The fact that André Leon Talley’s book is called The Chiffon Trenches: A Memoir means that the book is going to be full of shade and plenty of reads.
The former Vogue editor apparently holds nothing back about his former boss, Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour. According to excerpts from the Daily Mail, Talley is spilling the tea about Wintour, one section reads, “She is immune to anyone other than the powerful and famous people who populate the pages of Vogue.”
Talley continues by saying, “She has mercilessly made her best friends people who are the highest in their chosen fields. Serena Williams, Roger Federer, Mr. and Mrs. George Clooney are, to her, friends. I am no longer of value to her.”
Talley and Wintour had an on-and-off relationship that began when Talley began working with Wintour at the U.S. Vogue in 1983. They went their separate ways for a period, but Wintour then hired Talley as a creative director when she was made editor-in-chief of U.S. Vogue in 1988.
Talley felt he was being frozen out of the magazine’s best assignments, and in 1995, he left the magazine in a tizzy but made up with Wintour not long after the funeral for her mother in 1995.
When he returned to Vogue as editor- at- large, it was during a period when his weight was ballooning out of control. Talley’s weight was viewed as enough of his danger to his health that Wintour staged an intervention, forcing him to enter a weight-loss clinic in North Carolina.
While he continued to struggle with controlling his weight, in 2015 he was provided the opportunity by the publication to launch a podcast, which started off with a promising list of guests. Complaining about the paltry pay of $500 per episode, he wrote, “My car service bills cost that much and more for a round-trip from White Plains to One World Trade Center, where the Vogue office is based.”
The podcast was ended without explanation, an outcome Talley attributed to Wintour’s propensity for “sphinx-like silence.” Writing on the impact of her frosty behavior, Talley wrote, “Today, I would love for her to say something human and sincere to me. I have huge emotional and psychological scars from my relationship with this towering and influential woman.”
The end of his days with Vogue came when in 2018 the publication chose not to bring him back to conduct Met Gala red carpet interviews. Talley was replaced by 24-year-old YouTube star Liza Koshy.
Lamenting Vogue editor Grace Coddington‘s loss of comped stays at the Ritz Hotel and access to chauffeured town cars and editor Polly Mellen’s retirement party being held in the basement of Barneys, Talley wrote, “You are dismissed without ceremony, like in the court of the Sun King…it is not a place of great empathy for humanity.”
Just two years ago, Talley’s view on Wintour was much more even-handed. In a NY Times interview promoting his documentary “The Gospel According to André,” while he took Miuccia Prada to task for abandoning their friendship, when asked about Wintour, he stated, “Most days, she treats me like family. I know she cares for me deeply. But other days, she treats me like the proverbial black sheep, that family member who is left out, shut out, to be avoided.”
This memoir is about to be juicy and I am here for it.