André Leon Talley: Chanel, John Galliano & Yves Saint Laurent
In November 2021, the late André Leon Talley was in conversation with Nick Knight and SHOWstudio over email, as he was planning to take part in our series The Narrated Catwalk, where we invite fashion critics to talk about their chosen runway moments on camera. Sadly, we never got to film André. We did, however, receive his top 3 fashion shows.
“These are my favourite shows, historical and emotional”, he told us.
Unseen footage from Karl Lagerfeld’s first Chanel couture show is featured below. From their first meeting in 1975, Lagerfeld remained a firm and brother-like friend to Leon Talley. Reminiscing, the journalist wrote for Vogue of S/S 83 that, 'With it, he created the paradigm that remained Chanel until his last couture collection.'
John Galliano’s A/W 94 collection also had a personal resonance for Leon Talley, who helped to secure vital funds from backers for Galliano, together with the show space: Sao Schlumberger's hôtel particulier in Paris. Leon Talley often believed in designers when others did not.
Yves Saint Laurent’s S/S 78 Broadway Suits collection referenced Harlem Sunday best, and was inspired by the folk opera Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin and DuBose Heyward's 1925 novel Porgy. Detailing the lives of a black community in the American South through the economic and social hardships they endured in the 1930s, the reference points rang close to home for Leon Talley. In pursuit of the world of fashion which he had, until then, only experienced through the pages of magazines, he left his upbringing with his grandmother in North Carolina for New York City. As the first African-American editor at Vogue, he paved the way for some of the industry's most prominent figures today.
In November 2021, the late André Leon Talley was in conversation with Nick Knight and SHOWstudio over email, as he was planning to take part in our series The Narrated Catwalk, where we invite fashion critics to talk about their chosen runway moments on camera. Sadly, we never got to film André. We did, however, receive his top 3 fashion shows.
Watch Alexander Fury's take on the John Galliano A/W 94 show here.