“Standard
Dress Code Policy – Proper golf attire is required at all times for all players
and riders to include both collared and/or tailored collarless shirts for men
and recognized golf fashion for women. Golf shoes with soft spikes or athletic
shoes required. T-shirts, swimwear, tank tops, jeans or cut-offs are not golf
appropriate attire.”
Knicker(bockers)
in a knot: The ‘Attire’ debate on the golf course
Players
like Aaron Cox aren't afraid to push the fashion boundaries. But is this
practice good for the game?
From the
early days of the plus-fours and ruffled cravats, to today’s bright colours and
plaid ensembles, golf and fashion have long been intertwined.
That’s not
to say that golf fashion has necessarily been “fashionable”. Just look at golf
photos from the 1970s (or some of the blokes on tour today) and you’ll get my
drift.
Attire on
the golf course has been a contentious subject of late. The Inside Golf mailbag
and inbox are full of letters decrying the “imminent demise of Neat and Tidy”,
while last month’s cover photo of a “scruffy looking” Aaron Baddeley even got a
fair amount of unhappy reader letters (see page 87).
In the
continuing struggle to retain members, and attract the ever-important junior
contingent, some clubs are beginning to relax the traditional dress codes.
White socks and collared shirts still reign supreme, but it seems that more
clubs are starting to “turn a blind eye” to the more creatively-attired players
these days. It’s a neon-coloured grey area.
There are
two sides to the argument. Traditionalists argue that the standards of Neat and
Tidy attire MUST be adhered to in order to preserve the traditions and essence
of the game. They contend that if we relax the dress codes – even a smidgeon–
then the entire game may spin out of control into the equivalent of a
no-holds-barred, “golfers gone wild” frat party.
On the
other side of the fairway are those who claim that the game is entrenched in
old-fashioned, elitist attitudes and antiquated traditions that have little
appeal to the younger generations. They say that if we fail to capture the
kids’ attention, the game will dwindle in popularity until it is equal in
regard to, say Olympic Trampoline.
Dress codes
in nearly all sports have regularly adapted to the times. From the AFL, to
(Twenty20) Cricket, to American baseball to the NBA… uniforms have regularly
reflected the fashion and styles of the younger generations. It’s seen by some
as a “necessary evil” in order to ensure the survival of the sports.
Golf is no
different. I’m sure there was a similar outcry centuries ago when a small band
of golfers eschewed their kilts and animal skins to don (heaven forbid) ties,
knickerbockers and morning coats. And what about those heathens in the 1920s
who (gasp) stopped wearing formal jackets on the links? Or the “Free-thinkers”
with the radical concept of NOT tucking their long pants inside their socks; or
those who wore bowties, V-neck sweaters and even (double-gasp) short pants!
When you
think about it, today’s accepted “Neat and Tidy” attire – namely the
short-sleeve collared shirts, pleated shorts and golf caps – would have golfers
of the 1900’s covering their niblicks in shame.
I’m not
saying that we need to allow singlets and budgie smugglers on the course – on
the contrary, I firmly believe that young golfers and beginners need to respect
the traditions and the culture (and attire) of the game. But if we really want
to keep our game alive, surely we can open up our minds a little, and maybe let
our white socks drop a bit? There is certainly a compromise out there.
See you on
the fairways (in a collared shirt, of course).
Jeffrey
Epstein: Filthy Rich is an upcoming American television miniseries about a
convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The miniseries is based on the 2016
book of the same name by James Patterson, and co-written by John Connolly with
Tim Malloy. Filthy Rich is scheduled to release on May 27, 2020.
Filthy Rich
tells a stories of the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein, and how he used his wealth
and power to commit these crimes.[1]
Episodes
1 "Hunting Grounds" Lisa Bryant May 27, 2020
2 "Follow the Money" Lisa Bryant May 27, 2020
3 "The Island" Lisa Bryant May 27, 2020
4 "Finding Their Voice" Lisa Bryant May
27, 2020
The
miniseries was based on the 2016 book Filthy Rich: A Powerful Billionaire, the
Sex Scandal that Undid Him, and All the Justice that Money Can Buy: The
Shocking True Story of Jeffrey Epstein written by James Patterson, and
co-written by John Connolly with Tim Malloy. Filthy Rich was announced prior to
Epstein's death.
'It's outrageous': inside an infuriating Netflix
series on Jeffrey Epstein
Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich synthesizes legal
information with first-person testimony of the billionaire’s abuse and bought
immunity into a shocking watch
Adrian
Horton
Wed 27 May
2020 16.13 BSTLast modified on Wed 27 May 2020 17.23 BST
It’s
difficult to watch Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich, a four-hour Netflix series on
the now-deceased convicted sex offender without a choking sense of outrage. How
many girls had to suffer to get attention? How perversely twisted is the
American justice system that a Gatsby-esque billionaire, friends with such
powerful figures as Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew and Donald Trump, a
longstanding donor to Harvard and MIT, could buy his way out of an almost
certain life sentence for child sex abuse and trafficking?
Filthy Rich
arrives, of course, less than a year after Epstein, 66, died, officially by
suicide, in a New York jail last August. “There’s no justice in this,” Shawna
Rivera, speaking publicly for the first time about Epstein’s alleged abuse
starting when she was 14, says in the final episode. “There was just so much
more to be said that will never be said.”
There is,
however, much to be learned from the sordid, winding, thwarted path to
Epstein’s eventual arrest on sex trafficking charges in July 2019. Filthy Rich
doesn’t so much break new ground as synthesize the abundance of information
with the visceral impact of first-person testimony on Epstein’s crimes –
stories of predation, self-doubt and shame by numerous survivors betrayed by
the justice system supposed to protect them. Epstein’s decades-long legal saga
is “the biggest example I’ve ever seen of somebody using their money and
influence to thwart reporting on the subject and to work out an outrageous
deal,” Joe Berlinger, an executive producer, told the Guardian.
