Andre Leon Talley: The Chiffon Trenches, 9780008342357, 4th Estate, UK, hardback

“The Chiffon Trenches” is a great title, it holds promise of serious fashion gossip about such heavyweights as Anna Wintour, Yves St. Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld and it does not disappoint!  The title certainly seduced me to read this memoir by  Andre Leon Talley who is now in his seventies,  one of the first colored style icons who made it into the high echelons of fashion, first working for the famous Diana Vreeland,  becoming part of Andy Warhol’s inner circle, landing the job of Paris bureau chief of Women’s Wear Daily with the notoriously difficult John Fairchild as his boss and finally reaching the absolute heights as creative director of Vogue with  Anna Wintour at the helm who everyone now knows as  the A class bitch  in  the movie “The Devil wears Prada” . . Talley had majored in French at university and was always drawn to fashion like a magnet.  At Vogue he became one of the most influential  men  leading an extraordinary high powered life, famous for his unusual dress style and a close friend of Karl Lagerfeld before he fell from grace.

I just could not get over the fact how the world of these incredibly rich people seems to revolve around nothing but fashion or creating an impression, what designer or what clothes to wear or which parties to attend all documented painstakingly by Andre in his candid memoir.  It is past and beyond me how much money is spent on couture clothes,( no matter how much creativity might have flown into their making) luxury hotels, holidays or other luxury items and how very little else seems to matter.  Some of his recollections literally made me shake my head at such decadence. The court of Louis XVI came to mind.  

Andre Leon Talley was raised in the South by his religious grandmother after his mother showed little interest in him; religion continued to feed his soul throughout his adult life particularly in his later years when things did not go so smoothly anymore and him being overweight became a serious issue in this superficial world.

“The Chiffon Trenches” provides a rare glimpse and a behind the scene account of what it was like to be associated with such fashion czars as Yves St. Laurent, Karl Lagerfeld, Oscar de la Renta, Halston, Gianni Versace etc.  Andre Leon Talley had his own demons to deal with and is very open about his struggles, the hurt and bruises he received in dealing with such highly egocentric people.  The world of fashion as it turns out is a pretty brutal and ruthless one, it was very entertaining to take a look at this snake pit.