The Chiffon Trenches

by André Leon Talley

  Ralph Lauren’s Bedford house took three days to photograph. We had a great time and I was happy to get to know the iconic designer.

  “I can see now, it’s wrong, what people say about you,” he said after the first day of shooting.

  “What do they say?!”

  “I thought you were pretentious!”

  Everyone thought I was pretentious because I was running around Paris with Karl.

  But I wasn’t, and I proved it to Ralph Lauren, whose approval I treasure.

  One of my favorite house sittings was with Anne Bass, who had just left her husband and wanted to show off her new luxury Fifth Avenue home, decorated by Mark Hampton. There were stacks of telephone-book-sized divorce briefs strewn throughout her sitting room. It was a fabulous apartment, replete with incredible art—William Turner, Balthus, Picasso, and the Degas sculpture of the ballerina. Seeing her vast collection brought to mind my time with Andy Warhol, whom Anne had commissioned to paint over a half-dozen portraits of herself.

  Vogue’s former senior fashion news editor Kathleen Madden had gone down to Texas to interview Anne in her Dallas home, and when she came back she said, “All Anne Bass offered us was a glass of water.” Anne was not the warmest person, which I already knew and was prepared for. As I had shown time and time again, once people get to know me, they get comfortable with me. I was confident it would be the same with Anne’s shoot.

  We shot a range of interiors: Anne’s closets; her big puffy Ungaro dresses; one closet full of Scaasi evening dresses; her private exercise room, where she had a ballerina barre; her living room, featuring a Helen Frankenthaler; her library with the Picassos; her dining room with the Monets; the Degas in her bedroom, on the mantle in front of her Mark Hampton four-poster bed.

  It was the biggest house sitting I’d ever done. At the end of the final day, we asked the butler if he could order us takeout. Anne walked in and found the photography team sitting on the floor in the kitchen, gobbling down greasy slices of pizza. She was quite startled. “What are you all doing in here?” she said.

  “We’re just wrapping up and didn’t dare bring a pizza box to your dining room table! It would be so rude!”

  Anne laughed.

  After the piece ran in Vogue, Anne invited me to Florence with her and her daughter. I said yes, I’d love to go!

  I got back to Vogue and Gabé Doppelt was circling around my office door. This was never a good sign. Gabé had worked at Vogue a long time and had a tendency to make herself important by telling news about other people that could be detrimental to them.

  You know, that kind of person. Jealous.

  Gabé was well-known to stalk the lone fax machine all day, and apparently she had seen a fax from Anne Bass about Florence and told Anna about it. If I had been able to ask Anna Wintour, “May I go to Florence with Anne Bass?” there would have been no problem. But Gabé had taken the fax to Anna Wintour and must have presented it to her in a negative light and as a done deal. Without saying so, Gabé let me know that Anna Wintour was not going to let me go to Florence. The trip was kiboshed.

  Anne Bass and I became good friends regardless. We would often meet in Paris and have supper, just the two of us. Underneath it all I found her to be a woman of sincere empathy, with a passion for the arts and a love of beautiful things. When she came to Paris to buy couture, I would go with her to YSL, Dior sometimes, and sometimes Lacroix. Then she discovered Chanel and often ordered from Valentino. The clothes were always off the charts, and she loved them. She was practically addicted to clothes.

  Now she has turned her high-fashion attention to Prada, and custom-made Zac Posen day skirts and jackets. She has evolved with her new partner, a wonderful English painter, Julian Lethbridge, whom she met at a dinner at Anna Wintour’s townhouse. We remain good friends to this day.

  —

  Karl Lagerfeld did things for Vogue he would not do for anyone else.

  Four times a year, all of Vogue descended on Paris: in January for the couture, March for the ready-to-wear, July for the couture, and October for the ready-to-wear.

  Each time, Karl would give a special dinner for the entire staff, at his house, surrounded by his eighteenth-century decor and his porcelains and silverware. If we had visiting writers, they would come as well. Even Oscar de la Renta and Tom Ford were each invited once, the only designers to ever receive such an invitation from Karl.

