suits, but it had to be church appropriate. After all, where was I going in the suit but to church?
One Easter, my mother came home to Durham wearing a pale blue Fragonard suit in wool. I asked her where she got the beautiful Sunday suit, and she said, “It’s not a Sunday suit, it’s a walking suit.”
That was the moment I knew my mother had good taste. She was informed by New York manufacturers and instinctively knew good, simple lines in clothes. This suit, I realize now, relates to Diana Vreeland’s creed: “Elegance is refusal.”
My mother loved clothes, though I am not sure that she ever fully loved me.
—
Few survived the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, including the love of Karl’s life, Jacques de Bascher.
When Jacques got sick, he became impossible to be around, a dreadful person. The last time I saw him was backstage at one of Karl’s shows and he was unimaginably ugly toward me, hurling insults. As he spewed out hatred, I just walked away quietly. It wasn’t personal; clearly he wasn’t in his right mind. I knew in that moment he was sick.
He didn’t look sick, but there had been rumors. That was the last time I ever saw him, but that wasn’t the real Jacques. He was in pain and lashing out. It wasn’t just me; he was pushing away everyone he knew and all of Karl’s close friends, including Anna Piaggi.
Karl visited Jacques in the hospital every single day. Princess Diane de Beauvau-Craon, a friend of Jacques’s, would go with him most days. She was like a soul mate to Karl and stayed by his side at this most crucial moment of loss, the demise of Jacques de Bascher.
Jacques died two weeks after Diana Vreeland’s passing. Karl never discussed Jacques’s illness with me, nor his death. Not once. There was no funeral, just a small service with Karl, Diane de Beauvau-Craon, and Jacques’s mother. No one else was present. According to Diane, Karl fainted when he saw Jacques in his coffin. Jacques’s ashes were divided; half went to his mother, the other half went to Karl’s château in Brittany, where they were kept in a private chapel.
That year, Karl invited me to spend Christmas and subsequently two weeks in January at his country house in Le Mée-sur-Seine, twenty minutes outside of Paris (he later gave the house to Princess Caroline of Monaco). I figured Karl would be grieving, and since I myself was still grieving my grandmother, and Diana Vreeland, we could mourn together.
“Come to Le Mée-sur-Seine, stay as long as you want, ” Karl wrote to me.
On Christmas Eve, he sent me by Concorde to Paris. After church, with all my Louis Vuitton luggage packed, I arrived at the Air France terminal in New York. I simply said, “I’m André Leon Talley,” and they handed me my ticket. When I landed in Paris, Karl’s personal driver/bodyguard, Briam, met me and drove me straight to the country manor, in Le Mée-sur-Seine.
Just after midnight I arrived, and Karl was up waiting for me. Laure de Beauvau-Craon, stepmother to Princess Diane, was also present, as well as Eric Wright, Karl’s longtime assistant. Before turning in for the night, everyone opened their Christmas gifts. I had none for Karl, as was his wish. It was impossible to give him anything— maybe a book, but he had access to all the books from the great Paris bookstore Galignani on rue de Rivoli. Karl gave me a small paper cone, populated with German images of Christmas elves. Inside the cone, nestled in tissue paper, was a Fabergé pin, the initials “ALT” written out in fine cursory lettering and mounted in pale blue opal, framed in diamonds. Stunning!
The Le Mée house was big enough that each of us had our own en suite rooms, beautifully appointed beds, fine linen bath towels from Porthault, and flowers driven in from Karl’s favorite Parisian florist, Moulié-Savart. All the furnishings were fine French antiques, with huge early twentieth-century pale peach lampshades, typical of German houses. They reminded Karl of his childhood in Germany, where he was surrounded by many of the same type of fine furnishings. Every bedroom had wonderful views, and the thick walls kept sound from traveling room to room.
Breakfast was always in bed. Lunch and dinner were impromptu and totally dependent on Karl’s work schedule. He had an atelier in a separate building above the garage, which was off-limits to the rest of us. In any house he was in, you did not go in Karl’s work studio. If you saw his drawing equipment, you saw it because he allowed you to see it, and he stood there with you. He was not to be disturbed when he was drawing.
