public figure as Wintour’s longtime boss, Talley was already a legend within fashion, his encyclopedic knowledge of fashion history complemented by a glittering history of working for Vreeland and clubs with Karl Lagerfeld.
When I started attending fashion shows in the late 1990s, Talley was in his prime: a glamazon on a giant scale, draped in furs the size of oversized bedspreads and with a Lauren Hutton gap between his teeth. He once told me that something I’d written had amused him – and I carried the compliment with me for days.
For many years, Talley championed designers of color in the back pages of Vogue, featuring the work of Patrick Kelly, Kevan Hall, Stephen Burrows and Willi Smith. Toward the end of his life, he was an early cheerleader for designer LaQuan Smith, who has gone on to build a prestigious brand—that yellow trench that Priyanka Chopra Jonas is wearing on the cover of this month’s issue of British Vogue is one of them. Talley recalled giving her $2,000 of his own money to “‘go to Paris … just seeing the light fall on the buildings will inspire you’.” In 2010, Talley convinced his friend Serena Williams to help put Smith on the map by modeling in his New York Fashion Week show.
Highlights from the upcoming sale were flown to Paris for the haute couture shows this week, where they were greeted with a champagne reception. Both as a Francophile and a connoisseur of the high life, Talley would have liked to be honored during fashion week, said Deacon Alexis Thomas, the executor of Talley’s estate and a close friend. “André loved fashion and he loved luxury. That’s how he chose to live his life and he did it beautifully, and this collection reflects that. But our hope is that it also reflects a comprehensive sense of who André was as an activist, a friend and a man of faith.”
The party was packed, the champagne flowing freely, the glamorous thongs endlessly diverting – who knew Chanel made hot water caps? – but many in attendance were drawn to Talley’s portraits, rather than his possessions. In one, a large canvas by Kim Cole Moore, the artist borrows Diego Velázquez’s pose of Pope Innocent X for Talley, who wears rich white robes and a solemn, knowing gaze. “He seems so wise, so caring,” said Elizabeth Seigel, Christie’s head of private and iconic collections. “It captures the dynamic life and personality that we are trying to bring to life through these objects. He was always larger than life – but it’s also intimate and meaningful.”
But it’s the Vuitton trunk that will draw the most heat under the hammer, predicts Seigel. “It’s a lot of fun. The closer the association with the individual, the more competition there is usually and the luggage is both his signature and a part of fashion history. Some of them bear his name, and some have labels from his stays at the Ritz. It’s very charming.”
In his 2020 memoir The Chiffon Trenches, Talley wrote that he was underpaid, ostracized and eventually frozen out by Vogue and Anna Wintour. It feels poignant that he kept, in this treasured library, an informal Annie Leibovitz portrait of Wintour in her New York home. The presence of several Andy Warhol originals—including a silkscreen of a love heart signed as a Valentine’s gift—tells a contrasting story of an enduring friendship with Warhol, for whom Talley worked early in his career and stayed close to him until the artist’s death. A long and close friendship with Lagerfeld ended badly – Talley was apoplectic to find himself off the guest list for the designer’s memorial service – but a few Lagerfeld sketches of the pair together speak, here, of happier days.
Talley’s afterlife as a benefactor was very much planned in advance. “He was excited throughout his life by the idea of creating a fashion collection that would benefit the causes that were important to him,” Seigel said. The auction house will partner with the Church of Abyssinia for a celebration of his life with the church choir.
At Talley’s memorial service in Harlem last year, Michelle Obama paid tribute to his “kindness, charm and energy” which, she said, “changed the world”. Perhaps Talley is destined to always be remembered for his monogrammed trunks. But the tales of the young designers he helped and the generous legacy bequeathed in his name tell an altogether more sophisticated story.
