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André Leon Talley, a pioneering former creative director and editor for Vogue magazine, was well known for his visionary contributions to all things beauty and his flamboyant personality that gained him many “friends” in the fashion industry.

But with his death comes the revealing of the fashion industry’s true nature. The curtains that conceal this beautiful, mysterious, and elitist industry that many dream of, yet many will not make it into, have finally fallen.

With nearly five decades of his life dedicated to the fashion world and changing the way we see beauty, André Leon Talley is remembered as a powerhouse and a hero for many “outsiders” of the high-fashion world.

Talley, grew up as a Black boy in poverty during segregation in America, yet he managed to become one of the few and coveted African Americans in the highest towers of the fashion industry, or as he put it “the only black man among a sea of white titans of style.”

Since his death, a torrent of love and recognition of his many accomplishments and larger than life personality have poured in from many celebrities, close friends of Talley, and fashion authorities.

But his death revealed that even though this icon was swathed in luxurious capes and fabrics and was held in high esteem among his peers and generations after him, the industry he gave so much of his life to demanded all he had and threw him away afterwards.

Many articles and opinions have since surfaced the internet revealing that Talley died facing eviction, fighting bankruptcy, and suffering from isolation and watching friends in the industry turn away from him once Anna Winter, the Editor-in-Chief of Vogue, most powerful woman in the industry, and Talley’s longtime “frenemy” exiled him for being “too old, too overweight, too uncool.”

It’s common knowledge that the fashion industry is a cutthroat place that have led many prominent designers and fashion authorities to take their own lives. While Talley died from health complications, it’s not farfetched to believe that the heartbreak from being used and thrown out, without building a support group for himself or even finding a partner was another factor.

“There’ve been some very cruel and racist moments in my life in the world of fashion,” said Talley in an interview with New York Times in 2018. “Incidents when people were harmful and mean-spirited and terrifying.”

“You don’t make a loud noise,” Mr. Talley in an NPR interview in 2020. “You don’t scream. You don’t get up and say, look — hey, I’m loud. I’m Black, and I’m proud. You just do it. And then it’s recognized, and somehow it impacts the culture.”