
The Chiffon Trenches
A Memoir
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Narrated by:
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André Leon Talley
About this listen
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the pages of Vogue to the runways of Paris, this “captivating” (Time) memoir by a legendary style icon captures the fashion world from the inside out, in its most glamorous and most cutthroat moments.
“The Chiffon Trenches honestly and candidly captures fifty sublime years of fashion.”—Manolo Blahnik
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR • Fortune • Garden & Gun • New York Post
During André Leon Talley’s first magazine job, alongside Andy Warhol at Interview, a fateful meeting with Karl Lagerfeld began a decades-long friendship with the enigmatic, often caustic designer. Propelled into the upper echelons by his knowledge and adoration of fashion, André moved to Paris as bureau chief of John Fairchild’s Women’s Wear Daily, befriending fashion's most important designers (Halston, Yves Saint Laurent, Oscar de la Renta). But as André made friends, he also made enemies. A racially tinged encounter with a member of the house of Yves Saint Laurent sent him back to New York and into the offices of Vogue under Grace Mirabella.
There, he eventually became creative director, developing an unlikely but intimate friendship with Anna Wintour. As she rose to the top of Vogue’s masthead, André also ascended, and soon became the most influential man in fashion.
The Chiffon Trenches offers a candid look at the who’s who of the last fifty years of fashion. At once ruthless and empathetic, this engaging memoir tells with raw honesty the story of how André not only survived the brutal style landscape but thrived—despite racism, illicit rumors, and all the other challenges of this notoriously cutthroat industry—to become one of the most renowned voices and faces in fashion.
Woven throughout the book are also André’s own personal struggles that impacted him over the decades, along with intimate stories of those he turned to for inspiration (Diana Vreeland, Diane von Fürstenberg, Lee Radziwill, to name a few), and of course his Southern roots and faith, which guided him since childhood.
The result is a highly compelling read that captures the essence of a world few of us will ever have real access to, but one that we all want to know oh so much more about.
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Critic reviews
“The joy of reading about André Leon Talley’s journey in The Chiffon Trenches is coupled with knowing that he survived and thrived by being revered and respected by those at every level of fashion. That never goes out of style.”—Tamron Hall, award-winning journalist and host of Tamron Hall
“André Leon Talley’s fantastic memoir, The Chiffon Trenches, is a riveting, enthralling, and heartbreaking read, tracing the incredible arc of his life from growing up in the Jim Crow South to what it took for him to come to New York and, thanks to his vast talent and work ethic, gain the respect and recognition of the legends of his day, including Diana Vreeland, Andy Warhol, Karl Lagerfeld, and Anna Wintour. André has lived life at the epicenter of the most glamourous worlds of fashion in both Paris and New York; and now this book is one more chapter in his amazing legacy.”—Wendy Goodman, design editor of New York
“André Leon Talley is the preeminent fashion historian of his generation. His rare quality of mind and the depth of his knowledge infuse The Chiffon Trenches with a spirited voice, keen sensibility, and cultural intellect. The poly-sonic narrative incorporates histories of styles and collections; reveals fashion politics imbued with racism, power plays, fears, and ignorance; and describes with compelling honesty the impact of these forces on his black body.”—Dr. Janis A. Mayes, African/Diasporan Francophone Studies, Syracuse University
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Story
As a child, Anna Wintour was a tomboy with no apparent interest in clothing but, seduced by the miniskirts and bob haircuts of swinging 1960s London, she grew into a fashion-obsessed teenager. Her father, an influential newspaper editor, loomed large in her life, and once he decided she should become editor-in-chief of Vogue, she never looked back.
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WONDERFUL, SPLENDID, I LOVED IT!!
- By Liz Jardine on 05-13-22
By: Amy Odell
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A Visible Man
- A Memoir
- By: Edward Enninful
- Narrated by: Edward Enninful
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
When Edward Enninful became the first Black editor-in-chief of British Vogue, few in the world of fashion wanted to confront how it failed to represent the world we live in. But Edward, a champion of inclusion throughout his life, rapidly changed that. Now, whether it’s putting first responders, octogenarians or civil rights activists on the cover of Vogue, or championing designers and photographers of colour, Edward Enninful has cemented his status as one of his world’s most important changemakers.
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Discovery!