Production
on Filthy Rich began before Epstein became a household name – before his death,
before his shock arrest, before a 2018 Pulitzer-winning investigation by the
Miami Times-Herald into the sweetheart plea deal negotiated by federal
prosecutors to keep Epstein out of prison. “The level of incompetence and
back-door dealing that allowed him to get off – no one on this production
thought he would ever be arrested during the making of the show,” said
Berlinger, who first began work on an Epstein project in spring 2018, after he
received a copy of mystery novelist James Patterson’s 2016 true crime book on
the reclusive billionaire (and neighbor in Palm Beach).
The book
“infuriated me”, Berlinger said, especially since, in 2018, “people were afraid
to tell this story.”
Convincing
women to speak on the record “was hard”, director Lisa Bryant said. “Some
people wouldn’t talk at all, some numbers were wrong, some decided they just
weren’t ever going to talk, for various reasons. Some hadn’t even told their
parents about it.” The case of Epstein was never a he-said, she-said situation;
to quote the retired Palm Beach police chief Michael Reiter in the Herald’s
original story: “This was 50-something ‘shes’ and one ‘he’ – and the ‘shes’ all
basically told the same story.”
But
Epstein’s intimidation factor was strong, and many of the survivors, their
justice thwarted by the plea deal and Epstein’s subsequent immunity, had moved
on with their lives. “Yes, there was a pattern that he had, but each person’s
experience with that and how they handled it is different,” said Bryant. “This
is their story to tell, their narrative. We wanted this to be told through
their eyes.”
The series
revolves around the various experiences of the survivors, dating back to at
least 1996, when the painter Maria Farmer and her teenage sister, Annie,
contacted the FBI to allege molestation by Epstein and his ex-girlfriend
Ghislaine Maxwell. It went nowhere. Years later, in 2005, Palm Beach police
launched an investigation into an alleged sex ring run out of Epstein’s
beachside mansion, in which Epstein and Maxwell allegedly coerced high-school
girls – most of them around 14, in vulnerable circumstances and needing money –
into sex acts under the pretense of a “massage” for $200. Maxwell has denied
any involvement. The alleged crimes expanded even further, as favorites were
allegedly trafficked to rich and powerful friends for parties at Epstein’s $77m
Upper East Side mansion in New York, at a London townhouse, and on Epstein’s
private island in the Caribbean.
Some
survivors featured in the series are speaking on camera for the first time;
others, such as Virginia Giuffre, have been advocating for justice for years.
Giuffre alleges in and out of the documentary that she was forced to have sex
with Prince Andrew, who has denied the allegations and queried the veracity of
a photo that exists of him with his arm around her aged 18, with a smiling Maxwell
in the background.
Given
witness testimony in the series by a former Epstein employee who alleges he saw
the prince engaged in poolside “foreplay” with a topless Giuffre on Epstein’s
island, Andrew’s defense and lack of cooperation with prosecutors reads even
more shabbily here. Andrew says he has “no recollection” of meeting Giuffre.
The show
stokes justifiable outrage through each survivor’s account, retracing how the
Palm Beach police department’s investigation was bumped up to the FBI, and was
then derailed by a “non-prosecution agreement” the Herald called “the deal of a
lifetime.” Signed in 2008, the deal – brokered by state attorney and later
Trump labor secretary Alex Acosta and Epstein’s all-star team of lawyers,
including OJ Simpson defender Alan Dershowitz (the only Epstein acolyte to
attempt a defense in the series) – was controversially sealed and kept private
from the accusers. It offered Epstein and named and unnamed co-conspirators
immunity from federal criminal charges; instead, he pleaded guilty to two
prostitution charges in state court, and served 11 of 13 months in Palm Beach
jail, out six days a week on “work release”.
“He was
still seeing girls, he was still making money, he was still conducting business
– I mean, it’s just outrageous,” said Berlinger of Epstein’s “incarceration”.
Epstein’s elusion of justice for another decade demonstrated how the American
criminal justice system “was built for money and power and political gain”,
said Bryant. “And we see that over and over again in this case.”
The series
also addresses, but does not endorse, conspiracy theories on the cause of
Epstein’s death; the medical examiner ruled a suicide by hanging, though an
outside expert hired by Epstein’s brother raised unsubstantiated doubts, citing
an unusual neck fracture. “I think it’s up for debate, and for people to look
at the evidence both ways and make their own decisions,” said Bryant.
“There was
nothing that we turned up that would definitively support the idea that he was
murdered,” said Berlinger, “but we certainly felt [the theories] should be
touched upon.” Personally, Berlinger said: “I do believe it was suicide.”
Epstein’s
death denied survivors’ their true day in court, though several did speak at a
posthumous hearing. There remains the possibility of prosecuting those linked
to Epstein: perhaps Maxwell, whose whereabouts remain unknown and who recently
sued Epstein’s estate – the fund supposed to compensate victims – for her legal
fees. “I firmly believe and hope that the survivors will get that money,” said
Bryant, and that statutes of limitations are reconsidered given greater
understanding of childhood sexual trauma, the length and difficulty of
processing enough to speak publicly.
For the
survivors, said Berlinger, “the ultimate closure would be for everyone who
enabled this sick lifestyle and everyone who enabled a wealthy white person
with power and influence to have a different standard of justice to also be
held to account.”
Jeffrey
Epstein: Filthy Rich is now available on Netflix
You've read
the Jeffrey Epstein headlines, now get the full story. The world's bestselling
author, James Patterson, has written the definitive book on the billionaire
pedophile at the center of the newly unsealed federal sex crimes case.
Jeffrey
Epstein rose from humble origins into the New York City and Palm Beach elite. A
college dropout with an instinct for numbers -- and for people -- Epstein
amassed his wealth through a combination of access and skill. But even after he
had it all, Epstein wanted more. That unceasing desire -- and especially a
taste for underage girls --resulted in sexual-abuse charges, to which he
pleaded guilty and received a shockingly lenient sentence.
Included
here are police interviews with girls who have alleged sexual abuse by Epstein,
as well as details of the investigation against him.
After
learning his shoemaking skills in America, Norwegian Nils Gregoriusson
Tveranger designed a new slip-on shoe. Called the Aurland moccasin is was also
knows as the Aurland shoe.
Nils
Gregoriussen Tveranger
Taking
inspiration from the moccasin shoes worn by native Indians in North America,
and the simple slip-ons on the feet of Norwegian fishermen, the first design
was born.
