There’s something soothing about sinking into the escapist pleasures of even the most unadventurous fashion documentaries, which is not to say that Kate Novack’s The Gospel According to André is boring, only that I’m a sucker for this sort of film. Enjoyment of this kind of nonfiction film will vary according to pre-existing knowledge of its subject; for the uninitiated, André Leon Talley is a 68-year-old former creative director and contributing editor to American Vogue. An African American, gay man from the south, Talley is tall, broad, rather loud and fabulously dressed (dove grey leather gloves paired with an enormous, inky fur coat are perfect, pure luxury). It could be said that he has always stood out.
Novack casts him as a man of exceptional taste, opening the film with his reading of a quote from the famed fashion editor Diana Vreeland, Talley’s mentor and former boss, a mother figure he affectionately, insistently refers to as “Mrs Vreeland”. Fashion is fleeting, style remains, said Vreeland, and indeed the film attempts to apply her mantra, more interested in consecrating Talley as a man of taste and influence than it is probing for gossip or weakness.
