A.L.T: a Memoir.

by Andre Leon Talley Villard Books, April 2003 $24.95, ISBN 0-375-50828-7

Readers of Vogue will be familiar with Andre Leon Talley's whimsical and informative "StyleFax" column in which he talks about everything from John Galliano's new boutique in Paris to the latest Manolo Blahnik shoe. He is whip smart (he holds an M.A. in French Studies from Brown University) and never afraid to rake designers over the coals for not using black models on their runways. He is ever ready to promote the efforts of deserving African American designers and models. But Talley also is a true fashion historian. This gives his writing a palpable credibility and intelligence.

Talley is the African American fashion authority; no one rise has risen to his ranks. The pleasant discovery here is of Talley the man.

A.L.T. is really Talley's love song to the two extraordinary women in his life. First, his beloved grandmother Bennie Frances Davis, a hardworking maid who kept a spotless house, dressed to the nines for church, and adored and supported her grandbaby. And then there is Diana Vreeland, a onetime editor-in-chief of Vogue and director of the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, who always had time to devote to her beloved protege.

He had lived for Ms. Vreeland's take on the world as he poured over the pages of beautiful people that he would one day befriend. The fact that he wound up working as her assistant at the Costume Institute was quite a coup. We learn about his stints as a writer for Andy Warhol's Interview magazine, his nights of sleeping on the floor of his friends apartments because those glamorous first jobs didn't pay, his work at W magazine and his years spent in Paris. All of those helped on the way to his present coveted position as editor-at-large for Vogue.

This is not a big chatty, gossipy fashion bite, but there are some juicy tidbits and some name dropping of Talley's famous friends. Talley does not dwell on the difficulties of being a black man in primarily white world.

For a man who fought in the "chiffon trenches" of fashion for more than three decades, he can still step back enough to acknowledge the frivolity of fashion, and yet he is also acutely aware of, and fiercely defends, the importance of the pleasure that beautiful clothing and beautiful things in general can bring into our lives.