The Chiffon Trenches: A Memoir

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • 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.

“The Chiffon Trenches honestly and candidly captures fifty sublime years of fashion.”—Manolo Blahnik

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR • Fortune • Garden & Gun • New York Post

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 impacted him over the decades, along with intimate stories of those he turned to for inspiration (Diana Vreeland, Diane von Fürstenberg, Lee Radziwill, to name a few), and of course his Southern roots and faith, which 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 was the indomitable creative director at Vogue during the magazine’s rising dominance as the world’s fashion bible. Over the course of five decades, his byline also appeared in Vanity Fair, HG, Interview, and Women’s Wear Daily. He was the author of two memoirs, The Chiffon Trenches and A.L.T., and several illustrated works, including Little Black Dress, A.L.T.: 365+, and Oscar de la Renta: His Legendary World of Style. André was also the subject of the documentary The Gospel According to André. For his significant contributions to the arts, he was granted France’s distinguished honor of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters). He received his MA in French studies from Brown and served on the board of trustees for the Savannah College of Art and Design for twenty years. André Leon Talley died in 2022.