  Karl had a knack for social networking with the editors. Having been born into a wealthy family, he knew the value of sending special handwritten notes and gifts.

  Distinctive gifts. He would send books and oftentimes Diptyque candles. He was the biggest client at Diptyque.

  When a collection came, he would send grand flower arrangements to every important editor. Something like two hundred bouquets of flowers were sent out, from the best, most expensive florist in Paris. Each one with a handwritten note. When he went to Chanel, the arrangements, paid for by the company, only became bigger.

  Somehow Karl knew how to keep strong relationships with people who were important to him. But he did have one spat with Anna Wintour, when she approached him about doing a Chanel retrospective at the Met.

  Karl never got into the museum thing the way I did, ever since my time volunteering for Mrs. Vreeland. He was dismissive of curatorial exhibitions of fashion.

  He did not like seeing old, dusty clothes in museums, and he loathed coming to the Met.

  He came to the Met Gala for many years out of respect for Anna Wintour, but then one year he didn’t come, and he never came back. Amanda Harlech curated an exhibit of his work in Berlin once, and he never even went. To his own exhibit, curated by one of his closest friends!

  So when Anna Wintour asked Karl about doing a Chanel retrospective at the Met, she was asking a loaded question. The show was on, but then it was off. Somehow Ingrid Sischy of Interview got her two cents in and turned Karl against the show. In his mind, Karl was still at the height of his career, and a retrospective was for a designer on his way out. Ingrid made Karl think it was not the proper thing. You know how people stir the pot. She wanted to show her power, impress.

  Like any courtesan or courtier, Anna still went to Karl’s shows and acted as though everything was status quo. In the world of Anna Wintour at Vogue, there are no arguments. Nothing was ever discussed. But Karl was not picking up the phone to talk about this museum show anymore.

  One day, Anna asked me to get Karl on the phone.

  “He’s not coming to the phone, he doesn’t want to talk about this.”

  “Come to my office and get him on the phone.”

  And I did. Then she threw me out and closed the door. I don’t know what they said, but the idea of a Chanel show gradually fizzled.

  About five years later, Anna once again came to me asking if Karl might finally be interested in a retrospective show.

  I encouraged her to bring it up with him once more. He said yes, and the Chanel Met show happened, in 2005. With Anna Wintour, you know the drill: Things get done her way, even if it takes a few years.

  XII

  Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, publicity director at Vogue, came to my desk and said, “Ange, here’s a letter you should read.”

  On elegant stationery, a formal invitation from SCAD, the Savannah College of Art and Design, had been penned by their original founder and visionary, Paula Wallace.

  She invited me to receive the Fashion Icon Award and hold master classes.

  As reluctant as I was to leave New York and head down to Savannah, I was so charmed by this enchanting letter, and honored to be considered, that I agreed to go. My freelance position as editor at large at Vogue allowed me time away from the office and the ability to take on other projects.

  I was greeted at the Savannah airport by Danny Filson, SCAD’s best ambassador.

  He drove me by some of the interesting downtown architecture and sites. We stopped in for a bite at the Gryphon tearoom, a former local drugstore, where a whiff
of the ancient Orient prevailed, with a Chinese sandalwood pavilion containing books arranged in groups by color, and the antique pharmacy drawers with ivory knobs remained intact, part of the charm and warm décor.

  All the highlights of the school that seemed unique and exceptional, I was informed at this lunch, had been envisioned by Paula Wallace, who founded SCAD in 1978. Paula nurtured her dream of a forward-thinking university for the arts in the South, with the highest standards.

  A week after I received the Fashion Icon Award and returned to Manhattan, President Wallace sent me another elegant letter, suggesting that I present the André Leon Talley Lifetime Achievement Award each year, at the annual Senior Fashion Show, to anyone who I thought should be so honored. Nothing like this had ever been offered to me in New York or Paris; I gladly accepted.

  The first recipient of the award was my friend Oscar de la Renta, who took a commercial plane down from Connecticut on a Saturday morning to receive the prize later that evening. Danny and I picked him up at the airport and went straight to President Wallace’s residence. After a delicious Southern lunch, Oscar went to a hotel room, rested, and put on his navy bespoke suit to receive the award. A reception for the students followed, and a light supper, known as a repast in Southern jargon.

