Business mogul and supermodel Kimora Lee Simmons opened up to EBONY’s Marjon Carlos about her longtime friendship with fashion icon André Leon Talley.
Talley, who made waves across the fashion industry as Vogue’s former creative director, passed away last month. He had been hospitalized after being struck down by an unspecified illness.
Simmons holds her memories with Talley close to her heart.
“There were a few [Black people in fashion], like Patrick Kelly, but André is one of the very few. And coming from the Deep South and just living in that time, and being able to stand on his own two feet and ascend to all the greatness he did… I realized that he’s kind of like a godfather [to me]. We’re like family.”
Talley first joined Vogue in 1983 as the magazine’s fashion news director. He was soon promoted to magazine’s creative director and held the position from 1987 to 1995. Talley left Vogue in 1995 to return to W Magazine in Paris. He would return to Vogue three years later full-time as editor-at-large until his final departure from the magazine in 2013.
“My’ godfather’ was friends with Andy Warhol and [Jean-Michel] Basquiat, so when I’m telling you the very essence of culture, that is him no matter how you slice that pie. It doesn’t matter what kind of culture. He’s always going to be there, from hip-hop to classical; art to architecture,” Simmons mused.
“He lived at the intersection of music, fashion and media–including hip-hop culture. All of your favorite hip hop glitterati sought him out as a conduit between urban culture and stylists, editors, and designers. That was one of his great gifts—cross-pollination.”
In 2020, Talley released memoir, “The Chiffon Trenches,” which is a “candid look at the who’s who of the last fifty years of fashion, and proof that fact is always fascinatingly more devilish than fiction.”
During its first week, “The Chiffon Trenches: A Memoir” reached number one on Amazon’s fashion best-sellers chart. The hardcover version had sold out.
“Fashion owes him a lot. He was one of the only Black people at Vogue forever. One of the only. To me, he is like Anna Wintour. To me, he is alongside Karl Lagerfeld or Yves Saint Laurent. He’s not necessarily a designer, but he’s a creative.”
