ANDRE LEON TALLEY Editor credits women with his success

The editor at large for Vogue was raised by his maternal grandmother.
NEW YORK (AP) -- The first thing Vogue editor at large Andre Leon Talley notices about passers-by isn't their elegant clothes or expensive handbags -- it's their shoes.
"You can tell everything about a person by what he puts on his feet," Talley says with a laugh, because shoes are an individual's "soul" and "sole."
"I think that my Manolos suggest my love for elegance and luxury," says Talley, who's wearing a navy suit, blue-and-white polka-dot tie and gray oxfords by Manolo Blahnik.
But the 6-foot-7 Talley, who carries his large frame with dignity, doesn't let fashion get in the way of good manners. At cramped runway shows, he'll roll his luxurious fur coat into a ball and stuff it under a chair so that he doesn't crowd others.
No tales to tell
Likewise, the 54-year-old "Stylefax" columnist doesn't dish about late nights at New York's Studio 54 in the 1970s or what goes on in the offices of Vogue, where Anna Wintour is editor in chief.
"The person who I am doesn't gossip," says Talley, who has worked as fashion news editor and creative director at Vogue, and also as Paris bureau chief for Women's Wear Daily.
Instead, his new book, "A.L.T.: A Memoir" (Villard), focuses on the two most important women in his life -- his maternal grandmother, Bennie Frances Davis, who cleaned dormitories at Duke University, and fashion's Diana Vreeland.
Regal bearing
"Bennie Frances Davis may have looked like a typical, African-American domestic worker to many of the people who saw her on an ordinary day," he writes, "but I, who could see her soul, could also see her secret: that even while she wore a hair net and work clothes to scrub toilets and floors, she wore an invisible diadem."
Talley was raised by Davis in Durham, N.C., after his parents divorced. "My grandmother radiated kindness and love. The sparkle from her invisible diamonds could light up the darkest corner of your soul."
After he moved to New York in the 1970s, Talley met Diana Vreeland, former editor in chief of Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, and director of the Metropolitan Museum of Arts' Costume Institute.
They became such close friends that Talley read to Vreeland even before her eyesight started to weaken in the late 1980s.
"Mrs. Vreeland and my grandmother lived their lives a world apart, but with a common purpose: They lived to help others," he writes. "By helping others, they did not live in vain."
Q.: Both your grandmother and Diana Vreeland died in 1989. Are you lonely?
Talley: I do feel lonely. I'm a very nostalgic person. ... But I hope to again meet some great, great mentors and, indeed, I have met some, and I do think I will always meet great people.
Q.: What do you consider to be the ultimate luxury item?
A.: A clean, fabulous bed with white Egyptian cotton sheets.
Q.: Have you always worked in fashion?
A.: In the summer when all the poor people set up tents on the National Mall -- it was 1968, I think -- I was a park ranger. I made sure people didn't deface or defame the Lincoln Memorial. ... The next summer I was a park ranger at Fort Washington where I re-enacted torchlight vignettes and I talked about the role of slaves in the building of the fort. I wore a Civil War outfit that looked like a soldier!
Q.: Food and fashion -- do they go together?
A.: Food is not important in the fashion world where you are supposed to look like an asparagus. ... In my world, it's about butter poundcake, and fried chicken, and potato salad and hot biscuits. ... It's hard to break away from that for a lettuce sandwich.
Q.: What does an individual's shoes say about that person?
Talley: If it's a man and you can see the reflection of his face on the top of his black shoes, it means they've been polished to perfection. This is a man with impeccable taste with a great sense of himself and a sense of elegance that just might be missing from a man who has on the perfect pair of white hip-hop sneakers.
If it's a woman and she's wearing shoes that hurt ... well, shoes that hurt are very fashionable!"