  That night, I secretly whisked Oscar off to the last show, at midnight, at Savannah’s gay disco, Club One. The Lady Chablis, known for her breakout role as herself in the book and film Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, came to Savannah every other weekend to perform. Everyone had the Lady Chablis on their radar.

  We reserved front-row seats and had to sit through an hour-long display of funky drag queens lip-synching to current hits. Then the Lady Chablis swanned onto center stage, in a midnight-blue spangled Bob Mackie–esque gown. Her drag show was raw, raunchy, and completely off the rails; she stalked the audience, enraptured and fueled by generous alcoholic drinks.

  The Lady Chablis called out members of the paying audience for her sexual rants, with the floodlights beaming directly in their faces. “By the way, ma’am, blue is definitely not your color,” she deadpanned to one unsuspecting attendee. “Two tears in a bucket! Motherf*ck it!” I was terrified her swamp-vile jokes were going to be too absolutely outrageous for the elegant Oscar, in his best navy lounge suit.

  “Oscar, what do you think of her?” I asked as he sat with his arms folded neatly across his chest. His neutral face showed no emotion whatsoever. I thought, Have I made a huge mistake, bringing Oscar de la Renta to this late-night den of drag?

  He then said, with great seriousness, “Elle est très raffinée. ”

  I was so relieved. After the floor show ended, we went backstage to the Lady Chablis’s matchbox of a dressing room, cramped with knockoff evening gowns. She was honored to meet Oscar and full of grace.

  That was the first ALT Lifetime Achievement Award. The second one went to Karl Lagerfeld, who, due to his busy work schedule, what with now covering Fendi, Chanel couture, and his own collection, didn’t come to Savannah. President Wallace and SCAD

  sent me to Paris to present Karl with the award in person.

  I called up my good friend Elizabeth Hummer, a videographer who had worked closely with me on special interviews for Full Frontal Fashion, a cable weekly fashion show.

  “Elizabeth,” I said, “do you want to go to Paris and film Karl Lagerfeld being presented with an award? We will be staying at the Ritz.”

  How could she possibly say no?

  We were only in the City of Lights for a scant seventy-two hours. I presented Karl with the crystal orb, right at his atelier desk in the studio for his Karl Lagerfeld label. In return he donated a series of huge photographs for an exhibit at SCAD’s Red Gallery.

  They were all of pale peony-pink evening dresses that had been shown in his former couture collection. Afterward, Karl donated the entire collection of images to SCAD.

  Departing for the airport to return to New York, I spotted Elizabeth, coming down the main staircase in the Ritz lobby, carrying all her luggage and camera.

  In my usual barking loud voice, I exclaimed, “Elizabeth, this is the Ritz! No one comes downstairs carrying their own bags! It’s just not done!” Annette de la Renta would never be caught carrying anything upon checking out but her handbag. This was Paris!

  The next year, Miuccia Prada received the award, but I almost didn’t survive to give it to her. Days before she was due to arrive, I was in Greenville, Mississippi, attending the wedding of my great friend and one of Vogue’s best political writers, Julia Reed. At six forty-five in the morning, I was en route to the airport to return Anna Wintour’s rental car after the wedding when I fell asleep behind the wheel, crossed two lanes of opposing traffic, and turned over three times. When it was all over I was upside down, in a cotton field, suspended in midair.

  Luckily I had my seat belt on and didn’t end up a mangled corpse. A man reached in, unbuckled my seat belt, and pulled me gingerly through the front passenger side.

  “Is my luggage okay?” I asked him.

  “Your car is totaled,” he said.

  “The car’s a rental, my luggage is Louis Vuitton!”

  He helped me open the trunk and, thankfully, my suitcases were undamaged. My guardian angel knitted his brow and I felt silly that I cared so much about the luggage when I had almost just died, but that was my honest reaction to the shock of it all. Then when my adrenaline returned to normal, I started to process what had actually just happened and how close I had come to a tragic end. A tow truck was called and I rode up front with the driver, who told me many a driver had been found dead in that field. I was silent and thanked God.

