Review: 'The Gospel According To André' Documents the Groundbreaking Designer

"I don't live for fashion; I live for beauty and style. Fashion is fleeting. Style remains," says the African-American icon in Kate Novack's well-crafted 90-minute documentary "The Gospel According to André."

André Leon Talley grew up in Jim Crow-era Durham, North Carolina, learning about respect and cleanliness from his beloved domestic worker grandmother, and about passion and fashion from their weekly church sojourns, where there was a "moral code to dress well." He found escape in the pages of Vogue magazine at the library and learned to appreciate thrift stores after hearing Barbra Streisand sing "Second Hand Rose."

He grew into "a towering pine tree of a man" at Brown University, where he studied French (also inspired by Julia Child), and became bold when he started hanging out at the nearby Rhode Island School of Design, dressing up yet going nowhere with their students and writing for their newspaper.

He embodied the operatic figures he loved, wearing capes, which made him stand and behave differently, as well as caftans and turbans that still define him today, along with his ethos of "Do it, think it, wear it."

He moved to New York City in 1974, where he worked alongside Vogue's Diana Vreeland, a lifelong mentor, and started writing for Andy Warhol's "Interview" magazine. He went to Studio 54 to dance only, he asserts, then to Paris to become an influential editor for "Women's Wear Daily."

Talley's spent decades in "the chiffon trenches," and was deified by designers – Marc Jacobs, Valentino, Karl Lagerfeld, Diane Von Furstenberg, Norma Kamali (whom he interviews on his radio show), and Tom Ford, who calls him "one of the last great editors, a fabulous insanity." Also in the fan club are editor Anna Wintour, models like Isabella Rossellini, who also has an upstate New York farm, actors like Sandra Bernhardt and Whoopi Goldberg ("he's like the Black Rockette"), and style-makers like Will I. Am, who calls Talley "the Nelson Mandela of couture; the Kofi Annan of what you've got on."

He's friends with fellow Southerner, journalist Tamron Hall, who consults on her gown for the final Obama state dinner, a silver sheath in the style of her heroes Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandridge.

Everyone agrees Talley redefines masculinity, although he self-labels as a manatee since he's gained weight. But his influence is undeniable as his years of work are unearthed in magazine archives, like when he cast Naomi Campbell as Scarlett O'Hara in a Black Gone with the Wind spread.

The elegant film is marred, as are so many pieces of art in this moment, by the 2016 election, when Talley must live blog about Melania's fashion choices. But his life, work and attitude are defiant and indefatigable: "You don't say I'm Black and I'm proud. You just do it."

"The Gospel According to André" opens May 25.