Added Screening, Sunday, January 14, 6:30pm, Regal
film synopsis
Draped in capes and caftans, the glorious giant André Leon Talley is an icon of the fashion world, recognizable on runways from Paris to New York. A flamboyant 6’6” black man, dispensing bon mots of fashion wisdom with exuberant flair, Talley, as an editor and contributor to Vogue, has reigned for decades as an unimpeachable arbiter of style. Kate Novack’s fond, delicious documentary revels in Talley’s larger than life, stereotype-shattering persona while revealing the complex man behind the myth. Raised by a loving grandmother in Durham, North Carolina, educated at Brown, and mentored by his surrogate mother Diana Vreeland, Talley turned his life into a triumph of self-invention, but Novack’s gaze allows glimpses of the price this gay, black, boundary-bursting prodigy had to pay. With testimonies from such fans and friends as Anna Wintour, Tom Ford, Fran Liebowitz, Manolo Blahnik and Valentino, this rousing documentary delivers both the plumage and the poignancy.