Popularity
grew and export orders were sent across Europe and America. Esquire magazine even
featured an article with photographs of Norwegian farmers wearing the shoe in
cattle loafing sheds.
Soon after,
the Spaulding family of New Hampshire, USA, began manufacturing a similar shoe,
called The Loafer. This name later became a generic term used to describe a
slip-on, moccasin shoe.
In 1934, G.
H. Bass made his first version of the loafer which he called Weejuns. This
appears to be a play on words on the origin of the original designer -
Norwegian. A distinctive feature of this new design was a strip of leather
stitched across the saddle of the shoe, featuring a shaped cutout.
In 1950s
America before trainers were invented, the Weejun became the shoe of choice for
young men and students. It became fashionable to keep a dime in the half moon
cut out slot of the leather strip. This eventually gave the shoes their
colloquial name of Penny Loafer, which is still used today.
A bespoke
shoe company based in London that was established in 1847 developed the first loafer as a country house shoe for the landed gentry and
the royal family. The "Wildsmith Loafer" made by Raymond Lewis
Wildsmith of Wildsmith Shoes, was designed for King George VI as a casual house
shoe. The shoe has subsequently been marketed and sold by other London shoe
firms and dubbed "the Harrow".
Shoemaker
Nils Gregoriusson Tveranger (1874–1953) in Aurland, Norway, introduced his
first design around 1908. Tveranger obtained protection for the design. N.
Tveranger obtained a diploma at the Bergen exhibition in 1910 for his
"Aurland shoe".The first Aurland shoes were also made with laces and
a decorative upper side similar to the brogue shoe. Colors were initially
natural until approximately 1960 when they were also painted black. At age
13 Tveranger went to North America where he learned the craft of shoemaking and
returned to Norway age 20. Around 1930, Tveranger introduced a new design
called the "Aurland moccasin", later renamed the "Aurland
shoe". This design resembles the moccasins used by the Iroquois as well as
the design of moccasin-like shoes traditionally worn by locals in Aurland.
These traditional shoes resembled slippers and were useful outdoor in fine
weather. In 1936 the local shoe handcraft in Aurland was described as a
"very old industry" and shoes were sold in large numbers to foreign
visitors.[A 1953 catalogue listed about 10 shoe factories in the small village
of Aurland.When exported the USA the Aurland shoes were called "Norwegian
Moccasins". The Norwegians began exporting them to the rest of Europe,
where they were taken up by visiting Americans, and championed by the American
Esquire magazine. Some photographs included with the Esquire feature were of
Norwegian farmers in a cattle loafing area.The Spaulding family in New
Hampshire started making shoes based on this design in the early 1930s, naming
them loafers, a general term for slip-on shoes which is still in use in
America. In 1934, G.H. Bass (a bootmaker in Wilton, Maine) started making
loafers under the name Weejuns (sounding like Norwegians).The distinctive
addition was a strip of leather across the saddle with a diamond cut-out. Initially
only worn in the summer at home, the shoe grew in popularity in America to
become a significant part of men's casual shoe wardrobe; in Europe the style
has never reached the same degree of ubiquity.
The term
penny loafer has uncertain beginnings. One explanation is when American prep
school students in the 1950s, wishing to make a fashion statement, took to
inserting a penny into the diamond-shaped slit on their Weejuns. Another theory
is that two pennies could be slipped into the slit, enough money to make an
emergency phone call in the 1930s. This, however, is an urban legend, as pay
phone calls in the USA have never been less than five cents, nor have the pay
phones ever accepted pennies. Either way, the name penny loafer came to be
applied to this style of slip-on and has since stuck. The practice continues,
especially among those who remain committed to a classic and refined but still
scholarly appearance, such as lawyers.
In the
mid-1950s, further continental influences brought a more elegant image to
light, lower-cut slip-ons, which moved from purely casual use to being paired
with suits in the 1960s (but still only in America). In 1966, Italian designer
Gucci made the further step of adding a metal strap across the front in the
shape of a horse's snaffle bit. These Gucci loafers (now a general term
referring to shoes of this style by any manufacturer) also spread over the
Atlantic and were worn by 1970s businessmen, becoming almost a Wall Street
uniform, reaching widespread use by the 1980s.
At the
start of the twenty-first century, a revival of penny loafers, whose popularity
had peaked during the mid to late 1960s and again during the early 1980s to
early 1990s,[citation needed] occurred, with the shoe appearing in a more
rugged version, closer to the original concept, as either moccasins, or
espadrilles, both of these styles being very low or flat without heels. This
resurgence was most noticeable at college campuses across America.
Another
variation on the basic style is the tassel loafer, which emerged in the 1950s.
Again, though casual, their gradual acceptance among the American East Coast
prep school culture as equivalent to brogues (wingtips), has led to them being
worn there with suits, where they gained an association with business and legal
classes.
From the
pages of Vogue to the runways of Paris, this deeply revealing memoir by a
legendary style icon captures the fashion world from the inside out, in its
most glamorous and most cutthroat moments.
“The
Chiffon Trenches honestly and candidly captures fifty sublime years of
fashion.”—Manolo Blahnik
During
André Leon Talley’s first magazine job, alongside Andy Warhol at Interview, a
fateful meeting with Karl Lagerfeld began a decades-long friendship with the
enigmatic, often caustic designer. Propelled into the upper echelons by his
knowledge and adoration of fashion, André moved to Paris as bureau chief of
John Fairchild’s Women’s Wear Daily, befriending fashion's most important
designers (Halston, Yves Saint Laurent, Oscar de la Renta). But as André 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
eventually became creative director, developing an unlikely but intimate
friendship with Anna Wintour. As she rose to the top of Vogue’s masthead, André
also ascended, and soon became the most influential man in fashion.
The Chiffon
Trenches offers a candid look at the who’s who of the last fifty years of
fashion. At once ruthless and empathetic, this engaging memoir tells with raw
honesty the story of how André not only survived the brutal style landscape but
thrived—despite racism, illicit rumors, and all the other challenges of this
notoriously cutthroat industry—to become one of the most renowned voices and
faces in fashion.
