André Leon Talley: My relationship with Anna Wintour ‘is in an iceberg’
André Leon Talley just can’t stop talking about Anna Wintour.
Talley, 70, slammed the Vogue doyenne in his new memoir — due out Tuesday — and on Monday told Gayle King during a segment for “CBS This Morning” that “I think my relationship is in an iceberg with her,” adding, “I hope that it will not be that forever.”
As Page Six revealed, those around Wintour, also 70, believe she would be extremely hurt by the book, “The Chiffon Trenches,” which Talley claimed is a “love letter” to her — despite also arguing she is “not capable of simple human kindness.”
During Monday’s broadcast, King asked him to clarify the contradiction.
“I looked at that André and I went, ‘Love letter?’ If that’s your idea of a love letter I’m thinking I don’t want you to like me at all,” King said. “How do you explain that? I thought this must be very painful for her to read. Seriously.”
“Indeed, it is probably very hard for her to read,” Talley replied. “It was painful for me to write this.”
“But it is a love letter because it’s a love letter about the joys as well as the lows of my life. And the joys of my life have been with Anna Wintour,” he explained. “I owe to her the pioneering role that I had of a creative director of Vogue. I was the first black man to ever be named such. I owe that to Anna Wintour. I owe her much. And I think, in turn, I think she owes me.”
When asked to elaborate on what Wintour owes Talley, he replied: “She owes me kindness and simple grace and being decent when things go south.”
“I understand changes are made in a corporate institution at Vogue,” Talley said. “When she decides that I’m no longer working on the carpet for the Met Gala, just call me and say ‘André we’re moving in a new direction, you’ve been wonderful, I love what you’re doing, but now we’re going with the young influencers who know nothing because they have 20 million followers on YouTube.’ Just say it to me. No one had come to say to me why I was taken off the red carpet.”