  In Washington, D.C., Deeda Blair was expecting me for a lunch hosted in my honor at her home. I called to tell her I’d missed my flight and would be on the next available plane. I didn’t say anything about the accident; I didn’t want Julia Reed to find out while she was on her honeymoon!

  For the next eight hours, I sat in the airport, Mississippi mud caked on my gray matte crocodile flat man bag and matching hat. The gray matching Prada balmacaan coat thankfully lay packed away in a suitcase, untouched by any mud.

  After a quick stop in D.C. for Deeda Blair’s lunch, I immediately returned to New York and quietly checked myself into White Plains Hospital, near my home. They kept me for three days, thinking I might have whiplash. I was traumatized but said nothing.

  On the third day, I left the hospital and flew back down to SCAD to greet Miuccia Prada and hand her the Lifetime Achievement Award. For one week, I spoke to no one of this accident, except Anna Wintour; she of course had to be told. It was her rental car, after all.

  Over the next ten years, I presented the ALT Lifetime Achievement Award to the greatest talents in fashion: Tom Ford, Vera Wang, Marc Jacobs, John Galliano, Isabel and Ruben Toledo, Diane von Fürstenberg, Manolo Blahnik, Ralph Rucci, Francisco Costa, Stephen Burrows, and Vivienne Westwood. Zac Posen was awarded the New Look Award.

  Just about every one of them came down to Savannah to be honored and appear in person, which truly made me proud. Galliano did cancel at the last minute. It was frustrating, as we had spent two years planning around his schedule to make it happen.

  But Galliano canceled on Queen Elizabeth II for a state dinner at Buckingham Palace, so it was hard to take it personally.

  I suggested Paula Wallace invite Whoopi Goldberg down for a commencement address one year. Whoopi, the most sensitive, intelligent, articulate black woman on television, navigates steadily through the icebergs of being a black woman in the entertainment industry. She is otherness as she refuses all norms of fashion, and she creates her own style with her quirky collection of footwear (high translucent heels containing fake goldfish!) and her refusal to wear a typical evening gown to the Oscars (she selects frigates of crinoline and chintz brocade that have the scale of a Scarlett O’Hara dress). She spoke inspirationally to the students at SCAD, with no notes, and got a standing ovation. Later, she donated an antique
Steinway baby grand to the school.

  So many firsts happened for me at SCAD, firsts I never could have achieved or been recognized for in New York. I sometimes felt as if people in the world of Vogue and fashion in general had put me in a preassigned, limited zone. Anna Wintour didn’t see me in the role of curator. She failed to see how my knowledge gained under the tutelage of Diana Vreeland fueled me. I learned everything from Vreeland. Literally, she taught me how to analyze the power of fashion, its beauty, its technique, its historical relevancy, its worthiness to be viewed in an exhibit. Fashion can be an emotional experience.

  —

  Meanwhile, back in New York, one morning as I walked into Vogue, I was met by Patrick O’Connell, public relations director. He said we had to go to the conference room downstairs.

  Whenever you had to take the trek to the third floor, it was grave.

  “Am I being fired?” I asked.

  “Just come,” he said. I followed him back to the elevator. Dead man walking.

  By the time we got to the third-floor conference room, I had pulled myself together enough to put on a brave face. As long as I didn’t cry, I could deal with this. I opened the door, and there was my pastor, Dr. Calvin O. Butts III, of Abyssinian Baptist Church.

  Seated next to him: Oscar and Annette de la Renta, two of my closest, dearest friends.

  And then, standing stoically, there was Anna Wintour, with her new boyfriend, Shelby Bryan, seated next to her.

  At first I thought, How fabulous! I must be winning an award! But the somber faces made clear there was no such award coming. “What happened?” I said.

  Anna instructed me to sit down and Shelby filled me in. I was not being fired; I had just walked into an intervention. It was explained that my weight was out of control and I was being sent off to rehabilitation at the Duke Diet and Fitness Center in my hometown of Durham, North Carolina. A first-class plane ticket had already been purchased for that same day.