Last Wednesday evening saw the prolific André Leon Talley again in the back room of the new Rizzoli bookstore on 26th and Broadway, signing his new book on the life and creations of his dear friend, Oscar de la Renta: His Legendary World of Style. (It had only been a week or so since his last talk at Rizzoli, there with another tome and another friend—Manolo Blahnik—as its focus.)
The publisher’s back room was lushly appointed for the occasion but could hardly compete with the grandeur of the shopwindow, which saw two lucky mannequins facelessly lounging in two De la Renta creations—favorites hand-selected by Talley. One was a luxuriant tulle exemplar. “I call it The Storm,” said Talley. “It was sort of an undercurrent in his collection. As you can see, it’s just tulle, layers and layers of tulle. It’s one of the most exquisite dresses that he ever, ever made,” replete with a swirling burst of fabric at the waist. “A chou,” Talley informed me. “A French term—it’s an explosion of something within the design. C-h-o-u. Chou.”
The other De la Renta—“this beautiful gypsy Spanish taffeta dress, a flamenco skirt and sapphire blue blouse”—had been only recently donated to the archives from a private client who commissioned it for her 40th wedding anniversary. Talley fixated on the skirt particularly. “Look at where exactly he places the ruffles,” he said with hushed wonder. “Only Oscar could do that—he had the training. Lanvin, you know.”
Vogue.com was able to steal a few early minutes with the author before the crowds arrived for a brief insight into his writing process—but first and foremost, for a little snapshot into the famous friendship between him and De la Renta, which spanned decades. “The thing about Oscar is that he was very loyal and a very caring friend,” said Talley. “If you were his friend, he cared about you in all aspects.” De la Renta gave Talley gardening advice, and even designed a four-poster mahogany bed for him. Mostly, there were meals together—countless meals. “I would often spend Thanksgiving at home with him and his wife and [his son] Moises. And it would just be the four of us,” said Talley. “Then I remember so fondly dinners at the Ritz hotel in Paris, him working on his Balmain collection, and he’d be in his jeans and a cashmere sweater and Tod’s driving shoes. And he’d call me and say, ‘André, I don’t want to eat alone. I don’t even want to go to a Chinese restaurant alone. Will you go out to dinner with me?’ Or we would have creamed spinach and a hamburger in his room—he was shocked at the prices at the Ritz. Shocked.”
Mr. Talley’s famous memory is a beautifully visual one, with a keen eye for detail. When asked how he recalls Mr. de la Renta, Talley replied, “I remember him always in an impeccable beige Caraceni suit and beautiful Lobb loafers, and always in an oxford blue chambray shirt. He was of faultless grooming, faultless. He wasn’t a dandy, he was just correctly dressed. When you went to him for dinner, he might be in a nice cashmere sweater and flannel trousers and always driving shoes at home—not slippers, but Tod’s.” If it conjures a world that seems impossible, that’s by design. “He would surround himself with beauty—he had the most beautiful gardens in Santo Domingo,” Talley said of De la Renta. “And, as Voltaire said, one must cultivate one’s own garden.”
Talley, already a memoirist and master of the retrospective, wrote the whole book in nearly one single cathartic night. “I wrote it out of love,” he said. “It simply flowed from me as a constant strain of memories. It was easy for me to write.” What could have otherwise been overwhelming was instead a meditative journey. “I hold all the details,” said Talley, explaining his process. “And I sit, and when I think about the time I saw Oscar doing the merengue in the Dominican Republic at the top of a mountain, it’s very easy. When I sit and think about what he said to me at a certain time, it’s very easy.”
In the end, this reporter asked Talley to do an ethically complicated but always fun thing—write his own blurb for his own book. Mr. Talley seemed to almost expect the question. “This is a book that makes the heart smile,” he said, looking up to the vaulted ceilings, “as the man created clothes for women to make their hearts smile. He only wanted to create beauty; he didn’t want to create avant-gardism.” He paused just a moment. “He only wanted to create beauty.” Does he think this will live on as his great friend’s legacy? “Yes,” said Talley, softly trailing off. “I do.”
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