Woven
throughout the book are also André’s own personal struggles that have impacted
him over the decades, along with intimate stories of those he has turned to for
inspiration (Diana Vreeland, Diane von Fürstenberg, Lee Radziwill, to name a
few), and of course his Southern roots and ongoing faith, which have guided him
since childhood.
The result
is a highly compelling read that captures the essence of a world few of us will
ever have real access to, but one that we all want to know oh so much more
about.
André Leon
Talley on Anna Wintour: 'If she asks me to attend her couture fittings after
this book, I will be surprised'
In this
extract from his explosive new memoir, the former editor-at-large of US Vogue
talks frankly about its legendary editor-in-chief
Vogue
started a podcast in 2016 and Anna Wintour announced me as the host. It began
with a successful roar and a roster of huge guests: Tom Ford, Kim Kardashian,
Marc Jacobs, Alexander Wang. Anna quietly directed the whole thing from her
office. She did not approve of all the interviews I wanted to do, like Missy
Elliott or Maya Rudolph. We instead stuck to insider fashion. Anna came down
and participated if she found my guest interesting enough.
Then, like
a morning fog that suddenly lets up, the podcast no longer existed. No
explanation or compensation. Just sphinx-like silence from Anna. She decimated
me with this silent treatment so many times; it is just the way she resolves
any issue.
I knew I
mattered in our earlier days together. Today, I would love for Anna to say
something human and sincere to me. I have huge psychological scars from my
relationship with this towering woman, who can sit by the queen of England, on
the front row of a fashion show, in her dark glasses and perfect Louise Brooks
clipped coiffure, framing her Mona Lisa mystery face. Who is she? She loves her
two children and I am sure she will be the best grandmother. But so many people
who have worked for her have suffered huge emotional scarring.
I had
suddenly become too old, too overweight and too uncool. I bottled up how hurt I
was, as always
In spring
of 2018, I realised I hadn’t received any emails from Vogue about my red carpet
interviews for the forthcoming Met Gala. For five years, I was assigned to chat
to celebrities on livestream video for Vogue; it was something I looked forward
to all year. I called and asked what was happening.
“Oh, this
is beneath you now,” I was told.
I took the
call in my stride, but it was a terrible way to find out. What truly perplexed
me was that the previous year, Anna had loved my interviews. She told me they
were “great”, which I distinctly remember because she rarely complimented me.
This was
clearly a stone-cold business decision. I had suddenly become too old, too
overweight and too uncool. After decades of loyalty and friendship, Anna should
have had the decency to call or send an email saying, “André, we have had a
wonderful run with your interviews, but we are going to try something new.”
Simple human kindness. No, she is not capable. I bottled up how hurt I was, as
always, but our friendship had just hit a huge iceberg.
My friends
told me just to accept it and take my seat at the gala. And I did, in a
resplendent bespoke Tom Ford double-faced faille cape and cardinal-like coat
with a sash. But for the first time, I didn’t go to Anna’s hotel suite to see
her final touches of hair, makeup, shoes and jewels selection. I took my seat
like any other guest, at a table with Vera Wang, Zac Posen, John Galliano,
Rihanna, Cardi B and Jeremy Scott. A fake smile stretched across my big black
lips, my hands clenched in silent disgust. I didn’t want to create a scene, but
I couldn’t help but think: This is beneath me, to sit here pretending I am OK
with Generalissimo Wintour.
Benny
Medina, a major talent agent, interrupted my internal combusting: “Why weren’t
you on the steps doing your thing? Jennifer [Lopez] was looking for you; when
she didn’t see you, she kept walking.”
“I’m glad
to know that,” I said.
Annette de
la Renta, a long-time friend, entered, in her black guipure lace-flounced
Velázquez evening dress (it was Oscar’s favourite dress he ever made for his
wife). On the way to her table, she gave me a warm hug and I felt the love. I
realised then that, in all my years of knowing Anna Wintour, we had never
shared this feeling.
Anna now
treats me as a former employee. Like any ruthless individual, she maintains her
sang-froid at all times
I felt
suddenly, refreshingly, resolute. I stood up. Vera Wang asked where I was
going; I told her the men’s room, but instead I swept and swirled down the back
corridors of the Met to my waiting car. On the way home, I swore to myself: I
will never attend another Anna Wintour Met Gala for the rest of my life.
You might
think I see myself as the victim. I do not. When we began our united
trajectories at Vogue, Anna treated me with respect and the concern of a
friend. I’ve shared the great moments of her rise to becoming the most powerful
woman in fashion. What drives Anna is a sense of her own ability to survive as
a powerbroker, with sheer brute force, and to sustain an extraordinary level of
success. She has held her position as Vogue’s editor longer than anyone in
history, 30 years.
I was never
officially let go. I remain on the masthead even now, as a contributing editor,
though I rarely go to the office. However, I attend every fitting of Anna’s Met
Gala dress, right down to the Manolo Blahniks. Anna considers it her duty to be
at her best at the Gala. And, despite my wounded ego and insecurity, I have
continued to advise her out of loyalty, no matter if she remains silent. But if
she asks me to attend her couture fittings after my book is published, I will
be surprised.
Anna now
treats me as a former employee. Like any ruthless individual, she maintains her
sang-froid at all times. I believe she is immune to anyone other than the
powerful and famous people who populate the pages of Vogue. She has mercilessly
made her best friends the people highest in their fields: Serena Williams,
Roger Federer, Mr and Mrs George Clooney. I am no longer of value to her.
My hope is
that she will find a way to apologise before I die, or that if I linger on
incapacitated before I pass, she will show up at my bedside, with a hand
clasped into mine, and say, “I love you. You have no idea how much you have
meant to me.”
Interview
André Leon
Talley: 'My story is a fairytale, and in every fairytale there is evil and
darkness'
Hadley
Freeman
Fashion
As US
Vogue’s editor-at-large, he was Anna Wintour’s right-hand man. But then, he
reveals in our exclusive interview, he was ‘thrown under the bus’
André Leon
Talley – legendary fashion editor, prince of excess – has taken a fair few
luxury holidays in his time. First-class flights to Biarritz, private jets,
shopping trips to Florence by Concorde. But sometimes he keeps it simple and
spends a quiet weekend with his friend, the shoe designer Manolo Blahnik, in
Bath “at his residence on the Crescent”.
