In an early scene from “The Gospel According to André,” the star of the documentary sits on the porch of his home in White Plains, N.Y., with a hat perched jauntily on his head as he surveys a team of tree trimmers. André Leon Talley has spent a lifetime in fashion — reporting on it, critiquing it, admiring it and wearing it. But in that moment he looks less like a fashion grandee and more like a Southern gentleman overseeing his acreage — a man just home from Sunday service who would politely nod and tip his hat at any neighbor who happened past.
Talley is a tall (6’6″) stately African American man. He is a Southerner. And he’s a churchgoer. More than anything else, these are the things that have shaped the way he has moved through life. They influence the way he judges beauty and prioritizes grace. They fueled the ambition that put him so close to the summit of the fashion mountaintop — that peak from which the great editors in chief rule. And they explain why he didn’t reach it.
The clothes, he has always said, are armor: He used them to “navigate through these chiffon trenches,” he said in a recent interview. “Fashion is a cruel world. The clothes I put on are very deliberate.”
The film, which premiered last summerat the Toronto Film Festival, was directed by Kate Novack, who said, “André has been an unmissable fixture in the front row of fashion for as long as I can remember, but the story of how he got there has never really been told in an intimate way”.
The documentary features exclusive interviews with Anna Wintour, Tom Ford, Marc Jacobs, Valentino Garavani, Diane von Furstenberg, Manolo Blahnik, Fran Lebowitz, Whoopi Goldberg, Tamron Hall and Isabella Rossellini, among others — as well as archival footage from the 67-year-old’s storied career, which began with his involvement with Andy Warhol’s Factory in the 1970s and WWD, where Talley worked from 1975 to 1980.
To watch trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzZkVGCY5rY
A great account is Vanessa Friedman’s article in the New York Times: