Directed by Kate Novack, the documentary The Gospel According to Andre is about Andre Leon Talley life. A fixture in the world of fashion for so long, it’s difficult to imagine a time when he wasn’t defining the boundaries of great style.
I found the movie as an intimate portrait that took me on an emotional journey from Andre’s roots growing up in the segregated Jim Crow South to become one of the most influential fashion and trend curators of our times.
Novack’s movie is fascinating as she explores between the elegance of André’s beloved grandmother and the Black Church of his youth and his work at publications like Women’s Wear Daily, W, and Vogue. The documentary shares a wealth of archival footage from moments in fashion history while noting André’s life and career.
Novack’s grandfather was in the dress business, and she visited his factory in Lowell, Massachusetts. “So, fashion was kind of in my DNA. I’d seen Andre in so many fashion documentaries—I think that my last count was fourteen. And he wasn’t just in them. He had these scene-stealing roles. But they always had the feel of a performance.”
“Andre talks about a hymn that he always loved in church, that still brings him to tears, called ‘Precious Memories.’ I listened to that song, and it was so moving. It’s about the way that memory can act as a sustaining force. That was really the entry point and the vision, and that song now plays a prominent role in the film.”
The Gospel According to Andre is Novack’s first attempt at solo directing. “It just felt like the right story at the right moment. It felt like a moment where the story of this African American man—because, in many ways, I view the movie as being as much about one African American man’s experience in America as it is about fashion—was important and urgent. There’s a line from Eboni at the beginning of the movie about how Andre is a legend in mainstream culture, and he’s also a tall Black man in America from the American South and that there would always be great tension there. That really became an organizing principle in the film.”
Andre saw the movie, and his first impression was elation, being with friends and viewing images. “Kate threaded the narratives through the sophisticated research she had done. Her research is phenomenal! She had gone back and researched, contextually, my life story from its humble beginnings all the way to Brown, my theses and reviews from when I went to Paris and the great shows of Yves Saint Laurent in 1978.”
Andre explains how it “was an enchantment, but, at the same time, an experience that I would consider—I’m not a vain person—microscopic.”
“A documentary is meant to be truthful, and it is Kate’s story, it is definitely her story, but, being so creative in my life, and an editor, I would have, in hindsight, made a contract to have a full make-up artist on hand at all times. Having come from the world of Vogue, part of the armor is that you are professionally groomed and, on a cold, bitter morning in North Carolina, that was just me coming out and I… would have had a makeup artist.”
Despite showing Andre without makeup meant he is who he is. “I opened my heart, and I opened my life, and I opened my home, and I opened my history and opened all my friends. The people that are in the doc are the people that are of great value to my life.”