“Manolo
will be in the kitchen cooking his wonderful cuisine, and I’ll be in the
larder, lacquering my Louis Vuitton cases with yacht varnish, bringing them to
a high shine,” he tells me.
Wait, did
he say “yacht varnish”?
“Yes,
yacht. Y-A-C-H-T. It’s nothing esoteric. I was inspired by Mrs Vreeland, who
told me her suitcases were lacquered in yacht varnish,” he says, referring to
the late Diana Vreeland, a former editor of US Vogue and Talley’s first mentor.
Talley has
more than 50 pieces of Vuitton hand luggage, currently residing unused in his
second home in North Carolina, “because there’s no one at the airports to carry
them now”. So he gets through a lot of lacquer, in pursuit of “this refined,
dandy lifestyle: it’s not about glamour – it’s self-respect, a standard”. Nor
is it about snobbery: “I may have had moments of hauteur. H-A-U-T-E-U-R. But I
was never a snob. You can ask [Princess] Gloria von Thurn und Taxis, or [Lady]
Amanda Harlech!”
The fashion
shows are never short of over-the-top characters, but Talley was always the
first to grab everyone’s attention, whatever room he was in. How could he not?
He was a 6ft 7in African American in a sweeping kaftan, surrounded by thin
white women in cocktail dresses. Next to him would be the thinnest of all, Anna
Wintour, his boss at American Vogue.
Talley was
her creative director and later editor-at-large, and it was said he was the
only person who could tell Wintour if she looked bad in a dress. (“I would
never be so rude as to say, ‘You look bad,’” Talley corrects me. “I would say,
‘Oh, who made that?’ and my eyebrows would raise to the ceiling, and there
would be a silence.”) While other fashion journalists tend to speak in a tone
of elegant boredom, Talley’s voice rang out at every show and party, swinging
between a boom and a shriek.
Many people
who work in fashion come from a relatively privileged background. When I was
21, I was offered a job at US Vogue, and when I balked at the low salary, I was
told, “Most people who work at Vogue have a private income.” Talley did not.
Raised by his grandmother, a maid, in Durham, North Carolina, under Jim Crow
laws, he could barely afford food when he started as a journalist. For decades
he was the only black person on the front row, joined later by the great
fashion illustrator and Vanity Fair’s style director Michael Roberts, and the
Washington Post’s Robin Givhan, the only fashion writer ever to win a Pulitzer.
This gives you an idea of just how talented a person of colour has to be to
break into this still extremely white world.
During his
four decades at the magazine publishing house Condé Nast, Talley wrote landmark
features (including Michelle Obama’s Vogue interview after becoming first lady)
and oversaw some of its most extraordinary shoots, including Naomi Campbell as
Scarlett O’Hara for Vanity Fair, inverting Gone With The Wind’s racial
dynamics. His profiles could be overly chummy – he often interviewed friends –
but they were soaked in his outsized personality, and his shoots were joyful.
For a long time, he was the most powerful black man in fashion, now overtaken
only by Edward Enninful, editor of British Vogue. When Enninful got that job,
he wrote to Talley to tell him: “You paved the way.”
Or, as
Talley puts it: “I scorched the earth with my talent and I let my light shine.”
Now he has written a memoir that blows it all up, like a glorious firecracker
shooting into the sky.
***
“This is
the Guardian, yes?” he says, pronouncing it the French way (“Gwardian”?).
Talley is talking on the phone “from my library/kitchen/laundry room” in his
home in a New York suburb. He has a courtly way of speaking, mixing southern
good manners with faintly European pronunciations; friends are always referred
to as if he were introducing them to an ambassador at a party: “Annette de la
Renta and Oscar de la Renta, very close and dear friends of mine” and “the late
Lee Radziwill, the sister of Jackie Kennedy, who was one of my greatest friends
in my life, and it was not a known fact we were that close”.
“The first
thing I want to say about my book is this,” he begins. “This work, my epistle,
is about not only my contribution to the world, but how did my presence change
that world? And how was my work regarded and disregarded by Anna Wintour? I am
71 years old and I take my story with me wherever I go. The past is always in
the present.”
I read his
new memoir, The Chiffon Trenches, in one hot weekend, barely able to put it
down. The writing is deliciously good and, as a narrator, Talley is both
incisive and dizzyingly unreliable, which adds to the fun. A previous memoir,
ALT, published in 2003, often felt hamstrung by professional loyalties: “I had
to bite my tongue about certain people, for fear of reprisals,” he writes.
There is no tongue-biting here. “This is not a bitchy tell-all,” he says,
although some may disagree. Karl Lagerfeld, who died last year, was Talley’s
close friend for 40 years and showered him with gifts, including $50,000 for
his 50th birthday, because that’s how dandies roll. But in the book, he is
depicted as brilliant yet monstrous, capriciously dropping close friends for no
reason (including, you won’t be surprised to learn, Talley).
“I would
never have talked about this while Karl was alive, out of respect for him and
fear of his reprisals,” he says.
What would
Lagerfeld have done? “He could have decimated my reputation in fashion.” So
instead, Talley has decimated his.
Meanwhile
pre-publication coverage of the book has focused on Talley’s very personal
attack on Wintour, whom he says has inflicted “huge emotional scarring” on many
(including, you again won’t be surprised to learn, Talley) and – worse! – “was
never really passionate about clothes”, caring only about power. Wintour, more
than anyone in the world, can still make or destroy a designer’s career. She is
also a celebrity, recognisable to even the most fashion-phobic. Surely Talley
anticipated the fuss he would cause?
“I did not
anticipate that at all! One of my editors said to me, ‘Do you think Anna
Wintour will talk to you after this comes out?’ I said, ‘Yes, of course! Why
not?’”
Maybe
because you write that she is not capable of “simple human kindness”?
There is
the briefest of pauses. “Well, there’s always hope!” he says.
Talley and
Wintour fell out in 2018, after he discovered he was no longer doing the red
carpet interviews at the annual Met Gala, or those for Vogue’s podcast. He was
replaced at the Met Gala by Liza Koshy, a young YouTube star. “What could this
talented YouTuber offer? Surely she didn’t know what a martingale back is to a
Balenciaga one-seamed coat,” Talley writes.
