Subtitles by explosiveskull
I don't live for fashion, I live for beauty and style.
Fashion is fleeting, style remains.
I think, that beauty comes in many forms...
it could be a flower, it could be a gesture.
It could be so many things. So many things.
Voltaire says, "One must cultivate, one's own garden".
Which doesn't mean to grow garden peas.
But if you like string beans, that would be good.
But you must also cultivate your own,
aesthetic in your own universe.
Create your own universe, and share it with people that you, respect and love.
Oh! Look at that. Can you believe that!
Oh!
My God!
Are you...
This Andre Leon Talley, reporting live from Paris.
Backstage at Azzedine Alaia's
little apartment on Rue Bellechasse.
We've got Kenzo. We've got...
one of the famous Parisian mannequins from the high fashion world of 1952.
In an Azzedine Alaia, we got Bethann Hardison from New York City.
An entrepreneur of some of the best and important models.
Now watch, the magic, that he's invented.
The sleeveless... coat comes off...
And there's a beautiful boléro...
what I'm gonna call ski trousers.
There are very, very few people,
that have the wealth of information, that have
the first-hand experience of creative moments that Andre has witnessed.
My job, is to make sure that Vogue has the first entrée into every door
of every important house, be a fashion house or the house of someone
who has a great art collection.
To be the first to get Madonna on the cover of Vogue.
No one really needs another handbag or another sweater
or another coat.
It has to be emotional. And Andre could always make
the reader feel that dream, and feel that emotion.
I have to say this, I have to get this on the record 'cause I just arrived from Milan.
Since, the collection in January, single handedly, again,
the fashion world has been totally influenced by your collection.
It's gone from zen minimalism to quiet style folklore.
Andre is one of the last of those great editors,
who knows, what they're looking at, knows what they're seeing,
knows where it came from.
And Andre tosses out all these different words,
and he's so big and he's so grand, and his gestures are so grand.
I think a lot of people think, "Oh, my God, this guy is crazy".
But it's a fabulous insanity.
Hi guys, how are you?
This is a beautiful dress.
I think two bracelets, When you have two bracelets, it means you're wealthy.
Your husband can afford both.
He didn't have to buy it on credit.
Oh my... Oh, the style!
- This is major, where is this from? - This is Gucci.
Yeah.
's a Russian oligarch... black...
He's like the Nelson Mandela of Couture.
Rachel, this it. Look. This is it.
The Kofi Annan, of what you got on.
- What do you think of this outfit? - Dreckitude.
- What is a dreckitude? - "Dreck" which means a wreck!
Andre is at once a legend in mainstream culture.
And, he is also a tall, big, black man,
in America.
Born in the American South.
And as such there will always be great tension there.
We see how great it is, how great is it to be Andre Leon Talley!
Its great excitement, great beauty, great revilement, ravishment, wonderment, sex.
But he knows, what it has taken.
Watch that shrub!
He's scared of something. You see the way he hit that thing?
And if he breaks that shrub? You see that shrub?
Don't hit the shrub!
Okay.
I wonder how heavy that tree is? That branch. Look at that he's taking it.
God! He must be strong, but look at that.
I hate to cut a tree down.
But sometimes, it's necessary.
When I was child, there was one big maple tree and it was a beautiful, beautiful tree.
It was huge and it took over the whole front yard.
It just created the greatest shade.
All my aunts and uncles used to come over and sit on the porch in the summer,
when the weather was warm.
They just told the most wonderful stories.
It was an amazing life, based on narrative and anecdotes.
Narration, narrated, narrative,
all from past experiences of life.
When I was born, I was taken to Durham
and then my mother and father left me there.
And my grandmother raised me.
My grandmother kept me basically protected from any sort of outside world
except the extended family, the world of church.
It was a very protected world that I basically lived in,
where the most important person in the world was my grandmother.
And it was very much a parallel world to,
uh, Truman Capote's, A Christmas Memory.
A coming of winter morning, more than 30 years ago...
Oh my...
It's fruitcake weather.
The person to whom she is speaking is myself.
And we have lived together well as long as I can remember.
We are each other's best friend.
She calls me "buddy".
His grandmother was a stickler,
nobody messed with her.
She could scream all the way
from a... two city blocks, you could, you could hear her.
Andre!
André Leon Talley, get in here.
His grandmother was just everything.
For him, just absolutely everything.
The Southern Culture and his grandmother, um, greatly impacted who he is.
I had a kind of discipline that I learned early.
I always had to make up my bed,
properly and neatly.
My grandmother was a domestic maid all her life.
washing and-and cleaning rooms in a dorm to-to provide for me.
We had a very humble, modest place to live.
And we were not poor, we were certainly not wealthy.
But we had a very clean house, respectable house.
We lived in wood frame houses.
The houses, that we live in,
in North Carolina, we didn't have central heat,
and those luxuries. But he saw the luxury that his grandmother created,
in that space.
And even though they didn't have much they created,
so much in what they were doing.
I just remember going to church was
the most important thing in life.
Getting up and getting dressed to go to church on Sunday.
My grandmother got up.
She made a pan of biscuits for me.
I'd eat the whole pan of biscuits myself...
get dressed, get in the car, then go to the church.
Amidst the Jim Crow south
the Black Church was the only place, really, in which African-American life
and African-American identity was affirmed and valued.
And certainly, it was a fashion show.
Members of African-American Congregations put on their Sunday best.
They changed from the uniforms, perhaps, or the work clothes,
that, um, guided their lives Monday to Fridays,
and on Sunday, that was the day
we would bring our absolute best to God.
My grandmother had fabulous hats, fabulous hats.
And you just didn't have one hat, you had many hats.
I remember, my grandmother had stacks and stacks of hat boxes.
You had hats for seasons, you had winter hats, you had velvet hats.
You had the dressing hats for, uh, the holiday season.
And you had spring hats and summer hats.
My grandmother taught me about dignity and values...
and striving for excellence...
rigor, discipline, maintenance, cleanliness, next to Godliness.
It's aristocratic in the highest sense of the word.
You can be aristocratic without having been born into an aristocratic family.
I think we can all agree that this has been a rough week in an already rough election.
This week has been particularly interesting for me personally
- because it has been a week of... - Oh!
profound contrast.
See on Tuesday, at the White House, we celebrate...
I became familiar with Andre,
like a lot of other young women through Vogue magazine.
And for me being a black woman from the South, he represented
so much more than this grand character.
It was this broader representation of black people,
that were not a monolith.
That we come in, this various shape, size and interesting colors.
Oh no, not the dog.
No wait...
There, now you're done.
Sweetie, sweetie...
- Aw! - See, I'm nice.
- Aw! - Ooh!
- It's the most precious thing! - Don't be jealous.
Oh! Look at her.
- Oh! - She just loves you.
Oh, my God.
Yeah, amazing, amazing, amazing.
I said... I twittered, "Michelle Obama should get the Noble Peace Prize,
for her oratory, her eloquence."
If Hilary Clinton wins,
- I think... - She will owe a great deal to Michelle Obama.
- Absolutely! - And I love the way she looked.
- Slim leggings, it was amazing. - How do you think, her fashion has changed over...
I think it's evolved as being more and more confident.
It's incredible!
- Clothing reflects where she is... - Reflects she is, and yes,
Yes, yes... - versus where she was, you know, trying to
- assimilate as a proper First Lady in the beginning. - Exactly.
But she now has totally even keel and it's really quite incredible.
Yes.
I feel like a princess.
- Don't... - Could you believe I was born
in shotgun house. Two rooms.
- My grandfather was a sharecropper, - Beautiful, beautiful.
and today, look what happened.
- Beautiful. White House bound. - White House bound.
Anyone will tell you, to be invited to the White House,
no matter your political affiliation, it's our... it's our House.
