New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd had some (direct and unbidden) style help from late Vogue editor Andre Leon Talley.
Dowd recalled during a 92nd Street Y event that the outspoken creative director — who also served as a “America’s Next Top Model” judge — came down with the flu while in Washington D.C. in 2012 and needed a place to crash for a week.
Dowd says Talley stayed with her and “started yelling at me that my closets were messy, and that I couldn’t go out in wrinkled clothes.”
“He’d say, ‘Come back here and iron that!’” she said during the interview with Christine Baranski.
Dowd has a new book coming out called “Notorious: Portraits of Stars from Hollywood, Culture, Fashion, and Tech,” which features her conversations with people like Uma Thurman, Tina Fey, Larry David, Elon Musk, Bob Iger, Tom Ford and Talley.
“He was very sort of demanding, but also he was the coolest, most fun person,” Dowd said of Talley.
“By the end of the week, we were just lying in bed watching old French movies,” she told the crowd. “He had an advanced degree in French literature. We were critiquing Jeanne Moreau’s clothes and Catherine Deneuve’s stockings, and it was really one of the best times I’ve ever had.”
Talley, who began working at the fashion bible 1983, died in 2022 at the age of 73 from COVID.
His funeral was attended by Anna Wintour, Naomi Campbell, Marc Jacobs, Karlie Kloss, Martha Stewart, Diane von Furstenberg and more.