He believes
he was dropped because “I had suddenly become too old, too overweight and too
uncool”. Yet other Vogue staffers of his generation – stylist Grace Coddington,
writer Hamish Bowles – have resisted dodo status by embracing social media and
other shifts in the weather. Talley is on Instagram, but his page largely
consists of references to the past: photos of Radziwill, Vreeland, Princess
Gloria. The Vogue of the 80s, 90s and early 00s that he describes in his book,
when editors expensed their dry cleaning, is like reading about the last days
of the Raj. But you don’t get to be the longest-serving editor of Vogue without
knowing when something is passé, and Wintour is ruthless: “So much of it has to
do with… having talent that’s right for the moment,” she said in an interview
last year, referring to the way she casts her staff.
But Talley
says he had accepted the world was changing: “If Anna had called and said,
‘André, we’re thinking of going in a different direction [for the Met ball],
it’s important for our brand,’ I would have said, ‘Fine. That’s great.’ And I’d
have come in my Tom Ford cape – I always wear Tom Ford – and enjoyed my
dinner.” But she didn’t; his former confidante had moved on and, he writes, he
never “felt the love” from her.
The
estrangement was a shock because the pair had been allies since they first met
at Vogue in 1983. When she was appointed editor in 1987, Wintour made Talley
creative director. He is very funny about the unspoken rules of working with
her: no meeting must last more than eight minutes; food is not an essential
part of lunch. Once they took a taxi to a restaurant, ordered their meals, and
after 20 minutes Wintour announced they were leaving, before the first courses
had come out.
“Food is
not important to her, so I learned to deal with that,” Talley says. (I can
vouch for this: I was once summoned to a “breakfast meeting” with Wintour at
the Ritz in London. It lasted precisely 25 minutes and we didn’t even get to
coffee.)
But Talley
insists his book is “a love letter to Anna Wintour”, in which case I’d hate to
see what counts as hate mail. He has, he says, “been wrapped in neglect”, yet
the book often suggests the opposite. Over the years, Wintour invited him to
her first wedding (and gave him her bouquet); arranged an interest-free loan
from Condé Nast, so he could buy his grandmother’s house; hired him back after
he briefly left Vogue in the 90s due to a previous, unexplained falling out;
invited him to her children’s weddings.
“Yes, and
she did the intervention and Condé Nast paid for that,” he says, referring to
the many times Wintour packed him off to a health spa and instructed him to
lose weight. (He did, but put it straight back on.)
Didn’t he
feel bullied when she was constantly telling him he was too fat?
“No! I felt
it showed great concern,” he says.
Talley’s
weight has been a problem since his grandmother died in 1989, and he binged on
foods that reminded him of her. “Beautiful pineapple and coconut cakes, pies,
Virginia ham with cloves,” he says, with the same relish as when listing famous
friends or describing designer outfits. “I still have that crutch, eating, and
it’s an addiction.”
I ask if,
in an industry in which the one crime is to be fat, maybe it was also a
rebellion against his lunch-averse boss?
“I never
thought about that, but I’m sure people were looking at me and thinking, ‘How
disgusting!’ She was always sitting next to me, but I wasn’t deliberately
making myself bigger next to these small white women in power,” he says.
Things
reached a head after Talley stormed out of the 2018 Met ball. “It felt like I
was just thrown under the bus. It hurt!” he says now.
But maybe
she thinks he dropped her? He was the one who walked out.
He ponders this,
briefly. “Well, if that were the case, she could call me to say, ‘André, what’s
wrong?’ That’s what I would expect,” he retorts.
Despite all
this, Talley’s name still appears on Vogue’s masthead, as a contributing
editor. “I hope I’m still part of the Vogue family – I haven’t been officially
told I’m not,” he says, horrified at the thought. And he probably is – after
all, Wintour gave him the go-ahead to publish this book. She read an early
draft and asked only that he remove some private details about her children.
She knows being denounced as a she-devil is good for her brand (she turned up
to the premiere of The Devil Wears Prada in, yes, Prada). While outsiders have
long been transfixed by what Talley calls Wintour’s “sphinx-like looks”, the
funniest moments in his book come when we see just how much her staff also
bought into the mythology. In perhaps the weirdest scene, Wintour scribbles a
thank you note to Talley and he sends it to his framer so he can treasure it
for ever. (Alas, the framer failed to appreciate its significance and chucked
it away, much to Talley’s fury.)
Isn’t it
unusual to frame a casual note from someone you’ve worked with for decades, I
ask.
“It was not
an original idea! [US Vogue fashion editor] Tonne Goodman had a letter from
Anna framed,” Talley says.
I suddenly
feel rather sorry for Wintour, trying to get on with her job but surrounded by
people frantically framing every Post-it she discards.
***
Talley’s
book tells the story of his life, which is often the story of the women who
have supported him: his grandmother, Vreeland, Annette de la Renta, Carolina
Herrera, Radziwill and, most of all, Wintour.
I tell him
it sounds as if he spent his life looking for mother figures; maybe he forgot
that Wintour was his boss, not his mother.
“I have
always looked for mother and father figures. I had to look up to something to
go forward,” he says.
A day
later, he sends an email to clarify: “My mother figure to this day is my
grandmother. She gave me unconditional love and her home, her values, were my
arc of safety.”
Talley was
raised by his grandmother, Bennie Frances Davis, while his parents worked in a
different state. As a child, he was bullied by other kids, but adored by
Bennie, although he says she hugged him only twice in his childhood (“too
busy”). Yet she unblinkingly supported this little boy whose idea of a perfect
day was to watch Julia Child cook on TV, then wallpaper his room with pages
torn from Vogue.
His mother
was a different matter: “She never abandoned me, but she didn’t understand me.”
She could be cruel and would mock his experiments with fashion, which became
analogous with escape.
“Every
Sunday I would walk across the railroad tracks into the affluent part of Durham
and buy Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, and go back to my grandmother’s house, read
my magazines. I was allowed to retreat from the bullying and the sexual abuse
into a beautiful world,” he says.