You know, this is America's home.
- Okay, come here, come here. - Yeah.
- Laura. - Yes.
Carefully, I think, you could open this pleated two...
We both, know my affection for Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandridge,
And that presentation of the woman in the body.
There's a sheer elegance.
Tack it lightly, down here where the bias is,
where the point is. So when she's standing, this is like a frame.
This is my dream dress.
- The dress, I wanted to wear to the White House. This is... - Aw.
- It's quite beautiful, Tamron. - It is, right?
Fashion has to uplift the soul.
It uplifts the spirit.
- Let's go. - Now, let's see, walk now. Let's walk.
Oh! Yes, lightly, lightly.
It's a moral code to dress well.
All of my relatives,
all the women in my family and the men had style.
The chic thing was to go to downtown Durham and go to Jo Belle's.
It's a very chic hat store.
But Jo Belle's had this Jim Crow system,
where if a black woman came in the store to try on a hat,
she was asked to put on a veil,
but the white women would not.
In other words, the back woman's hair was not supposed to touch a new hat.
So, I was aware of the outside world, I was definitely aware of the Civil Rights Movement.
There were dogs being thrown on people in the South.
All of this was on the television.
It made me very aware of what kind of a culture I came from.
And what, we as African-Americans had to suffer.
My escape from reality was Vogue magazine.
And I actually discovered it in a general public library.
The visual moments of Vogue, turned me on, it made me think,
about style, culture, poetry and music, beauty.
I always look forward to the fantasy covers.
Girls in gilded cages, it's ornamental,
but to the point that it wasn't considered wrong it was considered right.
I loved seeing Pat Cleveland in Vogue.
I love seeing black people in Vogue.
I love seeing pictures of Naomi Sims in Vogue.
Then I just went completely bonkers.
These were two incredible black models, changing fashion.
I could see that there were people who were not racists,
who were not judging you for the skin color you had.
That was my most important escape, and that was my world.
Fashion magazines, they do allow you to dream, they're not real life,
they're enhanced reality. They're the way that you wish your life could be.
They're the way that you imagine life should be.
And it was a form of escape to a world which was,
kind and gentle and nice and beautiful.
Andre grew up in a magic bubble.
And it was genuinely like completely head over heels, immersed in all of it.
I was in that insulated world,
reading everything I could get my hands on.
Reading W, reading The New York Time, reading The Fashionable Savages
Mr. Fairchild, described the world that was larger than life.
He described the world of Paris Couture.
He described the venerable houses of Givenchy and Balenciaga.
He described Dior, he described the people who made fashion.
This was a world, that was almost like the world of Balzac,
like characters in a novel but it was actually characters in a real,
non-fictional world.
In April 1962, when Mrs. Diana Vreeland deserted Harper's Bazaar for Vogue,
the fashion world jumped.
Mrs. Vreeland is like no one else.
She's a mighty fashion chief.
She told the assembled editors,
the clothes are dull, dull, dull.
There's only one thing to do with the girls,
make them up, up, up, up.
Mrs. Vreeland always thinks up.
It made the culture of style come alive to a young,
black man in the South.
Every Sunday after church, I'd have to go across town to the Duke
East Campus, to the magazine stand to get the Vogues.
And one Sunday, I was going across the railroad tracks,
and people threw rocks at me from a car.
I wasn't wearing capes or anything. I was walking around in normal,
like a sweater, like a ski sweater or something.
And I thought that this was a bunch of white boys at Duke,
decided to throw rocks at me cause I was walking the campus.
But I was taught to rise above it and to be strong.
went to an all black high school
Hillside was a school that almost forced you to excel
to the best of your ability.
And it was excellence without an excuse.
And they accepted nothing less than that.
When Andre was a student, we still had segregation.
There was always the notion that...
you couldn't just be good, you had to be better.
And success, is the best revenge.
- Hey young man! - Hi. Good to see you. All right.
All right. Good to see you too.
This is good. My fondest memory of you is you had a fabulous grey flannel skirt, full,
very full like a Dior-New-Look skirt.
And you used to wear stilettos. And you used to click clack down the hall, the main hall,
and it was fabulous seeing you walking down the hall swishing,
and wooshing in that huge, wide skirt.
Maybe, you didn't know it and I didn't know it at the time, but it was,
uh, the total image of the Dior-New-Look of 1947. Do you remember that skirt?
Because Bruce has his memory, his... tell 'em your memory.
I was looking at your skirt and Bruce was looking at other things, your legs.
That's true.
But how do you remember Bruce and I. How do you remember?
What-what do you remember about me?
I remember that I was in A Mouse That Roared.
I was the star of The Mouse That Roared. Count Mount Joy, Love Joy,
or mount joy, one or the other.
I played two roles. I played every role.
- And you, and you knew, you were well suited. - Yes, I did. I did.
Andre was flamboyant.
When we did The Mouse That Roared. The part that he played.
He was the Count.
It was almost like type casting.
My dear chap, I have sent not one protest but three, mind you.
He was outstanding and stood out, because of his height,
because of his mannerisms. When heard him speak you knew it was Andre.
Bourguignon, we're gonna make beef bourguignon.
Julia Child made me gravitate towards French,
learning how to speak the language.
...and bon appétit.
French was absolutely my favorite, favorite subject.
So, I think, that's why, I mastered French
Whack it off!
He was creating for himself, out of what he loved.
Just a unbelievable, unbelievable character.
Believe it or not, I was inspired by a woman, Lady Ottoline Morrell.
Who was an English personality.
Ottoline Morrell inspired me as much,
as Dr. Martin Luther King did me with the white... impeccable white shirt.
I was inspired by people who just had dared to be daring.
I mean, in high school I was the outrider, the out-cryer, the outlier.
The bullies hated me in school cause I was the best dressed.
And I had the best clothes.
I don't like this kind of nostalgia for high school.
And I didn't agree with these people that were chosen
to be the most likely to... senior superlatives,
- Oh! No! - Right.
- And probably half of them are bums now. - Right and, or dead.
- Or derelicts or dead. - Yeah.
"Most talented, most humorous, I didn't agree with any of that.
"Most popular",
- Darly Smith was the most popular. That's right. - That's true.
And "The Best Dressed" is really wrong.
What was your goal,
in the yearbook?
Well, I just made this up, ambition, to become a professional
actor on Broadway I just made that up at that time.
And I love that I wrote it, my hobby was skiing.
- Like I ever had a ski on in my life. - Right.
Do you recall, how many biscuits you would have made just for you.
- Yeah, I had 12 biscuits, yes. - Twelve, 12 biscuits,
- for you only. - Yes
Beverly said you ate five hot dogs coming up here.
I eat five hot dogs every day, I can.
But you... That's not good for your health. Even I know... I don't eat five hot dogs.
- Why did you eat five hot dogs? - But... the same reason you eat caviar.
- Okay. - I don't eat caviar.
- Well, what joy does a hot dog give it to you. - It has too much salt.
What a joy does hot dogs give you?
- Satisfaction. - When you know it's not good for your cholesterol?
You know it's not good.
Caviar, how good is that for you with salt?
Well, I don't eat it every day.
You eat five hot dogs every day. I eat caviar on special occasions.
Uh-huh. - When I go to Valentino's house.
It's a level that I have never lived a lifestyle, I've never lived
- Hmm, hmm. - I've appreciated many things that were exposed
- to me because of you, uh, starting with your father. - Well, that's kind.
Yes, Okay. I think, my father preferred you to me.
- I don't agree. - But I wouldn't think so.
My father was in my life, but he was living in DC.
He was a taxi cab driver.
I couldn't wait to see that taxi cab, in front of Andre's grandmother's home
with that Washington D.C. plate on it.
His daddy, he would take us to baseball games and I'd be there so excited
with the popcorn and with the sodas.