Even on vacation Karl still worked on his couture collection every day. He’d go to town and buy some newspapers, play with his little terrier, and then close himself off, put on music, and draw his collections. We dressed for dinner, Karl always in his stiff Victorian collars and white shirts and ties, while I wore ties and sweaters in the Tyrolean style, bought at Comme des Garçons. Laure de Beauvau-Craon dressed in Chanel, of course. We would wait for him before we had our meals, according to his wishes. Each meal was sumptuous and served in beautiful porcelains.
During those two weeks, I only saw Karl at formal occasions, lunch, and dinner. Not once did he mention Jacques’s illness or death, or the death of my grandmother, or of Mrs. Vreeland. Any idea I had of our mourning together was quickly destroyed. And now that I thought about it, Karl had never once asked me about my grandmother, in her sickness or in death. Karl never allowed any looking back. He abhorred subjects of personal loss. I never saw Karl cry, or grieve, or in a state of mourning, for anyone.
That doesn’t mean Karl wasn’t silently mourning. For although he was with us in body, he seemed far away. It was hard to tell, since he was always wearing sunglasses.
The rest of us had to carry on and sing for our supper. Laure de Beauvau-Craon and I were on high alert, trying to amuse him the best we could. Every meal was a conversation on his various favorite subjects: literature, art, music. Karl was the kind of person you didn’t take for granted. You had to be on your toes when you went to see him, and dressed to the nines whenever he saw you, and you could not let him see you wearing the same thing twice, even on the same day.
As I planned to stay with Karl at Le Mée for more than a fortnight, Anna Wintour decided I could do shoots for Vogue while I was there. I organized a shoot featuring Laure de Beauvau-Craon’s step-daughter, Princess Diane de Beauvau-Craon, Jacques’s friend, on the lawn, in Chanel couture.
Immediately after the issue with the story hit newsstands, Karl had Briam remove all of the de Beauvau-Craons’ personal belongings from the house and deposit them with their apartment concierge in Paris. He never spoke to them again. No explanation given.
Maybe Princess Diane reminded him too much of Jacques. But to pack her bags? It was ghastly.
The following March, Roy Halston Frowick, the king of fine American fashion and custom, also died of AIDS, at the age of fifty-seven. Halston spent his last months in California, being driven in his Rolls-Royce up and down the Pacific Palisades between Santa Barbara and Los Angeles.
Soon after, Victor Hugo died of AIDS as well, penniless, long removed from Halston’s Paul Rudolph townhouse.
What if Halston had lived to be my age, or older? His talent was equal to that of Saint Laurent or Hubert de Givenchy. The sheer minimalist elegance of his cashmere twinsets that extended to the floor, worn by Jackie O and Lauren Bacall, were the last word in fashion.
During this terrifying time, my sexual repression saved my life. Fran Lebowitz called me a “nun” and she wasn’t that far off. Despite all the sex and drugs going on around me, I rarely ever partook. Part of it was fear. I didn’t trust people. Perhaps due to the whole situation with Michael Coady and Pierre Bergé, I worried that if I even thought about sleeping with someone I was inviting gossip into my life. And in my experience, gossip was detrimental to my employment.
Really though, I was too uptight to have a lover. I had internalized my childhood abuse and was too afraid now to have a relationship. I put love in the back of my mind.
Instead, I continued to focus on my career and never even considered the need for a separate social life until it was too late to reall
y have one. My friends were my work friends, Betty Catroux, Loulou de la Falaise, and Karl. My social life was attending fittings with São Schlumberger. I thought myself so clever then.
Sex was not on my radar. Success was. And if I felt sad, I would eat. If that didn’t work, I would keep eating until it did. I claim it! Yes: I claim it! For all the pain I must endure in the absence of love, binge eating is mine.
VIII
There was so much death in the air back then. Internally, I felt like I was beginning to spiral out of control. And perhaps Anna Wintour could tell. Early in 1990, she asked me if I’d like to get out of New York, and live and report for Vogue out of the Paris office on boulevard Saint-Germain for a few years. It was a generous offer, one that truly speaks to the grace and love in Anna’s heart. She didn’t respond to my loss like a boss would. There was no “nuclear Wintour,” as the tabloids called her. She responded as a caring friend.