Talley
never told anyone he was sexually abused as a child – not the therapists he has
seen, not even his beloved pastor. But he felt, with this book, that it was
time to explain himself.
“It began
when I was nine years of age, and it was serial. My whole life has been
determined by this trauma. I can say this now,” he says.
His first
abuser was a man who lived on his street, who would tell him, “This is our
secret game.” Later, there were older brothers of friends. He didn’t tell his
grandmother because “it wasn’t something that could be discussed at the dinner
table. And I was afraid I might be considered the perpetrator and sent away to
detention.”
Because of
the abuse, Talley says he has never really had an intimate relationship. In the
late 70s, he writes, he attempted to go to bed with a French journalist: “It
was hopeless, useless. This idea of mounting an individual and causing what I
had only known as deep discomfort... He gave up and we got dressed.” He has, he
says, had romances with men and women as an adult. “But I’ve not had them
successfully. I don’t know how to be intimate and in a relationship, and I
regret that. It comes from this childhood trauma.”
As a young
man in New York, he fled from gay bars, horrified at the overt sexuality and
preferring instead the chaste fun of dancing with Diana Ross at Studio 54. Instead
of looking for sexual connection, he would look for approval from people he
admired. And if he felt any emotional lack, he “filled my life with luxury and
the pursuit of education”.
Talley
studied at North Carolina Central University, then, on a scholarship to the
prestigious Brown University, got a master’s in French Literature. He is still
rightly proud of this, taking care to mention that he has “better degrees than
Anna Wintour”. It was at Brown that he first met people connected to fashion, and
after graduating was taken under Vreeland’s wing in New York. From that point,
it was a dizzying upward rise: working with Andy Warhol at Interview magazine,
reporting from Paris for Women’s Wear Daily and then, at last, Vogue.
I never thought about being a man of colour in
my career until recently. Now this is always in my mind
He felt “at
home” in this over-the-top world, where “there were no victims, only high
octane egos”. Any insecurities could be hidden beneath another custom-made
suit. During his first eight months in Paris, every time he got his weekly
paycheck, he marched straight to the Vuitton store and bought another suitcase.
Surround yourself with enough beauty and you’ll no longer think about ugliness
– that’s the theory, anyway. Talley instantly fell in love with the fashion
set, with their clearly defined rules: you go to these nightclubs, talk about
those subjects, use this lacquer on your suitcases.
He didn’t
think about being a black man in the white world of fashion: “I earned my position
not because I was a beautiful, skinny – you can look at the pictures –
articulate black man. But because I had done my homework and my degrees. I
never thought about being a man of colour in my career until recently.”
Others were
more conscious of it. In the book Talley reflects that, in the 70s, one fashion
PR referred to him as “Queen Kong”. Around that same time, a colleague accused
him of being what he describes as “a black buck” and sleeping with every
designer in Paris, in order to humiliate him out of his job. It worked, and
Talley, mortified and furious, returned to New York. These days, he says he
feels a different responsibility as a man of colour: “I’m a descendant of
enslaved people, and this is always in my mind. Whatever I articulate must in
some way reflect who I am as a black man and what I can impart to the history
of fashion, as this black person who was able to be in the front row.”
Since he’s
taken a step back, he says, his eyes have been opened to who his real friends
are. Some – Ford, Herrera – have stayed true. Others have not. “I do think I’ve
been dropped by Miuccia Prada. That is a big surprise. I have eight crocodile
coats custom-made for me by her, but she has not kept in touch. And that hurts
me.”
Talley is not
the first person to have confused possessions with love, or a career with life.
“I don’t need any more stuff, I have too much in my houses,” he says, then
lists his favourite stuff, including photos of himself with Oprah Winfrey, a
Warhol silkscreen of Vreeland, “Truman Capote’s sofa”. He couldn’t afford more
stuff now anyway; instead of being chauffeured everywhere as he was in his
pomp, a friend called Chad gives him lifts to the supermarket.
For Talley,
elegance is what he learned from Vreeland and the beloved matriarchs of his
past, but fashion is about being heartlessly modern. He says he doesn’t miss
the status he had in his heyday, but rather “the human fellowship of being on
the front row”. But the front row is a powerful signifier of status: being
there means you are one of the most important people in fashion, and this kind
of validation still matters to him. To show love to his “dear friends”, Talley
includes them in his list of best-dressed people. Wintour comes in at number
one – but only when wearing Chanel haute couture.
Talley and
I have been talking for two hours and I would be happy to talk for 10 more.
Fashion will be a blander place if it no longer has space for characters like
him; the expense accounts will probably be smaller, but it will be a less
exciting world. Despite his obsession with luxury and the fashion industry,
Talley remains interested in everything. Non-fashion topics we touch on include
the career of Barbara Stanwyck, the songs of Nina Simone, Barry Jenkins’
adaptation of James Baldwin’s novel If Beale Street Could Talk, Anne
Glenconner’s bestselling memoir, Lady In Waiting (“Exceptional: I come from the
opposite spectrum of the world, but I compare my life to hers, the gilded cage
and the reality”). Does he ever think he would have been happier had he stayed
in North Carolina and worked as a teacher, as Vreeland once worried he’d do?
“Never.
NEVER!” he gasps. “My story is a fairytale of excess, and in every fairytale
there is evil and darkness, but you overcome it with light. I want every person
I come across – the stranger on the street, the church member in the pew next
to me – to feel love. I have not been privy to love in my life, but I want them
to feel that they have received some love from engaging with me, André Leon
Talley.”
Since shops
reopened in France last week, luxury fashion boutiques in the French capital
have been revamping their security measures to create a transformed high-end
experience.
In one of
the first countries in Europe to open for consumers to such an extent, luxury
destinations are becoming self-aware pioneers in inventing a new shopping
environment. The challenge is “to make people today feel charmed as much as
safe”, says Jennifer Cuvillier, the head of style at the department store Le
Bon Marché – no small challenge in the context of global luxury sales projected
to drop by 50% this year, according to a recent report by Baines.