And Andre would be sitting there, more or less pouting.
And we'd go to the shopping mall and then that's when he got excited,
when we went shopping.
I'm wearing... second hand hats.
Second hand clothes.
♪ That's why they call me Second hand Rose ♪
Barbra Streisand inspired me to go thrift shopping,
"Second Hand Rose", a song.
She ran through Bergdorf's in leopard and white mink knickers
and then she would shop at the thrift stores.
And she loved going to thrift stores.
And I thought, if it's good enough for Barbra Streisand, it's good enough for me.
And I happened to been in New York one summer and I went to the thrift shop
and I found the most extraordinary maxi rubberized cape.
I think I paid about five dollars for it, maybe less than five dollars
and, it was my first cape.
Whoopee!
Capes for me, suggests a great moment. They are very, very formal
- and regal. - The train 18 feet long.
When you're wearing a cape, you're gonna behave differently,
you're gonna stand differently and walk differently.
I really have this appreciation for the dramatic moment.
I mean, this coat is a great coat.
This coat is inspired by all kinds of...
literary heroes and heroines.
Russian, people in the Russian... Tolstoy, people out of Tolstoy.
I might've said something to Carla about Tolstoy,
Anna Karenina, that's why the collar's like this.
Andre is an operatic figure, you know, you look at him, I mean, he is larger than life.
What moves him is that idea, like just do it, think it, wear it.
When he's like, oh, darling, make me a cape to the floor,
or darling, I need a ruffled shirt or whatever.
I... There's no hesitation like, do you think I should wear this.
It's just... there, out there.
And then like, changing your mind tomorrow.
I made some ridiculous style choices.
I had Miuccia Prada, make me a mauve alligator coat.
And then I wrapped my turban, it was mauve, like the Indians do.
And then when I saw the picture that came in that paper, I thought this is a big mistake.
I remember those disasters. These were not good moments in my wardrobe.
My best moments have been my kaftans, I love everything that I've worn to the Met.
When I was young, I was thin as a number five lead pencil.
And I look back on those pictures and I think,
Thank God! There's documentation of me.
I was thin, maybe up to the age of 40,
when I began to bloat up.
I just don't seem to lose the weight.
I've been quite bloated like a manatee.
I often think of myself as a manatee.
But yet and still I made the effort to go to the Met, looking fabulous.
Andre completely transgresses the boundary of what
has been deemed acceptable for black masculinity.
The black church has its liabilities as it relates to gender and sexuality.
And Andre bumped up against what was considered respectable.
I remember once, I went to church with my navy blue maxi coat, which is
in impeccable condition, found in a thrift shop.
And my mother said,
Oh!
"You gotta hang back, hang back I can't walk into church with you."
I said, "Why, what's wrong?" She says, "I can't walk into church with you.
I can't be seen with you and that Phantom of the Opera coat."
And I said, "Oh! Well, then okay, I was just... If you wanna go up to...
to the... you know, up the aisle by yourself."
My pleasure, feel free, go ahead. And I thought about that.
I stood outside and I thought about it a while.
And that's the first time I realized
that I did not have to like my mother, I had to respect my mother.
But I did not have to like her. She thought I dressed like the Phantom of the Opera.
She didn't understand it.
And my grandmother said, "Leave him alone."
My grandmother got everything.
Unconditional love.
I knew I had to get out of Durham.
And I went to Brown, I got the scholarship,
getting a graduate degree in French studies.
My grandmother was sad to see me go, but she knew it was furthering my education.
I really think had I not left home I'd still be in Durham, North Carolina,
going to church.
How are you?
We both went to Brown and we both love fashion.
- Oh, she went to Brown too! - I went to Brown too!
Oh, my!
So, we have, um, the shape of the gown.
for you to try on, this is the exact shape.
- Yes, you have to shorten it. I don't like it long... no. - No, it's gotta be...
And I don't like that on you at all, that-that dress!
- I like the shape, but I know the shape is gonna be different. - Yeah.
- Hold this up to you. - So...
Is that the right side for it?
- No, this is the right side. - This is the right side.
The first week for orientation,
all the first year graduate students gathered.
So, I was standing there, and here comes this towering, pine tree of a guy,
uh, walking with this long trench coat and a fedora hat.
And I thought, I don't think he's a science major.
And he was all presence with this booming voice.
And he introduced himself to me.
He asked me, uh, how many pieces of Louis Vuitton luggage I owned.
And I said, "None."
And he said, "Darling! You will need them when you cross the ocean on the QE2."
I go, "right."
He was at Brown,
in Providence, I was across the street at Rhodes Island School of Design.
RISD and myself and my friends represented,
a freedom, that he had never experienced in his life.
So, we sort of opened his eyes to what...
style could be or what...
being yourself might feel like.
I wrote a column in the RISD paper. And I covered the scene.
It was kind of a decadent group because they were very affluent.
And I remember some of them didn't go to classes.
And they would wake up having Bloody Mary's.
I guess, that was just how they grew up. They said that their parents woke up and did that.
I never thought of even waking up to drink a Bloody Mary at 11 in the morning,
before the first class.
Fashion was our devotion.
We were not into, uh, crystal meth
or cocaine or heroin.
Our passion, was fashion.
We would use,
these kind of dress up nights, where we'd...
stay home and create
kind of, "fashion moments."
We would play in laundry bags or,
sheets of paper, all as an escape.
We were invited nowhere. We'd get all dressed up,
we had nowhere to go.
This is how we spent every night.
He was spreading his wings, and he could be
anything, here.
He had a dream,
don't wanna sound like Martin Luther King, but, yeah,
Andre had a dream.
I did not know who exactly I was, I was becoming.
But I did get out of the Jim Crow south.
Brown gave me, a freedom, a liberation.
It propelled me into the world, that I know.
...three, two, one, coming back.
Fashion, culture, fabulous!
This is Full Length
with Andre Leon Talley
Welcome back to Full Length. I'm Andre Leon Talley.
And I'm here today with my fabulous guest and dear friend, Norma Kamali.
And I have known her since way back in the day.
Well, I'd say back in the day, since the great, great 70's.
The last one, when there was true style reigning in New York City.
Welcome, Norma. Thank you for your great time, your valued time.
- Oh, it's so great to be with you, Andre. - Thank you, Norma, thank you.
So, let's go back to when, actually, New York defined style,
almost globally.
The 70's were the birth,
and the explosion of the fashion industry,
with designers as celebrities,
and the creativity was like nothing you'd ever seen before.
It was a very freeing time, and I don't think,
I wore a bra or underwear through the whole beginning part of the 70's.
Yves Saint Laurent, and Halston were the kings of fashion.
Halston in America, Saint Laurent in Paris.
Halston was more of a minimalist
and Yves Saint Laurent was more of a romanticist.
In 1974, Halston was already a big star.
His lifestyle and his minimalistic look
permeated everything about fashion.
And that's what I dreamed of.
I listened to people who were from New York, and they said,
"You should follow your dreams."
And I did take the risk
to come to New York in 1974.
I went up to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
I wanted to be at The Costume Institute.
And, I had a letter of introduction to Diana Vreeland,
to volunteer for Romantic and Glamorous Hollywood Design, the show.
They gave me this Lana Turner costume.
of metal pieces, that I had to put together with pliers.
So I'd never seen anything like it.
And I had to figure out which pieces attached to the bathing suit part
of the piece, and then, the whole skirt was a curtain
of fringe, of these metal discs.
And I just had to assemble like a jigsaw puzzle.
And, uh, I put it on the mannequin and Mrs. Vreeland came by and saw it.
I hid behind the column.
She stopped and looked at it. She said nothing.
But, then, two minutes later, they called me into the office,
and said, Mrs. Vreeland would like to see you.
She sat on the side of her desk, with a big, yellow legal pad.