- By Introspective on 01-04-23
By: Edward Enninful
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Slaves to Fashion
- Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity
- By: Monica L. Miller
- Narrated by: Janina Edwards
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Slaves to Fashion is a cultural history of the black dandy, from his emergence in Enlightenment England to his contemporary incarnations in the cosmopolitan art world. Interpreting performances and representations of black dandyism in particular cultural settings and literary and visual texts, Monica L. Miller emphasizes the importance of sartorial style to black identity formation in the Atlantic diaspora.
By: Monica L. Miller
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Gods and Kings
- The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano
- By: Dana Thomas
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Sastre
- Length: 15 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In February 2011 John Galliano, the lauded head of Christian Dior, imploded with a drunken, anti-Semitic public tirade. Exactly a year earlier, celebrated designer Alexander McQueen took his own life three weeks before his women's wear show. Both were casualties of the war between art and commerce that has raged within fashion for the last two decades.
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Captivating
- By kpaige on 04-15-15
By: Dana Thomas
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Empresses of Seventh Avenue
- World War II, New York City, and the Birth of American Fashion
- By: Nancy MacDonell
- Narrated by: Gail Shalan
- Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Empresses of Seventh Avenue will tell the story of how these extraordinary women put American fashion on the world stage and created the template for modern style—and how the nearly $500 billion American fashion industry, the largest in the world, could not have accrued its power and wealth without their farsightedness and determination.
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Rich history, well told
- By Water79 on 05-30-25
By: Nancy MacDonell
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The Beautiful Fall
- Fashion, Genius, and Glorious Excess in 1970s Paris
- By: Alicia Drake
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 16 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the 1970s, Paris fashion exploded like a champagne bottle left out in the sun. Amid sequins and longing, celebrities and aspirants flocked to the heart of chic, and Paris became a hothouse of revelry, intrigue, and searing ambition. At the center of it all were fashion’s most beloved luminaries - Yves Saint Laurent, the reclusive enfant terrible, and Karl Lagerfeld, the flamboyant freelancer with a talent for reinvention - and they divided Paris into two fabulous halves.
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Fun and immersive -- despite the narrator
- By SBG on 01-10-21
By: Alicia Drake
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Grace: A Memoir
- A Memoir
- By: Grace Coddington
- Narrated by: Grace Coddington
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
Beautiful. Willful. Charming. Blunt. Grace Coddington’s extraordinary talent and fierce dedication to her work as creative director of Vogue have made her an international icon. Known through much of her career only to those behind the scenes, she might have remained fashion’s best-kept secret were it not for The September Issue, the acclaimed 2009 documentary that turned publicity-averse Grace into a sudden, reluctant celebrity. Grace’s palpable engagement with her work brought a rare insight into the passion that produces many of the magazine’s most memorable shoots.
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Grace a Memoir
- By Placeholder on 02-13-13
By: Grace Coddington
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Fashionopolis
- The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes
- By: Dana Thomas
- Narrated by: Dana Thomas
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In Fashionopolis, Thomas sees renewal in a host of developments, including printing 3-D clothes, clean denim processing, smart manufacturing, hyperlocalism, fabric recycling - even lab-grown materials. From small-town makers and Silicon Valley whizzes to such household names as Stella McCartney, Levi’s, and Rent the Runway, Thomas highlights the companies big and small that are leading the crusade.
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Very informative and optimistic
- By cannonwall on 01-05-20
By: Dana Thomas
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Dress Your Best Life
- How to Use Fashion Psychology to Take Your Look - and Your Life - to the Next Level
- By: Dawnn Karen
- Narrated by: Jeanette Illidge
- Length: 10 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Dawnn Karen is a pioneer in the field of fashion psychology, and she has spent years studying the relationship between attire and attitude. In Dress Your Best Life she goes far beyond well-known makeover advice, pushing you to ask yourself: Are my clothing choices hurting me or helping me to achieve my life goals? Her book will help you discover your unique style story, become a smarter shopper, use color to your advantage, match moods to clothing choices, and embrace new or different standards of beauty.
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A lot of notes regarding racism
- By Vid Elena on 08-28-21
By: Dawnn Karen
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Make It Ours
- Crashing the Gates of Culture with Virgil Abloh
- By: Robin Givhan
- Narrated by: Robin Givhan
- Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Make It Ours is at once a remarkable biography of a singular creative force and a powerful meditation on fashion and race, taste and exclusivity, genius and luxury. With access to Abloh’s family, friends, collaborators, and contemporaries, and featuring a cast of fascinating characters ranging from visionary Black designers like Ozwald Boateng to Abloh’s mercurial but critical employer and mentor Kanye West, Givhan weaves a spellbinding tale of a young man’s rise amid a cultural moment that would upend a century’s worth of ideas about luxury and taste.
