This morning, social media is flooded with tributes for fashion legend André Leon Talley, who died on Tuesday.
He was 73.
Talley, who made waves across the fashion industry as Vogue’s former creative director, had been hospitalized after being struck down by an unspecified illness.
Darren Walker, the president of the Ford Foundation, confirmed the news of Talley’s passing to The New York Times.
“André Leon Talley was a singular force in an industry that he had to fight to be recognized in,” Walker said, calling him a “creative genius” and noting his ability to craft a persona for himself out of “a deep academic understanding of fashion and design.”
Talley was born on Oct. 16, 1948, in Washington, D.C., to Alma and William Carroll Talley. He was raised by his grandmother Bennie Frances Davis in Durham, N.C., from two months.
While growing up in the South, Talley spoke about sometimes being stoned by college students when he crossed campus to buy Vogue. He majored in French studies at North Carolina Central University and received a master’s from Brown University. His thesis was titled “North African Figures in Nineteenth-Century French Painting and Prose.”
He was introduced to French-American fashion editor Diana Vreeland by a classmate’s father. Talley worked alongside her in the Costume Institute. Vreeland later sent him off to Andy Warhol, who hired Talley at Interview.
Talley first joined Vogue in 1983 as the magazine’s fashion news director. It was not long before he was promoted to the magazine’s creative director. He held the position from 1987 to 1995. Talley left Vogue in 1995 to return to W Magazine in Paris. In 1998 he returned to Vogue full-time as editor-at-large until his final departure from the magazine in 2013.
“I’d like to be remembered as someone who made a difference in the lives of young people – that I nurtured someone and taught them to pursue their dreams and their careers, to leave a legacy,” André Leon Talley.