And she wrote in very exaggerated scale,
Andre, with the accent, and then in a pencil, she put a dash, and she said,
"Helper." H.e.l.p.e.r.
And she wrote that, and then she put her pen down.
And she said, "Now, you will stay by my side for the rest of the show."
I gravitated toward Mrs. Vreeland in a way that I cannot tell you.
She was a theatrical, dramatic.
She looked like, she was seven feet tall.
Because she stood up straight, and she just sketched stretched and up, up, up.
And she made very dramatic gestures.
Please, don't stand there.
Andre would, actually,
become Vreeland, like, he'd walk around saying,
"Mm, I want drama. I want navy and pink.
- Think pink, get crackin'." - Great, great!
The little details, she made very luxurious in her life.
Luxury wasn't having, like, antique furniture or a painting by Picasso.
Luxury was in the mind.
The luxury of a great dress, comes from within.
You know, my greatest joy
in working here is to go through the closets.
and see the magnificence of the fabrics.
You see...
the way this hung, the marvelous color, and the feathers against the skin,
it's so beautiful.
Mrs. Vreeland stays with me every day.
She taught me the language of clothes, the language of style.
Hello! Ladies.
Oh, look at those velvet Chanels.
Woo!
And everything is impeccably kept. These are not clothes found
in a dustbin.
These are true, true treasured pieces. Nothing shabby here.
And this is Mrs. Vreeland's great kaftan, one of two, from Oscar de la Renta.
This is typical Mrs. Vreeland. And I'm sure the embellishment was a big part
of the whole charm and the fabulous, enthusiastic, exuberant color.
It's very Russian, this.
You might see this in a Russian Orthodox Church.
Mrs. Vreeland would have loved to have been entering from her bedroom
in that, with all the sparkle.
Now, what is that? That red one?
- Valentino. - Valentino, is that Mrs. Vreeland's?
- Yes. - What?
Oh, my goodness!
I think that's the great dress she might've worn in the Horst picture.
Sprawled out on her big red sofa.
That's the dress!
He was very close to Diana Vreeland.
When Diana Vreeland, she was not feeling so well,
he was so exceptional. He used to go to her apartment.
And to read some book, to read the magazine, the newspaper.
To let her know what happened in the world, because, she couldn't go out anymore.
This is something with the big Andre heart,
because he had a big heart and in...
When he... he would love somebody, was really for serious.
Mrs. Vreeland gave me unconditional love.
And I always say, my grandma, and Mrs. Vreeland were very much alike.
She believed in cleanliness, and my grandmother believed in cleanliness.
Polishing, ironing, washing.
And they both gave joy to people.
As Mrs. Vreeland says, "You want to give the world some sort of spark,
that is, perhaps, not there."
The only Christmas I was ever away, first Christmas,
was December, 1974, when I had gone to the Met Ball.
Romantic and Glamorous Hollywood Design, and, um,
Mrs. Vreeland said to me, "You must stay,
it'll happen for you in the new year," and I called my grandmother on Christmas Eve.
And she says, "You have to come home, it's Christmas, you have to come home."
I said no, because, Mrs. Vreeland told me
that she... it will happen, and I will get a job in the new year.
And I have to stay in New York.
She says you have to come home. You just have to.
I said, "Why do you want me at home?" I kept...
coaxing her to tell me why. And she said,
"Because I know, you're sleeping with a white woman."
And I... I just said... I laughed. I started laughing, and I thought.
"If she only knew."
I didn't go home, Mrs. Vreeland said it would happen. And she made it happen.
And I went to work at Interview magazine.
I went to the factory and I answered the phone, I was receptionist.
And I went to pick up Andy's lunch and brownies.
I used to love to see the people walk into Interview.
Mrs. Vreeland would come for lunch.
And then, people would come in and have their Polaroids taken for their portraits.
Princess Caroline of Monaco, Michael Jackson, Diana Ross.
I was at the center of everything, right there with Andy Warhol.
No one notified me, well, Andre's gonna be there, I never heard of him,
And I walk into Interview, and he was sitting behind the so-called,
reception desk.
I was very startled, because,
he was preceded by a string of debutantes, who had this job.
You know, half of them, you know, first there, you know,
what-what's your name, Lady so and so.
So, um, and they were many even quite fetching, but none of them answered the phone.
Okay, so, they were not really
used to working in a... even like, "Hello, Interview."
Um, so I thought like, who is this guy, so, someone tell me his name.
Um, and I, I didn't quite hear it, so I said to him,
"Is your name Andre Laley?"
That's what I thought, I heard. He said, "No.
Talley. Andre Leon Talley, as in Talleyrand."
And I burst out laughing. I thought he was joking.
But he was dead serious.
I danced every night at Studio 54, every night.
Dancing, dancing, I went there for the dancing,
not for the decadence, the downstairs drug-taking,
and upstairs sexual decadence that was going on upstairs, in the balcony.
Where I absolutely saw, like, Sodom and Gomorrah.
You can't imagine the orgy that New York was in the 70's.
You know, the word promiscuous doesn't like begin to touch it.
We thought sex was good for you, like orange juice.
But Andre was like a nun.
I did... not involved sexually in that scene with anyone.
And, as I call them libertines, for want to be kind.
Don't forget, Andre came to New York
from a very conservative Southern background.
- How do you like the nightlife, - I love nightlife...
in New York?
Andre wasn't part of our neighborhood, so to speak.
He was like an implant, or what do call it, immigrant? No.
Someone who comes from, you know, outside.
We all were different. But, he was, you know, he added to the difference.
My mother once said to me, "You know that friend of yours, the African prince."
So I said, "What friend of mine, the African Prince?"
"You know you have a friend who's an African Prince."
I said, "I don't have friend who's an African Prince.
I absolutely have never had a friend who's an African Prince."
"Yes, we met him at that party. He was wearing a turban." Andre.
To my mother, a black man dressed like that, he must be an African Prince.
There was probably a little bit of a fantasy of me.
Maybe I was like...
A black..., a black page, like in a Russian court.
But, I had something to say.
And I think the people who mattered, realized that.
For all those, you know, people who could look at him for who he was,
he so happened to have been of color, he so happened to have been
a big guy that was of color.
But he had a knowledge that
you could just... he could drop on you.
And then speak French fluently, being so tall,
and so lean, and you just wonder,
you know, where you... Who you... who are you? Where you come from?
People's heads went...
Just exploded, because he was so many things he wasn't supposed to be.
And they couldn't get around it.
He just was.
He was, you know, this African American from North Carolina.
Tall, beautiful guy.
When he was working at Interview,
he became part of the landscape of New York.
All of these photographs are people that shaped
the whole personality of...
New York society, then.
It's just amazing. I just... it just lived it.
I mean, I had those people on my walls, and then I was meeting the people.
My first big interview was with Karl Lagerfeld in May,
of 1975.
We all met at the Plaza Hotel,
for tea, in the living room, of Karl's suite.
I think he was impressed that I asked the right questions.
And then, at the end of the interview, Karl said to me,
Come into my room, could you see me in the bedroom, please?
And, I thought, uh, what is this, okay?
I went into the bedroom...
In the bedroom were these beautiful trunks from Goyard
and he was throwing things out of the trunks.
Crepe de chine shirts and crepe de chine scarves, custom made in... Paris.
He literally was throwing things, take this, take this... take this... take this.
And, um, I wore them. I wore them out.
So, he and I got on, like, fireworks,
from that first meeting.
Do you feel that you have some sort of superhuman energy
that gets you through all of these collections?
Yes, in a way, sometimes I have that feeling.
But, even my, my doctor tells me, he said I'm,
- I'm from another planet, I don't know. - So, naturale.
I thought myself very much down to earth,
but, seems to be different.
He's an innovator because he allows a spontaneity,
and a magic to come.