Shoppers
are welcomed to Le Bon Marché by an eerily masked and gloved army of staff –
150 to be precise, one for each visitor at the store’s maximum capacity in
these post-confinement days. A shop assistant privately chaperones visitors
through the almost invariably glass-shielded displays.
In an
ambience lodged between a museum visit and a dystopian sci-fi movie, they
follow the mandatory curated route so as to avoid any potential physical
contact. The tills are shielded by acrylic screens, such as at Chanel on Rue
Cambon.
The majority
of the shops disinfect and quarantine any item that has been touched, for 48 to
72 hours. And, of course, the changing rooms are sanitised after every use. To
counter these rather daunting measures, brands seem to be focusing on offering
personalised and upgraded services: luxury labels including Louis Vuitton and
Christian Dior have begun offering private shopping sessions.
All the
efforts notwithstanding, a week after doors reopened, the initial rush seems to
have faded. While on 11 May, crowds flocked to the boutiques on the Champs
Élysées and Avenue Montaigne – a seemingly endless line of luxury-hungry
shoppers awaiting the opening of Louis Vuitton – the situation has radically
changed: Chanel, Céline and Yves Saint Laurent are all queue-less a week later,
and the boutiques almost empty. Sales assistants at Galeries Lafayette Champs
Élysées and Loewe both confirmed traffic had fallen significantly.
“There was
an initial craze that didn’t last,” notes Rémy Faure, a hair colourist. “One of
my clients went straight out on the 11th to buy an electric-blue Kelly bag at
Hermès. But a lot of people have started thinking more critically about their
life choices and needs during the confinement.”
Serge
Carreira, a fashion lecturer at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, says:
“With the absence of tourists, who make up the large majority of luxury sales,
boutiques are empty.”
Shopping is
not going away, he says, but it is changing: “Those who shop will do it
differently, more determinately; it won’t be a heat of the moment decision but
something thought out.”
Coming out
of Galeries Lafayettes Champs Élysées, Samantha, 34, and Elena, 33, suggest
that the slump in shopping is down to the fact that there is nowhere to show
off any new outfits. “À quoi bon?” (What’s the point?) grumbles Samantha.
Theatres, cinemas, restaurants, cafes and bars are closed. “The only places to
visit are shops,” adds Elena, for whom lèche-vitrine (literally “window
licking”, as the French call browsing) is one of the few outdoor activities
available in the city now.
According
to Carreira, the slowness could be due to habits gained in the lockdown:
“Shopping addicts shopped as much as they could during the confinement, many
people have adopted the habit and, one can assume, don’t see the point of going
out to a city still with a ghost-like feeling.”
Luxury stores open in Paris that’s empty of tourists
as France eases coronavirus lockdown restrictions
Luxury Parisian shops are testing customers’ appetite
for splashing out on goods again, though the dearth of international tourists
remains a major drag
Brands used
new hygiene routines, with Louis Vuitton steaming clothes tried on and
quarantining handbags; Christian Dior erected Plexiglas shields at tills
Shoppers,
using social distancing, wait in line to enter a Louis Vuitton shop in Paris,
France. The French began leaving their homes and apartments for the first time
in two months as the country cautiously lifted its lockdown restrictions.
Photo: APShoppers, using social distancing, wait in line to enter a Louis
Vuitton shop in Paris, France. The French began leaving their homes and
apartments for the first time in two months as the country cautiously lifted
its lockdown restrictions. Photo: AP
Shoppers,
using social distancing, wait in line to enter a Louis Vuitton shop in Paris,
France. The French began leaving their homes and apartments for the first time
in two months as the country cautiously lifted its lockdown restrictions.
Photo: AP
At an
Hermes store on one of Paris’s swankiest streets, shop assistants greeted
customers through face masks with sanitiser gels and a polite refrain: “May I
refresh your hands?”
As France
began to exit its strict coronavirus lockdown, many of its luxury brands also
opened their doors, giving sanitary protocols a makeover and testing people’s
appetite for splurging after a shutdown that has rocked economies worldwide.
At Louis
Vuitton’s store on Paris’s grand Place Vendome square, which sells everything
from €645 (US$700) cocktail shakers to jewellery worth hundreds of thousands, a
few local clients kept business ticking over.
“It’s a
friend’s birthday and we’re buying her a wallet,” said Paris resident Hajar.
“It’ll be the first time we’ve seen each other in two months.”
At the
Hermes shop on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore, there was even a semblance of
business as usual. A shop assistant discreetly kept count of the number of people
milling around at any one time – around 50 at one point in early afternoon,
across two floors. And one shopper said she had been told to make an
appointment if she wanted to discuss buying a pricey “Kelly” handbag.
“They
always make things difficult at Hermes,” said Blessing Williams, a 23-year-old
model from Nigeria who lives in Paris. She still came away with a pair of
sandals.
But travel
restrictions and the resulting dearth of international tourists will remain a
major drag for months to come on luxury shopping capitals such as Paris, or
Milan, where fashion firms are set to reopen stores on May 18.
Depending
on the brand, foreign tourists usually make up between 35 and 55 per cent of
luxury labels’ revenue in Europe, according to Jefferies analyst Flavio Cereda.
In Germany,
where small stores have been open for three weeks, well-heeled shoppers looking
for luxury are still few and far between, suit maker Hugo Boss said last week.
The plush changing cabins at Vuitton’s Vendome shop, now regularly disinfected,
were a lot less busy than usual, assistants say.
A nearby
Chanel store was quieter than before the crisis too, staff say. Hermes boss
Axel Dumas, mingling with employees at the Faubourg Saint-Honore shop, declined
to comment on how the first few hours of trade had gone.
Despite
signs of recovery in China, the industry’s biggest market, global sales of
luxury goods are expected to slump by up to 50 per cent this year, the
consultancy Bain forecast last week.
For now,
brands are focused on easing into new hygiene routines, including making the
use of face masks compulsory.
At Vuitton
in Paris, owned by the LVMH conglomerate, clothes that are tried on are set
aside to be steamed, and handbags are put in a 48-hour quarantine.
Cleaning
protocols for other items vary, depending on how close they come to people’s
faces or the materials involved. Christian Dior, another LVMH label, and
Chanel, a privately owned group, have also erected Plexiglas shields by the
tills.