I of course said yes.
Everything was arranged by American Vogue’s Paris bureau chief at the time, Susan Train, a Colonial Dames member, who went to Paris in 1951 and became the toast of the town. She had been Diana Vreeland’s favorite American-born fashion editor, and because of that, she had been unofficially exiled by Grace Mirabella. Susan was also loved by S. I. Newhouse and his wife, Victoria, so Grace had never “technically” fired her.
In my early days at Vogue, Mrs. Vreeland called and asked me to dinner to discuss “the Susan Train crisis.” She was very worried about Susan’s health, because her entire life was Vogue. Never married, no children, nothing except a petite pair of cognac-colored dachshunds, called Nicely and Gogo.
“Take an appointment with Susan when you go to Paris to cover the collections,”
Mrs. Vreeland said.
Over the years, Mrs. Vreeland would keep the friendship fueled with personal requests, like taking her exquisite needlepoint cushions and tasking Susan Train with finding the best needlepoint restorer in Paris. I was glad I took the time. Susan made sure my move to Paris was as seamless as possible. As soon as I was settled, Susan invited me to her flat for my first dinner back in Paris.
She gave me a tour of her apartment and told me about being the darling of Paris in the 1950s. In her bedroom, in pride of place over her convent-style décor, she had hung the famous René Gruau drawing of her in a Wedgwood-blue Balenciaga suit and pillbox hat with long white gloves.
We talked about the greatness of Diana Vreeland and how hard it was to lose her.
“Do you know what Grace Mirabella said to me when she took over? She called me on the phone and said, ‘Susan, take it easy now, relax.’ ” Typical Grace, always beating around the bush.
Susan was fascinating for her knowledge and her American style; she wore elegant, simple clothes, beautiful scarves, trousers, and the same uniform of sensible low-heeled shoes. She summed up the impact of Saint Laurent in these words: “We were wearing pants. We found ourselves with long skirts with boots. While remaining invisible, he had his finger on the pulse of the time. He seemed to know what we wanted before we realized it. He put everything into place.”
Susan Train never really truly retired, and was made a member of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for her brilliant book on haute couture fashioned on dolls during World War II. David Seidner did the photography.
“André, these young fashion editors today know nothing. They don’t even know the basics, like what is a martingale tab on the back of a Balenciaga coat!” she would say.
Her frustration was palpable.
There were intervals of frisson, when she overpoliced my expenses. This was Condé Nast! This was Vogue! My apartment on the boulevard de la Tour-Maubourg, which had a view of Les Invalides, where Napoléon is entombed, was paid for by the company. The television was rented by the company. Restaurant accounts were paid for, as long as one kept receipts. I had a full-time assistant, Cyril, who was also my full-time driver.
I was suddenly using Lagerfeld’s costly and very rewarding hand-wash laundry service, housed in a cul-de-sac on the Right Bank. My sheets, shirts, everything was dry-cleaned, and it was all expensed and submitted to the Paris office, and I imagine shipped off to New York. My life was cushioned to the hilt.
I developed a great friendship with Miuccia Prada and Tom Ford. Some weekends I’d spend with Gianni Versace and his partner, Antonio d’Amico, at Lake Como, whiling away all day in our dressing gowns and bingeing on movies long into the evening, when we had a light supper and then continued to binge on old black and white Hollywood films.
—
Working for Vogue as the Paris editor was a serious job. Anna sent me there not only because she thought I was in need of a change, having just gone through the loss of my grandmother and Mrs. Vreeland, but because she believed in my abilities and my taste. I scouted locations for important stories, was an ambassador to the major houses and the European titans, and had the privilege to explore and discover emerging fashion trends. I couldn’t believe I was in Paris, again, living at the epicenter of style and fashion, seeing Karl almost on a daily basis: having dinner and going on his daily rounds to his favorite bookstore, and then on to Café de Flore for some cheese and boiled frankfurters, and a salad. Of course, the job came with great duties.
Anna would send me direct, specific assignments, often aligned to something Karl was doing. “André, we’re going to be doing a profile on Karl, we’re going to have Helmut Newton come up from Monte Carlo and you will supervise the shoot.”