Accidents happened, and they became,
totally magic moments.
Have you had a great moment of creativity?
Or a great moment of excitement?
Once you have a moment every day, if one can possibly...
But doesn't happen everyday in New York now.
Moments should come to you every day.
You have to see the world through the kaleidoscope eyes of a child.
And just be in awe of everything.
This is my absentee ballot, look.
Oh, politics here we go.
My absentee ballot.
- Who's in there? - Uh, uh, uh, uh.
- You know who's, is in there. - The pride of his life, right now.
I'm excited that in 11 days...
Andre, will be free.
I will be free from that television.
Oh, my gosh.
I watched the marathon last Saturday,
Jaws, one, two and three.
How do you watch two and three?
- One was so great. - One... after two and three,
- more to watch. - They were good?
- It was important to watch to see how they sequelled it... - To see where it goes, okay.
By Jaws 3, the shark is so big,
they can swim inside the mouth of the jaw
and plant a bomb.
The man enters the mouth of the shark
and plants the detonating bomb and swims out.
At your dinner fantasy party of designers...
four guests at your party... dead or alive,
designers'
- dinner fantasy party. - But they would all be dead.
Okay, well that's fine.
- Four, which four? - Dead or alive?
Madame Grès, Chanel, Schiaparelli...
And two men, I'd have to be five, Balenciaga and Saint Laurent.
When you see Madame Grès clothes, oh.
Wolf trousers!
- Wh... What? - Wolf.
Wolf!
I've never seen those.
What?
- Wolf. This is an education. - Wolf!
The animal in the forest.
- Oh, my gosh. - Fur.
Sec...
- Yeah, so, uh... - Break my wrist
- No, I... - Oh...
- Did you ever meet, Madame Grès? - Of course, I did.
That's why I was such a success,
because I could speak the language. I can hold my own with them,
you know, I didn't say, bonjour.
- I said bonjour. - I said bonjour for four years.
Everyone knew that I became friends with Karl Lagerfeld.
So it was very exciting to me to be going to Paris
to be fashion editor for Women's Wear Daily.
The first night I was scared and I was alone.
When I stepped off the plane with 13 pieces of unmatched luggage,
I was frightened.
I didn't know what I was getting into.
I didn't think that I was all that and a bag of chips.
We have a saying in the black community down south,
you think you're all that and a bag of potato chips.
Well, I did not think I was a bag of potato chips, I was very insecure.
It was sort of like, they didn't want to accept me in Paris.
that Women's Wear, since it's black men.
But, yet they knew that I was talented and knowledgeable.
He was right at the center
and he was in Paris and he was the bureau chief,
which, really, was being in the eye of the storm.
Yves Saint Laurent, was the moment of fashion
He had two great muses,
Betty and Loulou, and I got to know both of them.
I introduced him to Saint Laurent,
which was very difficult because Saint Laurent is very private.
You know, we were, sort of... untouchable.
He was a master of cloth.
The fluid evening dresses, the sensuous draping of his clothes.
The drama of a great operatic collection,
inspired by the Russian czars, and Czarina's, the moguls.
The clothes just expressed a kind of inspiration,
that you would expect from a painter or a great filmmaker.
The first and most important thing, I had to write about was...
the Yves Saint Laurent collection in January of 1978.
When Mounia came down the runway to the tunes of Porgy and Bess,
with a silver lacquer straw boater
and a pale pink suit.
Yves Saint Laurent,
strutted, uh Broadway, City Lights, Bourbon Street and Big Time Jazz,
in a couture collection that is certain to be,
one of the most influential he has ever done.
Imagination, wit, zest, vitality and energy,
marked the show from start to finish.
"It was only a few weeks ago that I was driving home
and heard Porgy and Bess on the radio," said Yves.
"Then I realized, I had the answer.
For me, Porgy and Bess, is the epitome of the American spirit.
It is modern,
sexy, amusing and full of gaiety."
It was just amazing that he would listen
to Porgy and Bess, and interpret the sound.
Through Gershwin,
through the black women of the south,
the way my relatives went to church...
it just hit home.
He has a childlike quality
that appreciates things like this.
Because they reverberate.
From this little boy from the south,
and it's almost an unconscious,
"look at what I've become."
I just remember that, all of a sudden,
he was the king of Paris, he ruled Paris.
Beautiful 6-Ply cashmere,
utter luxury, total simplicity.
Double breasted cashmere, expensive sweater.
The tension of navy blue with the black sweater.
Navy blue skirt and black.
Do you know how sophisticated it is to marry
navy blue with black.
Most women, don't have the courage.
These are the kind of clothes that are investment clothes.
You can get a tax write off for all the clothes.
You could donate them to the Costume Institute.
You know, even rich people have a way of economizing these days.
You know, there's a lot of effort that goes into becoming,
Andre Leon Talley.
Hey, there he is... or no.
Andre had established himself as a great fashion persona,
in Paris.
I think the decision for most people at that point
in our lives... you know, become career oriented,
or, you know, fame oriented.
Okay, you all go down there and get me walking.
Just go towards the, the van and I'll just walk.
So, I mean, I think that when he was becoming
Andre Leon Talley...
a partner mattered less.
And I think that, he's not unlike many, many people that I know,
or you know.
You know, when, when they finally say,
now is the time I want to be in love...
The ship sometimes has passed.
Listen, I have no love life.
There's no such thing as a love life.
I've never had a love life.
I was busy, doing my career.
That is the flaw in my life that is there.
I never have fallen in love, or have never experienced love.
I wish that I could've found someone
to live with as Tom Ford has found someone to live with. Or,
I wish that I could've found someone to live with as...
my friend, George Malcolm has, who's been with someone for 40 years.
But I kept moving on, I kept loving the world, that I was in.
I love the world of Paris, I love the world of fashion,
I love the world of the runway.
I have certainly to have loved, my career.
But, as for falling in love, I don't know about that.
You have to have a curiosity and you have to like what you're doing.
And, of course, I love Paris. This is wonderful.
It's the mecca, of style.
Turkey, turkey, turkey!
Isabella, magnificent.
They're beautiful, aren't they?
- They look like bears. - Oh, my goodness!
- These pigs are beautiful. - Aren't they wonderful?
The black one is Boris and the red one is called Pepe.
- Hello, the chicken is amazing. - And, this chicken, she's beautiful.
I call her Andy Warhol because of the hair.
Oh!
He loves it!
Oh, wait. Pepe is a she.
No, that's his penis but it's inside.
But what are those little, little things?
- This, this... - The dots, what are those...
- little nipples? - Yes.
Well, also male have nipples, that is...
in science, it's one of the big questions,
- why do male have nipples. - Oh, why do the males have nipples.
Uh, yes.
How many covers did you have in Vogue, in the 80's?
Maybe five, six hundred?
- Yeah. - Six hundred?
I don't know since I... I had three in a row.
- September, October, November. - Oh well, wow, I remember.
- Amazing. - I was at Vogue in '83.
and you were already famous, you had all these covers.
But for me, photography, I mean, my hook to fashion...
was always image,
- in a way, you know. - Image. Yes, yes.
- And I love wearing clothes because it was part... - Yes.
- of the image, yeah. - Of the image. Yes, yes, yes.
- Yeah. A visual art. - Yes, yes.
When I got to Vogue, in '83,
it was under the leadership of Grace Mirabella.
I don't think Grace Mirabella, understood me at all.
To illustrate that feathers were in, in Saint Laurent couture,
I took this historical photo,
of a native African man, wearing feathers in his hair.
Miss Mirabella did not understand,
and she said, "What have I done to deserve this?"
It was, fear eats the soul...
And she was fearful of these feathers on this African man.
And she was not going to have it in her pages of Vogue.
And I went back to Anna Wintour's office and she said "Andre,
move on."
