EFE – André Leon Talley, the former editor of the US edition of Vogue and an international fashion legend, died on Tuesday at the age of 73, the celebrity news outlet TMZ reported.
According to TMZ, which cites a source with direct knowledge of what happened, Talley died Tuesday at a hospital in White Plains, New York, of causes that are still unknown.
During his career, Talley wrote for a large number of publications such as Women’s Wear Daily, W, and even The New York Times, but his work on the American edition of Vogue led him to Fame.
He was the magazine’s chief information officer, its creative director, and one of its senior editors, which led him to work closely with Anna Wintour, the editor-in-chief of Vogue USA.
Born in 1948 in the US capital, Talley broke the mold of the time and became the most powerful African-American in the world of fashion.
He grew up with her grandmother in North Carolina at a time when racial segregation marked life in the American South and, at just nine or ten years old, she showed an interest in fashion by reading Vogue magazines on the local library and seeing how African-American women dressed for church on Sundays.
He studied French literature at Brown University (Rhode Island) and, in 1974, was discovered by the then editor of the American version of Vogue, Diana Vreeland, who got him a job at the legendary New York studio “Factory” of the eccentric Andy Warhol.
From then on, Talley immersed himself in fashion, ultimately becoming one of the most high-profile African-Americans in the industry.
With an explosive personality and almost two meters tall, Talley was in the front row of the most prestigious fashion shows in New York, Paris, London, and Milan for almost three decades.
During all that time, he was an advocate for racial diversity not only on runways with models but also among designers, executives, and magazine editors.
Images: Instagram @andreltalley