I was like an unnamed Karl Lagerfeld editor; he was very important to Vogue, both editorially and financially. Anna didn’t ask me to write profiles on Karl myself, as it would be too nepotistic. Instead, she’d get a great writer from The New Yorker. I would be there on hand to oversee and facilitate. Karl on the sofa, a bit overweight, with a lot of makeup on and a fan he could hide behind. I had to keep Karl happy and keep Vogue happy, and since I was right in the middle of everything, it was a perfect marriage.
Karl and I were aligned in most everything. His mother spoiled him. My grandmother spoiled me. He loved his distant father. My father and I had a similar relationship. And we both were in the beginning stages of putting on considerable weight. I think we both may have suffered abuse in our childhood, but Karl never completely defined his personal experiences to me. He did tell me that at a young age, his mother would strap him to his bed at night with leather restraints. It was done to prevent him from eating during the night. He also mentioned that when he was eight, his mother told him, “You look like an old dyke.” She would also say, “You look like me, but not as good.”
We both shared a love of books. And we both loved and lusted for luxury in all its forms: fine linens, fine scents, finely shaped bodies of both sexes, fine clothes, furniture, cars, and people. And we both found inspiration in classic cinema. When he was a child, Karl’s mother would let him skip grade school and instruct their driver to take Karl to the theater, where he’d sit in the movie house all day.
I learned so much from Karl. This man had knowledge that was almost as vast as that in the Alexandrine Library, especially regarding the history of haute couture. At a casual dinner, he could spit out the entire history of the great and venerable house of Christian Dior, drawing the timeline of every Dior couture collection in the designer’s ten-year span on a dinner napkin. I loved so much his passion for eighteenth-century France and the refinement of the arts de vivre. He could go straight into addictions: his art deco period, which was just ending when I met him in 1975; his Memphis period, which didn’t last more than a minute; and collecting museum-quality tapestries and porcelains, which lasted nearly two decades. In his final years, he went all modern, erasing the past, shedding that rare Aubusson carpet from Versailles, keeping one favorite Kandinsky painting and, for a long time, one incredible Nicolas Poussin painting, which he treasured.
Just walking down the street with Karl, on our way to Café de Flore, was exciting.
Sharing a ride home fr
om Chanel on rue Cambon at two A.M., after a great couture or ready-to-wear show, riding ten minutes home, tired and spent, but satisfied, having made the scene and stood the test of exhausting fittings, seated next to him right to the very end. After every collection, I would send him my typed or handwritten faxes or letters on what I felt was great about the collection, also injecting lines about what I thought might have been weak: the makeup, a hat, a passage of taped music, the set.
I never fought with him once over a Chanel collection. Well, there was one time; he made these huge matching portrait hats in gold lamé tweed with lamé fringe dangling like a curtain in front of the wearer’s face. I didn’t understand them and thought the show was ugly. I told this to my colleague Carlyne Cerf, who told Karl’s first assistant, Gilles Dufour, that I thought the new couture was grotesque. And I suffered in exile for a season but learned a valuable lesson: Never trust anyone close to Kaiser Karl. Like in the court of Versailles, people are always ready and waiting to destroy your place in the line of courtiers, and to decimate your influence with the king.
But ultimately, we always came to an accord. There was a way I could talk to Karl that no one else could. That’s why I always sat next to him. I was always supportive when he asked my opinion; I’d never call his work ugly or tacky. I wouldn’t overtly criticize or put down anything he’d done. If I didn’t think something worked, I would simply offer suggestions, different things he could try. Sometimes he would change it and sometimes not.
—
Besides my monthly column, my main job at Vogue was to go on shoots, often with Helmut Newton, one of our top photographers. He worked with me exclusively.
To work with Helmut, I had to travel to his home in Monte Carlo on the French Riviera and have dinner with him and his wife, June, in their apartment. These dinners could go until two or three in the morning. The next day, you had to get up early and get out on the streets, to look at locations in and around Saint-Tropez and Nice. Exhausting, but once he found the place to shoot it would go quickly. Helmut would take no more than nine frames, and we’d spend the rest of the day around the pool.
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