The Gospel Accord­ing to André

Some­one, some­where down the line had a big hit with a doc­u­men­tary about the fash­ion indus­try, and now direc­tors from all over are scrab­bling to find new ways to delve back into the world of cat­walks and haute cou­ture. André Leon Tal­ley is the sub­ject of Kate Novak’s glossy, super­fi­cial por­trait of a fash­ion world gad­fly who, on the back of his detailed knowl­edge of art his­to­ry and wild­ly flam­boy­ant man­ner, man­aged to claw his way to the very top. He is notable for being one of the few black com­men­ta­tors on mod­ern fashion.

The film opens on Talley’s strict south­ern upbring­ing and charts how he became deter­mined to tran­scend his hum­ble roots. Church was a key con­stituent of his youth, and lat­er in life, as seen in his count­less media appear­ances, he retained the fire and fer­vour of a pul­pit min­is­ter. Lat­er, he found him­self nestling under the wing of icon­ic Vogue edi­tor-in-chief, Diana Vree­land, and that led him to become a per­ma­nent fix­ture at fash­ion events across the globe.

Tal­ley is a man who is both out­spo­ken, and very in touch with his own feel­ings – about him­self and oth­ers – and so he makes for a fine chat­ting com­pan­ion. His rec­ol­lec­tions of saun­ter­ing through celebri­ty clos­ets, frater­nising with design mavens and hang­ing out at Warhol’s Fac­to­ry remain vivid, and he’s some­one who appears to have made far more friends than ene­mies. Big names queue up to pay homage to him.

The film peters out some­what by the final third, as the fash­ion talk stops and focus shifts to the elec­tion of Don­ald Trump. Tal­ley ini­tial­ly seems incon­solable at the fact, but then by the time the inau­gu­ra­tion rolls around, he’s live-blog­ging Mela­nia Trump’s cloth­ing selec­tions on the big day. There isn’t real­ly a firm struc­ture, it’s more a case of fol­low­ing this larg­er-than-life sub­ject as he goes about his busi­ness – one day he’s doing his dig­i­tal radio show, then he’s at a detox clin­ic, then he’s vis­it­ing with Isabel­la Rosselli­ni and her pet pigs.