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The Chiffon Trenches: A Memoir

About the Book

The Chiffon Trenches: A Memoir

From the pages of Vogue to the runways of Paris, this “captivating” (Time) memoir by a legendary style icon captures the fashion world from the inside out, in its most glamorous and most cutthroat moments.

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 50 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 and 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.

The Chiffon Trenches: A Memoir
by André Leon Talley

  • Publication Date: April 27, 2021
  • Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction
  • Paperback: 304 pages
  • Publisher: Ballantine Books
  • ISBN-10: 059312927X
  • ISBN-13: 9780593129272