'His success was Black excellence in action—signed, sealed, delivered.' Raven__Smith reflects on André Leon Talley's legacy.
André had an innate, unforced grandeur, and an insatiable appetite for splendor. His was awith chronic opulence, and the people that perpetuate it. But he was more than the flamboyance of a caftan, more than a statuesque apparition at Studio 54. Yes, he had an encyclopedic knowledge of fashion history. Yes, his generosity was unparalleled. Yes, he was fiercely loyal. But there’s something more that’s kept all of us so happily enthralled.
For me, André's magic was in his singularity; he didn't look like anyone else. Fashion is not brimming with six-foot-seven, lavishly-dressed Black men who talk in lyrical stanzas. His appearance in the front row or on the red carpet always seemed remarkable. André didn’t sound like anyone else. He wasn’t brash—to be brash is to somehow bulldoze other people’s emotions—but he was never restrained or quiet.
To put a finer point on it, André was simply elegant. And he was elegant in a world where elegance is often equated with whiteness and thinness and a certain withholding of emotion. It’s important to remember that un-thin Black men don’t start on the same rung of the privilege ladder as everybody else. I don’t want to reduce André Leon Talley to his Blackness, to a “Black man in a white world,” but Talley’s legacy will always be tied up in his visibility.
I’d love to say his life in the chiffon trenches is separate from his race, that his success was pure and simple. I’d love to say that what he did and how he did it wasn’t connected to his ethnicity. I’d love to say his Blackness didn’t matter. But it did. His success was Black excellence in action—signed, sealed, delivered.
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