Andre Leon Talley: the fashion guru gets to the bottom of what makes the fashion maven tick

ANDRE LEON TALLEY: Look at you with your gloves and your bag!

MIUCCIA PRADA: And look at my shoes! [both laugh] Anyway, this is only the second time I've done an interview, Andre, so I'm not feeling very professional. The last one was also for Interview--that time I spoke with Michelangelo Antonioni [October 1995].

ALT: Well, I'm very flattered to be in such good company!

MP: I like being on the other side of the tape-recorder and turning the journalistic tables.

ALT: I have my research tool [laughs] I have my questions, but you're the journalist here! ... Those shoes are great! Look at those shoes, with the rosette in crocodile. Look! Okay, so you start with your questions and we can do an inter-exchange.

[The door to the Interview library opens]

ELTON JOHN: Hi, Miuccia. Hi, Andre.

MP AND ALT: Elton!

EJ: I didn't know what to get you for your birthday, Miuccia, which I know is coming up, so I brought you some CDs.

ALT: Nina Simone! Oh, that's divine! That is the most perfect gift! Nina Simone, she was one of us!

EJ: Yes. But I don't want to interrupt. Bye. [leaves]

MP: So, now Andre, we must try to be serious. In reading your book, A.L T. [Villard], what touched me is the emotion. Obviously, when you were growing up, beauty was a source of emotion for you--you can tell by the way you describe your grandmother. I would like to understand more about that. Try to go deep into your memory. How do you think those emotions started?

ALT: I think that my emotional world or universe became something real very young because I was an only child in a house of women. I played with other children--I had friends on the street--but the world that touched me was a world based on the people around me. It was my grandmother and my great-grandmother. My environment was built around these two women. Because I was a child, I didn't participate in conversations with them, but I observed. I learned early on to just observe people and look at detail. One of the greatest feelings that I had that I really loved and that I really miss was when I used to see my grandmother sit at the dresser and comb her hair--she had beautiful long, silver-white hair. That was something that I loved watching her do, to take the brush and comb her hair. That struck me as something beautiful. Not that I thought her hair was beautiful. I didn't have time to think--I just loved that she was sitting there combing her hair. We didn't talk. We didn't talk much in our house. My grandmother and great-grandmother did not have conversations about philosophy or what was going on down the street. We just lived. And very early I had to connect to a world and a place within my own mind to entertain myself.

MP. Were there moments when you wanted to go out and play? Or because you had such a profound connection to the women at home, is that where you wanted to be?

ALT. I felt very protected at home. I felt very nurtured. Being the only child in the house, perhaps I was the center of attention. To me, the greatest moment was to come home from school. The smells of the kitchen always stayed with me--the steam coming off the pot on the stove, the sounds of the pot. I used to sit and watch them do the linens. They did not let me participate. When they washed the sheets, my great-grandmother would get in the yard with a big black pot and hot water and cook the sheets--they were literally cooked, boiled.

MP: You've mentioned gestures, smells, things in the home. What about outside?

ALT: Of course, there was the ritual of going to church. We prepared ourselves on Saturday by putting our clothes out. My grandmother placed her clothes on a chair in her room, and my clothes were placed at the foot of my bed.

MP: Like a religious gesture. Clearly you like elegance, and you are elegant. Do you remember the first moment in your youth that you can connect to this appreciation of elegance?

ALT: It was my grandmother going shopping with my great-grandmother. They went to shop downtown. We did not have malls. I can remember my grandmother's pair of navy-blue stilettos, with a bow, with a matching navy-blue handbag. These were church clothes, and the church clothes was where the money was spent. If there was any extravagant spending, it was on something for church, for herself or for me. I also remember the sensibility of elegance when she would take me shopping for my own clothes. She would take me to the best stores and would let me pick the things out myself with no debate. It was fine if I wanted a gold coat. Once I remember I had a beautiful gold coat made in corduroy, with a beautiful plaid lining. She probably wanted me to get a navy-blue coat, but I asked for the gold coat, so she let me buy it. I remember this distinctly, and I remember her giving me my first pair of pajamas. The label was Christian Dior. It was a licensee, of course. She bought them for my birthday. They were yellow with red paisley, and I think that's the first time I ever saw something so special and so unthinkable for my world. I loved these pajamas, and I kept them for a long, long time.