Anna Wintour, the former right arm: “She is ruthless and unable to be nice”

Born in 1949 in North Carolina, Talley soon managed to establish himself in the fashion world, becoming one of the first African-Americans to achieve important roles. In the 1970s she worked for Andy Warhol Interview magazine and in the early 2000s she came to Vogue directed by Grace Mirabella and there she met then-creative director Anna Wintour. The big occasion came in 1988 when the latter, while becoming Vogue’s number one, gave Talley his role (as creative director). Wintour entrusted the first cover to African Americans in 1989 with Madonna as the protagonist. An iron deal was born and soon Talley became a great friend to famous stylists like Karl Lagerfeld and Yves Saint Laurent and attended the jet set.

Talley always shows deference to her director and, especially the early years, subjugated by her: Vogue meetings ended in eight minutes, she writes. If they lasted more than 15, something had gone very wrong. The description that makes Anna Wintour not far from the character played by Meryl Streep in the 2006 movie The Devil Wears Prada, but Talley disputes a few anecdotes: No one actually threw their coats and never used vulgar language. You certainly couldn’t be drunk in the newsroom. Talley feels closer to Wintour: on the day of the director’s mother’s death, he flies to the UK and attends the funeral. Wintour begins to cry and cradles her in his arms.

The report’s crunches begin to play out in 2016. Wintour summons Talley, meanwhile named general editor, to point out that he’s grown too fat and orders him: You have to go to the gym. Talley obeys, takes a personal trainer, and tries the cabbage diet – basically you just eat cabbage, she writes. Too bad it didn’t work. The big problem with the food relationship continues … Wintour doesn’t accept his weight out of control and sends him to rehab at the Duke Diet and Fitness Center in Durham, but there’s nothing to be done. Wintour slowly withdraws the former disciple from his graces and becomes colder and colder. In 2018, the break when Talley finally discovers she won’t be conducting the red carpet interviews at the Met Gala as usual, the task was entrusted to 24-year-old YouTuber Liza Koshy: after decades of loyalty and friendship … Anna should have. have the decency and kindness to call me or email me saying “Andr, I think we had a wonderful response with your interviews, but now let’s try something new.”

In some passages, Talley seems to bury the ax, in others she returns to the charge because for years Anna was the most important woman in my universe and then I threw myself on the sidewalk: I got too old, too fat, it was no longer cold enough for Anna Wintour – he writes -. Anna despises everyone except the famous and influential people who populate the pages of Vogue. I wonder if when she comes home alone at night she is not happy. You feel lonely Then he said: Today I would like you to tell me something human and sincere. I have great emotional and psychological scars due to my relationship with this imposing and influential woman. I know, nothing lasts forever. Simple kindness would have been enough. Unfortunately no, she is not capable.