By: Robin Givhan
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Alexander McQueen: Blood Beneath the Skin
- By: Andrew Wilson
- Narrated by: Piers Hampton
- Length: 11 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
McQueen had risen from humble beginnings as the youngest child of an East London taxi driver to scale the heights of fame, fortune and glamour. He designed clothes for the world's most beautiful women, including Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell. In business he created a multimillion-pound luxury brand that became a favourite with both celebrities and royalty, most famously the Duchess of Cambridge, who wore a McQueen dress on her wedding day. But behind the confident facade and bad-boy image lay a sensitive soul who struggled to survive in the ruthless world of fashion.
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Earnest and Voyeuristic
- By anna on 01-21-21
By: Andrew Wilson
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I.M.
- A Memoir
- By: Isaac Mizrahi
- Narrated by: Isaac Mizrahi
- Length: 13 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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In I.M., Isaac Mizrahi offers a poignant, candid, and touching look back on his life so far. Growing up gay in a sheltered Syrian Jewish Orthodox family, Isaac had unique talents that ultimately drew him into fashion and later into celebrity circles that read like a who’s who of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: Richard Avedon, Audrey Hepburn, Anna Wintour, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Meryl Streep, and Oprah Winfrey, to name only a few.
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Even better then I hoped !
- By Gina ihms on 03-08-19
By: Isaac Mizrahi
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Lee Miller
- A Life
- By: Carolyn Burke
- Narrated by: Ann Richardson
- Length: 18 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Carolyn Burke reveals Miller as a multifaceted woman: both model and photographer, muse and reporter, sexual adventurer and mother, and, in later years, gourmet cook - the last of the many dramatic transformations she underwent during her lifetime. A sleek blond bombshell, Miller was part of a glamorous circle in New York and Paris in the 1920s and 1930s as a leading Vogue model, close to Edward Steichen, Charlie Chaplin, Jean Cocteau, and Pablo Picasso. Then, during World War II, she became a war correspondent - one of the first women to do so.
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A Unique and Beautiful Person
- By Cindy A. Ossias on 03-21-24
By: Carolyn Burke
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Chasing Beauty
- The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner
- By: Natalie Dykstra
- Narrated by: Maggi-Meg Reed
- Length: 15 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Isabella Stewart Gardner’s museum, with its plain exterior enfolding an astonishing four-story Italian palazzo, rose from Boston’s Fens at the turn of the twentieth century. Its treasures encompassed not only masterwork paintings but tapestries, rare books, prints, porcelains, and fine furniture.
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The best narrator I have ever listened to on an Audible!
- By William P. Anderson on 03-15-25
By: Natalie Dykstra
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By Her Own Design
- A Novel of Ann Lowe, Fashion Designer to the Social Register
- By: Piper Huguley
- Narrated by: Tracey Conyer Lee
- Length: 12 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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The incredible untold story of how Ann Lowe, a Black woman and granddaughter of slaves, rose above personal struggles and racial prejudice to design and create one of America's most famous wedding dresses of all time for Jackie Kennedy.
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I loved it!
- By BEAUTIFUL ONE on 06-24-22
By: Piper Huguley
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Adventures in the Louvre
- How to Fall in Love with the World's Greatest Museum
- By: Elaine Sciolino
- Narrated by: Lynn Bradford
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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The Louvre is the most famous museum in the world, attracting millions of visitors every year with its masterpieces. In Adventures in the Louvre, Elaine Sciolino immerses herself in this magical space and helps us fall in love with what was once a forbidding fortress. Exploring galleries, basements, rooftops, and gardens, Sciolino demystifies the Louvre, introducing us to her favorite artworks, both legendary and overlooked, and to the people who are the museum's lifeblood.
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Easy Recommendation for Travelers to Paris
- By Jim Kane on 04-27-25
By: Elaine Sciolino
Informative and Honest
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My favorite book!
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As a person who has spent the better part of her adulthood loving and admiring the pages of Vogue, Vanity Fair and WWD and loving his beautiful takes on the worlds top designers and collections. Listening to this was such a treat, Thank you Andre for such a beautifully told story! A definite relisten for sure.
Loved Loved LOVED
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A MUST!
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A rare glimpse into the world of high fashion
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National Treasure
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A Towering Admission
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Loved this so much!!!
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Gorgeous prospective
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In His Voice
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