André Leon Talley Defined Style on His Own Terms

André Leon Talley, who died on Tuesday at the age of 73, made the fashion world take notice of Black design genius. In the late 1990s, he regularly championed Kevan Hall, Stephen Burrows, Willi Smith, and many others in his Vogue “StyleFax” column, firmly placing these emerging designers in the mainstream. By that time, he had spent years attempting to map a new American fashion genealogy—one that now extends to superstar Black designers of today such as LaQuan Smith, Mimi Plange, Kerby Jean-Raymond, and Christopher John Rogers, whom Talley presciently called “the future” of fashion.

Talley’s name is rarely spoken without a mention of , as if even being hired by the publication, which many at at a time when powerful African Americans in the industry were rare. As the magazine’s first Black creative director, he infused its pages with models of deeper hues and with garments that referenced the African diaspora. From his hiring until he , in 2013, Talley never forgot the Black readers who’d subscribed to because of him—and he kept on battling an institution that was often antagonistic to his changes. But Talley’s influence stretched far past . In particular, it included his vision for a more democratic fashion world.