André Leon Talley opens up about pay disparity at Vogue

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Legendary fashion figure Andre’ Leon Talley talked about experiencing wage disparity while working at Vogue magazine on The Tamron Hall Show.

Talley appeared on the show Monday, where he said: “I just found out two weeks ago from someone of authority that women at Vogue, high, high rate fashion editors made close to a million dollars. I never made that much in a year. I made almost $300,000, but people on the same level, maybe they were doing more work than the fashion photoshoots, were making $900,000 a year.”

“They don’t make that anymore,” Talley continued, “but this is, this what comes when you live in America, when you’re a Black person, you have to wake up and you know there’s a double standard.”

Talley is the long-acclaimed former creative director and American editor-at-large of Vogue. He was the magazine’s fashion news director for four years and its creative director from 1988 to 1995. Long considered an iconic force in fashion. Talley has appeared in films, documentaries — including serving as the focus of 2017’s The Gospel According To Andre — and authored three books.

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The style god has said he and longtime Vogue editor Anna Wintour are not as close as they once were, however, he clarified recently, saying, “We are friendly, and we care about each other.”

Talley has called his relationship with Wintour “an iceberg.”

Last spring, he released his revealing book, The Chiffon Trenches: A Memoir, which he previously called a “love letter” to Wintour yet added there would be parts of the book “painful” for her to read. The Chiffon Trenches talks about Talley’s start in fashion in New York City in the 1970s, specifically chronicling his experiences with racism in the industry. He also shared that he’d sent Wintour a proof of the book before its publication, and she complimented it — and the things she wanted to be removed were.

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“I owe to her the pioneering role that I had of a creative director of Vogue. I was the first black man to ever be named such. I owe that to Anna Wintour. I owe her much. And I think, in turn, I think she owes me,” Talley said on CBS This Morning.

Talley was replaced in 2018 as the host of the Met Ball. The celebrated fashion event returns this year after a year off due to the coronavirus pandemic. The 2021 Met Ball, slated for September, will be a smaller, more intimate celebration for the opening of the Costume Institute’s next exhibition, “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion.”

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