The Chiffon Trenches [9780008342340]

Discover what truly happens behind the scenes in the world of high fashion in this detailed, storied memoir from fashion icon and former Vogue creative director Andre Leon Talley.

During Andre Leon Talley's first magazine job assisting Andy Warhol at Interview, a fateful meeting with Karl Lagerfeld began a decade's long friendship with the enigmatic, often caustic designer.

Propelled into the upper echelons by his knowledge and adoration of fashion, Talley moved to Paris as bureau chief of John Fairchild's Women's Wear Daily, befriending fashion's most important designers. But as Talley made friends, he also made enemies.

A racially tinged encounter with a member of the house of Yves Saint Laurent sent him back to New York and into the offices of Vogue under Grace Mirabella.

There, he developed an unlikely but intimate friendship with Anna Wintour, and as she rose to the top of Vogue's masthead, Talley became the most influential man in fashion.

The Chiffon Trenches is a candid look at the who's who of the last fifty years of fashion, and proof that fact is always devilishly more fascinating than fiction.

Andre Leon Talley's engaging and detailed memoir is his story of surviving and thriving in the notoriously cutthroat fashion industry amidst racism, homophobia, other challenges to become one of the most legendary voices and faces in fashion journalism.

AUTHOR:  One of the most recognisable names and silhouettes in fashion journalism, Andre Leon Talley was the indomitable creative director at Vogue during the magazine's rising dominance as the world's fashion bible. Over the past five decades, his byline has also appeared in Vanity Fair, HG, Interview, and Women's Wear Daily. He has published several illustrated works, including Little Black Dress, ALT: 365, and Oscar de la Renta: His Legendary World of Style. A documentary of Talley's life, The Gospel According to Andre, was released in 2018. Talley received his MA in French studies from Brown, and has been on the board of trustees for the Savannah College of Art and Design for twenty years.