Diane von Furstenberg has known Talley for 30 years. (NICK HUNT/PATRICK MCMULLAN)
Andre Leon Talley was sitting on a chair, dressed like King Arthur in a floor-length satin cloak, while at least 100 women scrabbled at the floor around him. It was Manolo Blahnik’s biannual sample sale, and the scene was chaos. Ladies who lunch — squeezed into a small conference room in the Warwick Hotel — were grasping for as many marked-down stilettos as their dainty hands could snatch.
I was one of those women back in April, and God help me, I couldn’t choose between the lime-green
patent leather sandals and black satin evening shoes.
Fortunately, Talley, who at 61 is a contributing editor at Vogue, was there to help me make the choice.
“Darling, darling . . . no, no, no . . . get those!” he exclaimed, pointing to the black satin. “You can never have too many black pumps. Never! And those are di-vine!”
Talley will be presiding over the next invite-only Manolo Blahnik sample sale tomorrow, at the same hotel, doling out his priceless advice. Blahnik’s reps have even dubbed him “Master of Ceremonies.”
So what’s Talley — who speaks fluent French and counts Diane von Furstenberg among his closest friends — doing as a glorified shoe salesman?
It all started last year, when Talley (otherwise known as ALT) attended his first Manolo sample sale with a friend who wanted his advice. He ended up becoming the de facto counselor to the entire crowd. “People saw me there and were asking, ‘Oh, should I buy this or that?’ ” Talley remembers. “And [Manolo’s people] said the next year, [I] should just come and host the sale.”
He’s been a fixture ever since, calling it “one of [his] favorite things to do.”
But the sale is just one example of Talley’s current reinvention as fashion’s man of the people. In February, he signed on to judge one of the campiest, most mainstream shows on television — “America’s Next Top Model.” One month later, he stepped down as Vogue’s editor-at-large for the less prestigious title of contributing editor. (In this capacity, Talley performs nearly all the same duties, but has more time for freelance projects).
“My visibility went way up,” he says of his “Top Model” gig, for which he issues verdicts on models’ photos and poses with great flair and little care for ego. “Declassé” and “dreckitude” (in other words, “terrible”) are two of ALT’s most common quips. And his high-fashion, lowbrow shtick is a hit. Never before has Talley been more accessible to the masses.
“I love him, I think he’s great! I use the word ‘dreckitude’ all the time now,” says 31-year-old Manhattan resident Jackie Ellis. “He keeps it real when he tells you about fashion.”
Talley is surprised by how the show has raised his profile. “I’m now recognized at a mall if I go to Target!” he says.
Yes, that’s right. Talley shops at Target.
Sure, he might have donned a custom-made green crocodile coat by Prada throughout Fashion Week in September, but he was wearing a rotating collection of velour shorts underneath the entire time.
“There is a whole cult of people who are wearing shorts to the office, and I didn’t embrace that until now,” Talley says of the look.
While Talley’s common touch is refreshing, it’s also not completely surprising for a man who grew up in Durham, NC, where he was raised by his grandmother. He went on to attend North Carolina Central University and receive a master’s degree in French from Brown. In 1980s New York City, Talley lived in a brownstone on 23rd Street, before moving into Chelsea’s London Terrace. He worked as a fashion reporter at Women’s Wear Daily and as Andy Warhol’s assistant at Interview magazine (where Talley was paid $50 a week), before joining the Vogue team in 1983 as its fashion news director. Five years later, he was made creative director. But Paris called, and in 1995 he packed up and moved to France to work for W magazine. Three years later, ALT returned stateside to resume his work at Vogue as editor-at-large under Anna Wintour.
But this time around, Talley settled in Westchester instead of Manhattan.
“I just need green,” he explains. “I need to wake up and see grass and squirrels. I don’t want to see skyscrapers.”
Usually he sticks to meals at the City Limits Diner in White Plains, NY, an unassuming spot complete with a dessert fridge by the entrance. He sometimes eats there seven days a week, three meals a day, according to chef Peter Assue. While Talley normally sits alone and freely doles out contact numbers to aspiring teen fashionistas, Assue admits that Talley can be a “demanding” customer.
He doesn’t like to be interrupted mid-chew, and especially not by Republicans, Assue says. And if Talley wants lunch before the kitchen is ready, well, the kitchen staff had better get moving. “It’ll be 11 a.m. and he says, ‘Get me the chef here right now. I need to have roast chicken!’ ” Assue says.
But Talley’s diva streak is softened by his Everyman appeal. If Wintour’s aura is icy cold, Talley’s is as warm as a big mug of tea.
He’s the type of man to skip Paris fashion week for the opening of the opera “Das Rheingold” (though Talley admits that he was “sad not to be sitting next to [Wintour] at the Chanel show when I saw her in a fabulous new Chanel coat!”). He doesn’t drink (save for ginger ale or Diet Coke) and rolls his eyes at the notion of ringing in the new year at some over-the-top party: “I’m usually at home and in bed by 10 o’clock. I do not want to be out at anybody’s New Year’s Eve party,” he says.
Talley manages to move in and out of the high/low cultural worlds with an ease that few — save for stylist Rachel Zoe — have mastered.
“One thing that I appreciate with him is that he is the same with everyone,” says Talley’s personal assistant, Teddy Tinson. “There is not André the Persona and André the Man. He is the same.”
And while his outrageous designer clothes suggest the tastes of a snob, when it comes to making friends, Talley is quite the opposite. Four years ago, he met one of his dearest confidants — at the lunch counter at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
“We ended up sitting together for two hours at the lunch counter talking about life, and we became such good friends,” says Kim Moore, a 50-year-old painter who lives in Winnetka, Ill. Not only do they trade books and exchange 10 e-mails daily, but also, Moore doesn’t buy a single item of clothing without consulting Talley. “He’ll get mad at me if I buy something he doesn’t like,” she says. “Because he has such a pure eye, he can’t handle it.”
She’s not wrong. My black pumps have served me well. They go with everything. And it’s always an added bonus to say that André Leon Talley picked them out for me.
dschuster@nypost.com