I wouldn't be where I am today, if it weren't for the support of Vogue and Anna Wintour.
I mean, I went there, Anna Wintour said, "Come with me."
What I recall is, not so much that I was his protector,
but that, to be totally candid, my fashion history is not so great,
and his was impeccable.
So, I think, I learned a lot from him.
Graphic, based on artists,
based on modern art, based on color.
Graphic, graphic. Big and bold.
John Galliano is the couturier.
And his sensibility is that of couturier.
This is a fragile poet,
and endangered species in the fashion world.
I've got wedding chapel ceremony reception.
Palace, Buckingham.
Fashion should have more
- joie de vivre. - But why don't we see it on the street?
But, darling, it depends what street you are walking on.
and going down, and at what time of day!
The people need mohair for the fireplace, darling.
I mean, there are ladies who just stoke the fire with their fabulous couture dresses.
You know, it's Christmas Eve when you got some lights and some fire, darling.
The yule log, darling. Please.
His bombastic personality and his passion
sweeping through the corridors, yelling Andreisms...
Saucy, saucy.
Saucy with style.
Gave people energy themselves and to take risks.
- Why you being so low key? - Don't know.
You know if Schiaparelli could do lobsters for the Duchess of Windsor,
huge, splashy orange lobsters in like 1939 or something,
Why shouldn't suddenly people be wearing huge roosters, on evening clothes
Why not?
This is a look. Oh, this is a look!
John, took a section in the couture
and it was, you know, Eskimos were treated like the aristocrats
and the aristocrats were treated like the serfs.
An aristocrat could be turned into an Eskimo aristocrat.
Shooing away people from him when he's at the... in the tents,
when we would go to the fashion shows,
if I met up with him, he just was so overwhelmed
by what was... how it had changed.
Andre walks that line
between, you know, the glamour and the excitement and he's also bigger than life.
- Ugly? - No.
- Is ugly kind of a... - Not at all.
It's a word not to use in your vocabulary. Hi darling.
But, for him this was something that was... he lived for.
There are moments in fashion shows when I cry.
I can see the most beautiful, beautiful shows of...
uh, Marc Jacobs, when he had that French locomotive
that big, amazing locomotive.
I can listen to music and see the dresses coming.
It was just a great moment for Americans, in Paris.
I can see, uh, the most beautiful collections of Chanel,
in the Ritz Hotel.
There were two shows and the girls would come in my room and sleep.
Kate Moss, Shalom and Naomi, would take naps.
Oh, Naomi was fabulous.
What makes up Andre and all that goes on in his head,
that imagination and the passion,
is that first-hand primitive connection.
He sat in those shows and looked through his eyes
and felt the music, the models, the way they moved.
- Hi. - You all were fabulous. A big kiss. You were brilliant.
It's about the lifestyle, it's about the love.
You were fabulous!
And it came through in the pages of Vogue.
At the time,
a page edited by Andre,
was like, what a printed image in a magazine should be,
and more than that.
He did embellish... the unreality.
That is what magazines should do,
transport you some... move you.
- Welcome to the archive. - Hi, Tonne.
Hi, Tonne.
Isn't this great? Did you know this existed.
- The archive, I did. - Mm-hmm.
- Andre, - ANDRE: Mm-hmm.
Do you remember this one? Cindy, without the helmet,
- we were just blowing that up. - Oh.
One of my favorite shoots was with Cindy Crawford.
We made her a rich widow, going to bury her husband,
and then she went to the funeral in a bathing suit.
She's walking through Monte Carlo,
she's got this big black veil.
And, a woman in a veil is a very special thing.
Jackie Kennedy in a veil.
The veil of Sisi, the empress of Austria.
And not only funeral veils, but veils as in Luchino Visconti.
Luchino Visconti, he put women in veils, everywhere.
I mean, a veil is a very romantic device,
to convey a kind of elegance, that is no longer with us.
Look at that. I forget that photograph, actually. Amazing.
And this is... that's why she's being made up and he snaps,
and look what it becomes, part of the story.
- That's a great story. - Mm-hmm. Amazing.
You have to have a diet of beauty,
you have to hydrate yourself with beauty
and luxury and style, whatever that is,
that makes a difference.
Scarlet 'N The Hood, was a shoot that I did for Vanity Fair.
It's a spoof on Gone with the Wind.
The blacks are the aristocrats and the... the white people would be the servants.
And, Naomi Campbell became Scarlet O'Hara in the most expensive Chanel dress.
John Galliano became a servant in the house,
and Manolo Blahnik was a gardener.
Andre is very good at putting fashion in a, more of a cultural context.
I mean, I think, only an African American man
could've pulled something together like this.
And only somebody like Andre, could've executed it.
Just seeing those photos,
he is making such a statement
about the value of black life.
And about the way black life has been demeaned, historically.
It is an affirmation that God is going to turn it around.
And that's a message that only comes from the black church.
Hello, testing one, two, three. Talking to the mic.
Hello? Yes. Testing.
Thank you. Cut it off.
Andre is...
a man... he's like a black superhero.
You know?
He's fashion, he's elegance. He's intellectual, he's loving.
So please join me in welcoming, Andre Leon Talley.
How does it feel to be someone that's seen as larger than life?
I mean physically, first of all,
- and who you are. - Well, it's...
You walk in a room, there's no one going to say,
is that Sam Jackson?
I think it was the first time they'd ever seen a black man in Paris,
at the fashion shows,
in a position of importance and of influence.
You were not on TV
- screaming, - ANDRE: No.
- injustice, injustice. - No, no, no.
Why do you think that was the best strategy?
Oh, it's just the best strategy because that's the world I moved in.
It was a very sophisticated, structured world.
And those were, kind of, the attitudes imposed upon me.
You didn't just go screaming, you know, after all it was Vogue darling.
Vogue has a certain kind of level of standards.
Vogue!
Just the very word, you say Vogue, you gotta act...
you gotta stand up, honey.
- Vogue! - Yes.
It's musical, isn't it? Vogue!
Yeah.
I think Andre Talley has been...
one of the pioneers.
He helped break down a lot of walls, and I hope he gets the credit for that.
- Just wanna shake your hand. Love you. - Hi, lovely.
He knew that the fashion business,
was not necessarily, acknowledging African Americans in it.
I thought it was just this moment when I saw you, you're just an inspiration...
He was like, the black Rockette,
you know what I mean?
So it's like, person, person, person, person, what?
Person, person, person, person. He's the what.
I think his life and time at Vogue, and his seat
in the front row was super important
in how he saw himself in the...
African American world and what he represented to them.
You don't make a loud noise, you don't scream,
you don't get up and say, "Look, hey, I'm... loud,
I'm black and I'm proud", you just do it.
And then, it's recognized.
And somehow, it impacts the culture.
Now, we know him as Andre Leon Talley.
But, I see the real man. I see the real... struggle.
I think that Andre had some ambivalence about...
talking about race.
He would, you know, write me long-hand letters about...
his experiences to do with race.
But, obviously, it was always...
bubbling, I think, under the... under the surface.
People have said many bad things about me.
A... uh, a former editor at Women's Wear Daily, and I will not mention his name
because I respect him enough, he's still alive.
But one of these great editors at Women's Wear Daily says,
"You've been in and out of every designer bed in Paris."
This is when I was working in Paris for Women's Wear Daily.
And that hit me at home, so hard, it was so brutal,
that I... that someone thought that I had been in and out
of every designer bed in Paris. So what were they calling me? A whore.
And someone also accused me, that you must've slept with Mrs. Vreeland.
Because, a black man couldn't have been that close to Mrs. Vreeland
without having had an affair with her.
And the person is someone that I love and I thought...
"I'm just gonna let you say that and I'm gonna just let this ride
because this is really ignorant and it really is hurtful."
