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Andre Leon Talley: the fashion guru gets to the bottom of what makes the fashion maven tick
Interview, Nov, 2003 by Andre Leon Talley
MP: Let's go back to how church influenced you.
ALT: We went to church every single Sunday, and it entailed a big preparation. Not only was there going to church, but there was the food before the church--the breakfast. Then there was getting dressed for church. We did not have a car, so we were picked up by other relatives in a big car. We lived in a city but the church was in the country. So getting in the car, going to the country was a big thing for me because I could see the beautiful road with the trees, and I used to love to be in the back of the car, looking out the window.
MP: So you were daydreaming?
ALT: Daydreaming, daydreaming, daydreaming.
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MP: In church do you remember observing how people were dressed?
ALT: Oh, absolutely. I always loved to look at people in the church. I always loved the women in their hats. They always wore gloves, too. My grandmother always had the most beautiful gloves. And in the summertime they had fans or they had huge hats with big flowers. My grandmother never went to church without a hat on in her entire life.
MP: For you, was the church experience about beauty alone? Or did you connect it with sexual awareness?
ALT: No, never! I didn't think about that ever! Sex? No, no, no. It was the music and order and ritual.
MP: I can remember myself, more or less, being in the same situation. Young, in the church. But I always had some fantasies.
ALT: In church? No, not in church. In church I was always doing what I was supposed to do. Sit up, sit straight, don't talk, and don't get into trouble. Now, if I left the church, I used to get into trouble in the churchyard. You could get into trouble with the boys in the churchyard. When they had revivals, sometimes the children were not allowed inside--they would leave the church and go outside. Then you would discover sex or eroticism because people talk about it when they're young.
MP: I'm not just talking about sex, but fantasy. Did you have any kind of fantasy of living in--
ALT: --Living in another place?
MP: At home, in your mind? Did you know, for instance, a young girl who dreamed of being a princess?
ALT: No. When I discovered a new world, it was through books. The first book that ever really, really touched me was Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary. I liked the idea that Madame Bovary was a woman living in the country who saw a bigger world when she got ready to go to the ball at la Vaubyessard. She dreamed of going to Paris and having Parisian clothes. I was reading that maybe at the age of 12 or 13. I loved the fact that she was pinning pictures in her room that she'd torn out of magazines, or pictures of clothes from Paris. Although she was living in the provinces, she was dreaming of going to Paris. So that book touched me.
MP: And you didn't have any dream like that?
ALT: No. I did not have any dream to go to Paris. I used to have nightmares. [laughs] I used to have a lot of nightmares sometimes. What about you?
MP: I wanted to be old, have a good husband, and travel and dress like a princess.
