When I started working in fashion in 2016, one thing was clear: this was a white, female and thin industry. André Leon Talley, who died on Tuesday, at 73, was defiantly, unapologetically and fabulously none of these things.
Talley’s passing isn’t just the tragic end to the life of a figure who revolutionised perspectives towards clothes. It’s also the silencing of a voice who represented what fashion could be: the triumph of the outsider in a world of cookie-cutter conformity. People of colour, like myself, are constantly being told to make ourselves smaller and to hide our true selves if we are to survive unscathed in an overwhelmingly white world. Talley was heroic because he never followed these rules. He never apologised for his booming voice, which pronounced in sing-songy staccato sentences, his unconventional body shape or his blackness, despite knowing that racism is “part of the fabric of our existence”, as he wrote in his memoir, The Chiffon Trenches.