Whether you're serious about it or not,
I didn't even qualify or quantify the statement, I just let it... ride over me.
But this is because people think that you're stereotyped.
If the person says you... you've slept in and out of every bed,
it's like, you're some black, uh... black, uh, what do call 'em?
Black buck, you know, you're some black buck,
sleeping around with people.
You're getting all this information,
you're getting access to all these great designers
because you're a black buck or something.
You can't be close to Mrs. Vreeland
because you must have gone to bed, how offensive, how rude and how,
absolutely incredible someone would have that thought.
I came from the segregated south,
I had to be well aware of the things between black and white.
So when a man said I was a... sleeping in and out of beds at Vogue, the...
Was I a black buck?
No, I was not a black buck.
So, that was like, a stereotype about slaves, you know.
It was like, oh, but then they must be,
attractive sexually or something, it was just ugly and dirty.
So, you know, although I am from the south
and I really realized
that we had made advances by the time I got to Vogue,
there were still some moments like that.
They used to call me, Queen Kong.
A woman in Saint Laurent, who used to call me Queen Kong.
I was like an ape.
King Kong, Queen Kong.
They were saying I was a gay ape Queen Kong.
And, that went on... and I knew this
from very close friends.
I never confronted her because, these things I...
internalized and kept them bottled up.
And, uh...
Do you know how much I wish my grandmother had been alive,
to have seen this? My grandmother was dead.
People always say, "How do you do it?
How have you put up with this world for so long?"
I say, "Through my faith and my ancestors", you know.
They put up with slavery for so long.
Lynching.
Voter suppression.
Beatings.
When you see these things when I was growing up,
when you're seeing these pictures on the television, they were amazing to me.
Dogs being let out on people.
Fire hoses, white cops, kicking women...
it all impacted me too.
But I had to move on, I had to get on with my career.
There are five days left.
Trump has had the momentum for the past week.
I still think it's a two point race,
maybe a three point race.
But, another five days of momentum,
anything's possible.
- Hey, babe. - Hi!
So... so what's going on, Andre?
I just... here take this,
I have to wait until Tuesday and I just don't know how I can wait.
I'm waiting for the outcome, it's just so nerve-wracking.
Well are you... so you'll be there at 6:00 a.m.?
No, I... I voted in North Carolina, already...
- I did an absentee ballot. - Oh, yes! Yes, yes, yes. Which is a state that needs it.
Yes, in a need. But I... I will not be up at 6:00 a.m. following the news.
But I will hope to track it one way or the other.
I just don't know how I'm gonna get through the weekend and Monday and Sunday...
What if the absolute worst happens?
Well, we'll... we'll...
I'll be out of... out of communication.
You'll... it'll be weeks before you can reach me.
It'll be weeks, absolute weeks.
- Here, try that on. - I like that.
Hoo-hoo! Coo-coo! Cocoon!
- This is gorgeous. - This is...
I love that on you.
- Going to class at Yale, this is the coat, darling. - Come on, this coat.
I cannot do that coat in black, that is ridiculous.
You better do it in plaid...
It has to be. Look at that color on her.
This is gorgeous. Look at her with the bag.
Tell me anything.
- Isn't it fabulous? - It's fabulous.
- I'd say it's fabulous. - Oh, my God. You might have to just leave with that coat.
How long is the rental?
Um, I have no idea. We'll discuss that.
But um because...
- We have... actually... - I want, I want this. I don't want to rent this.
- She wants to buy it. - I want to buy this.
Ooh!
But she's got to wear this out today.
- Whoosh! - And into class next week.
'cause this is all... it's all about Yale.
- Work. - It's all to the deal. It's time to cross the campus
- in this coat. - Whoosh.
- I said so, "Whoosh..." - Across the green.
- Uh-huh.
- Woosh. With a pair of Manolos. - Yes.
- That coat is amazing, Andre. - Yeah now...
- Brother, Andre, this coat is... - Love it, this one...
Oh! Break the furniture.
Hillary Clinton is set to cast her vote
in her hometown of Chappaqua, New York, today.
How confident is Team Clinton, heading into election day?
Hello, darling?
You're just in time.
I'm so worried about the elections, it's...
- I've gotten physically ill. - Oh, oh no. You'll... it'll be fine.
- It'll be fine. - It's gonna be fine.
I just had my friend's guru in Pakistan,
- said y'all can start... you can pop the champagne now. - It's gonna be okay?
- It's gonna be okay, definitely. - Yeah.
- Yvonne, I love those. - Yeah.
You should've went for the red suede though.
- I was thinking about that but... - Red suede.
Oh. Oh, yeah.
I prefer those to the gold.
- All right, Andre. - All right.
- You have talked me into all these shoes. - Plus, the damage is done.
The candy store, that's what I call this place.
I will need those for the inauguration.
Oh, yeah, you need... gonna need them and you're gonna need them too.
You'll be in the VIP section but I can tell you, you still gotta walk a long way.
Because I was in the Rotunda for Barack Obama with Diane von Furstenberg.
And we had to walk from miles away.
I know, and it's horrible. and if it's cold.
Have a great time tonight, please.
And please say to Mrs. Clinton for me
that we... if I may offend, if she needs any help with her dress,
- that I'd be happy to help her with her dress. - I will.
- I'll tell her that. - I'll be happy.
- You and me, both. - And tell Chelsea.
- Alright. Bye! - Bye, Yvonne.
Break a leg tonight.
Oh, get... oh! Get her... get her in that fabulous outfit.
What a night. This morning, NBC news projects,
Donald Trump,
the President-elect of the United States.
At this hour, Trump has 278 electoral votes,
to Hilary Clinton's 218.
You guys want some juice or anything? Coffee?
Thank you.
What should I say?
I'm just here to share my thoughts
on... on the great style of the First... of the new First Lady.
And I hope that...
I know that some of you will love it,
and many of you will hate it.
And therefore, I will have, further exiled myself
into a style gulag, until the next moment comes along.
Are you using Russian metaphors, intentionally?
Look how beautiful, look at the gloves, look at everything.
- It's perfection. - Gorgeous.
The elegance is in her gloves and her shoes.
The more you take away, the more elegant you are,
which is really what's she's done.
Beautiful, beautiful!
- Yes. - Okay, what do you wanna say?
"Melania, has made it an art of stiletto glide.
And she's walking with royal confidence."
- And that's perfect. - Now, I'm gonna be killed,
- then I'm gonna get hate mail. - That's perfect.
Now, do you wanna say "I'm gonna get killed"?
- I like that. - Yeah, Yeah, Yeah.
I'm gonna be killed, I'm gonna be the... my...
Twitter, email and Instagram and my phone,
will never stop ringing.
Do you wanna say, why?
Because I like the way Melania Trump is dressed,
this day.
Any thoughts about Trump? What Trump's wearing?
No, I only have been talking about Melania Trump here.
Here it goes.
"I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear..."
Oh, my Gosh. You must be...
"That I will faithfully execute..."
"The office of President of the United States,
and will to the best of my ability..."
"And will to the best of my ability..."
"Preserve, protect and defend..."
"The Constitution of the United States..."
- "So help me, God." - "So help me, God."
2009, uh, when Obama became President,
he wrote to me. "I was so moved
to see the sea of 2 million people.
Nancy Pelosi got me great, I mean, great seats,
right behind the stage.
And he walked out.
And this is a man who is a great man.
A man full of love, fearlessness and a scholar.
He will be our Abe Lincoln,
and not just in the gestures of the Abe Lincoln Bible.
I was so moved, a jolt, a surge of something went through me,
when he was finally sworn in, which was such a long trip
to get there."
I think the most important thing
at a certain age is that you sit back and you think,
seriously, how you achieved a certain amount of success in your life.
And you must always look back
on the place from whence you came.
To go down Mt Sinai road and to see the beautiful trees,
to see the quiet dignity in the country,
where I used to go pick blackberries with my grandmother.
Just, just wonderful memories of my childhood,
of being at that church, on that ground, in that yard.
So you used to kill more snakes in the cemetery?
Yeah.
My brother had dug 'em up, you know, on the bulldozer.
- I... - Big beds of 'em,
you know, they'd be tangled up, you know, all wrapped up.
Oh, my goodness.
I was baptized in the baptismal pool.
And I was very afraid of the snakes.
Whoo!
People used to tell me stories,
of how, there would be black snakes,
that would fall sleep in the trees and fall out of the tree.
So, when you hear these stories as a child, you'll... you'll fear the snakes.
So, where was the water coming in from?
Right down through that stream.
The stream... the... that was all concrete...
- Yeah. Uh-huh. - And there was steps?
Whoo! That's a lot of history.
Now having had this sort of neurotic fear of snakes,
I'm not adverse to wearing snake skin
of any quality.
I always think you have to just...
keep cultivating your own garden.
And I hope, I'm not a dry well, yet.
- What's that? - It's germ oats.
Be right back with your utensils.
Thank you, so much.
This is so boring.
Elizabeth, hi. It's Mr. Talley, how are you?
I'm doing well, and yourself?
I'm sorry for calling your room but I'm waiting
for some information you were supposed to give me two days ago.
The calorie... the calories in a biscuit.
Oh, 550.
What?
550 calories, I will never eat another biscuit again.
All right.
- You've lost weight really well. - Yes, yes.
- Um-hm. - Thirty-one pounds.
I could have lost more, if I'd not eaten a biscuit.
- Oh, don't... - Shh, don't beat myself up.
And I must say, I... I knew that the biscuit was perhaps
a... sort of a sin but, it was overly big.
And it is like a rococo cake.
A piece of... It was like a rococo cake.
It was a puffy biscuit.
From time to time, you also have to give in to food, but...
- Yes, you love. Yeah, yeah. - That you love, like a biscuit.
- Yes, the biscuit, yes. - Right, the biscuit.
The biscuit is linked to, um...
- My childhood. Yes. - Your... your grandmother and your child...
And uh, childhood. She loved cooking.
- Oh, it was fabulous. - Uh-huh.
So what... what else did your mom...
- your grandmother prepare? - Cakes.
- Cakes. Every kind of cake. - Cakes.
Lemon cake, chocolate cake, coconut cake, pound cake,
fruit cakes for Christmas, and sweet potato pies.
Oh, okay.
This is my grandmother's house. I bought it in 1988.
This is the living room of the house,
where, actually, nobody sits in, anytime,
except on formal occasions, then I... it's an homage to Diana Vreeland.
And actually, the red carpet was chosen trying
to match the red carpet in her apartment,
where I spent many wonderful hours.
I tried to create a room that was somewhat an homage to Diana Vreeland,
and yet, my grandmother could sit in the room and say it was hers.
And, uh, this room is exactly as it was,
when my grandmother moved in and I've not changed it.
She died from leukemia... uh, in the blood.
But she'd never been sick for a day in her life.
So, she lived here for six months.
I miss her. I miss her. She took very good care of me.
So therefore I'm the person I am because of my grandmother.
And I said... I would say I miss her almost every day.
It's bittersweet to be in this house.
It was a sunny day.
But it was so cold outside.
As I had been stranded in Memphis,
I was unexpectedly drawn on this day.
To the now, infamous, Lorraine Motel,
where the reverend, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr,
just a few years older than I am today,
would draw his last breaths.
Having been shot down, like a dog,
as he stood on the balcony.
We've got some difficult days, ahead.
The text tells us,
that where there are curses, there are also blessings.
Where there is death, there is also life.
Where there is adversity, there is also prosperity.
Telling us to keep on, keeping on.
Telling us to keep hope alive.
Telling us to march together, children,
and don't you get weary. Telling us,
to sing together, children, and don't you get weary.
Pray together children, and don't you get weary.
Dance together, children.
Strategize together, children, and don't you get weary. Why?
You were extraordinary, Eboni I'm...
I was sitting there, holding myself.
And, you know, I thought of my grandmother.
Because she... she nurtured me
and I... I came from this very humble beginning in Durham,
- and then I went to New York. - Mm-hmm.
You were speaking to my grandmother
was a domestic maid on the west campus.
- Where we were. - She went every week,
five days a week,
at seven in the morning,
to Duke's west campus to be a maid...
- Mm-hmm. - in the boy's dormitory.
When I think of that...
- Mmm. - it's so powerful.
But, you know, I've lived such an extraordinary life coming
from the black south, that this comes from your grace.
This is you. This is the inner you.
This is who you are.
It's your destiny.
We're here at the Dorsey Hotel,
waiting for the departure of Terry Maglier...
leaving New York, going back to Paris.
His career, allowed him to say "I showed you...
That my dream did come true.
I showed you, I can be what I said I want to be."
I love the boots, I love the belt.
But the most important thing I love, is that it's black.
Black is the new red.
Black is back.
It was like magical. I guess if you look back over the years,
it's magical. I'm sure to Andre it doesn't seem magical
because it's so much work to getting to where you wanna be
in life, but...
He got there.
Is fashion art?
No, No. Absolutely not.
Is fashion art? No!
Fashion is hard work, gritty, it's not glamorous...
It's rough, the Chiffon trenches. It's rough.
I make it look effortless, sitting on the front row, all those years,
with the attitude, the sable coat,
the Prada crocodile coats,
the Prada French coats but...
it has been rough.
I couldn't believe you asked me last night,
what is that in your bag, like I took drugs.
- I've got a 72 karat ring, like, - Let me see.
- how many karats are yours? - I don't know.
He's not all about the sequins and the embroidery,
and the glitz.
Under it all, is a very fine,
cashmere pure,
cashmere heart.
The way he dressed,
the way he would present himself, you know, the capes
and the kaftans and the... the gold, and the red, and the jewelry.
I always looked on it as Andre...
putting on his armor to present himself to the world.
- We might have to give a nod to the godfather. - Oh my God.
Look at you.
Had to give a nod to the godfather.
But you're giving us futuristic
James Brown moment on the shoulders.
- See if I can reach. - You can reach me, of course you can.
- Ooh, you smell so good. - Thank you.
How did you get in to it?
Did they have a... a diagram?
Don't you see like 1940...
- Look. - Nineteen... Oh...
I know.
- Andre! - Bootylicious.
I know, bootylicious.
- All right, bring out the something. - Uh...
Oh!
All right, now do the... do the reveal.
Oh!
Michael Lee spent all weekend making that.
- It's your Golden Girls. - Oh, it's fabulous. Thank you, Wendy!
Thank you so much for being here.
- It's my friend, Andre Leon Talley, - Oh!
- everybody. - I will wear it every day, thank you.
Just a box of lumps...
and paper, paper, paper.
Love the leather, or it could be...
a metro-sexual gym case.
Or...
it's a... it is a picnic set, portable.
Beautiful.
Andre Leon Talley is a member of our church.
He listens carefully to the sermons.
I don't know if he can sing or not. I have to watch him
- more closely. - I cannot sing.
That's Mrs. Vreeland, my mentor.
Oh, she's platinum honor.
I'm platinum so you know that's major money,
but I am very proud of that.
I'm 68...
but some days I feel like I'm 115.
And other days I feel like I'm 32, but depends on who I see and meet.
But the most important thing is um...
just coming home and being in this beautiful garden,
seeing these beautiful trees, and just looking at this beautiful nature,
and seeing two rabbits who just use this property as their home.
The deer I don't like, but the rabbits, they... it's their home.
The skunks and their uh...
raccoons, no.
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