“Look Homeward, Angel” by André Leon Talley was first published in the March 2003 issue of Vogue. For more highlights from Vogue’s archives, sign up for our Nostalgia newsletter [here](link).

If I tell you I’m writing about luxury, you might assume I’m about to share lessons from Diana Vreeland, that self-proclaimed queen of extravagance. Or perhaps I’ll reminisce about fashion’s golden age of indulgence. Or maybe I’ll rhapsodize over the flawless craftsmanship of a custom-made shoe. And you wouldn’t be entirely wrong.

But that’s not the luxury I mean.

The truth is, I live on a grand scale—because fashion demands it. It’s larger than life, unpredictable, dazzling. Yet it doesn’t provide the grounding a person needs to live a balanced, fulfilling life—one that serves not just oneself but others. Fashion can’t replace family, and I doubt I’d have ever appreciated haute couture if I hadn’t first learned to value simpler things.

Long before I became Mrs. Vreeland’s assistant at the Met’s Costume Institute, long before my roles at WWD, W, or Vogue, I was a Black boy raised by my hardworking grandmother in North Carolina.

Growing up, I learned how to live simply by watching my grandmother, Bennie Frances Davis. She worked, prayed, and built a home for me. Her life wasn’t easy, but it was guided by clear, unwavering principles—church and family, inseparable and central. Her home was spotless, warm, and welcoming, a place where love and care were as visible as the shine on every surface.

That’s the luxury I knew: not excess, but the beauty of ordinary tasks done well, of simple things cherished and maintained. Faith, hope, charity—and yes, luxury, because in our home, it was sacred.

By 1989, I was 40, known as “Mr. Vogue,” thriving in my career. But that year, I lost the two women who shaped me: my grandmother and Diana Vreeland. Both had fought illness fiercely, and their deaths left me heartbroken.

My grandmother had raised four children (losing two at birth), worked as a maid, and after being widowed, took me in. She cleaned dorm rooms at Duke University five days a week. Our home was filled with love and hand-me-down furniture from students.

Diana Vreeland kept an immaculate home too—though hers was maintained by a small army of maids. My grandmother did it all herself: cooking, laundry, caring for family. Two years before she passed, she was diagnosed with leukemia but hid her pain, just as she’d always done—quietly, with dignity.

That’s the luxury I remember. Not extravagance, but love, discipline, and the quiet strength of a life well lived.She had kept her illness hidden from loved ones, and I only discovered her condition one Sunday when I rushed home to North Carolina. There she was in a wheelchair at Duke University Hospital’s emergency room, wrapped in her robe, surrounded by her favorite nieces. That’s when I learned she’d been secretly visiting Dr. Cox at an outpatient clinic for months, taking oral chemotherapy. I spent that endless night on a hospital bed beside hers in the emergency ward, watching her sleep and praying for a miracle.

After a lifetime of hard labor, learning to rest doesn’t come easily. Both my grandmother and Diana Vreeland faced illness with remarkable dignity, refusing to let it define them. My grandmother kept baking, cooking, and doing light housework until the end. Mrs. Vreeland—as I always called her—retreated to her bed behind those elegant lacquer-red doors, where I’d sit reading to her while she reclined perfectly dressed atop the covers, her toes and nails painted in her signature hell-red polish.

Mama (my grandmother) never wore red polish—her only makeup was Sunday lipstick for church. Two days before she died, she still shuffled over with her walker to tuck me in as I napped on the chaise lounge in her bedroom. For her 90th birthday, I threw her a surprise party where she wore a navy Calvin Klein suit and let me pin a large corsage to her lapel as she stood before her tiered cake.

I first met Mrs. Vreeland on my very first day at the Met in 1974, a few years after earning my master’s at Brown. Arriving early in my high school treasure—a lemon-yellow V-neck lambswool sweater Mama had bought me—paired with navy alpaca trousers like those I wore to church, I was the picture of propriety. I hadn’t yet discovered six-ply cashmere.

Costume Institute curator Stella Blum immediately handed me a surprisingly heavy shoebox, white cotton gloves, and needle-nose pliers. Opening it revealed a jumble of purplish metal discs. “This is Lana Turner’s chain-mail dress from The Prodigal,” she explained when I asked. My task? Reconstruct it on a waiting mannequin before Mrs. Vreeland’s inspection.

Untangling the dress took considerable time—it was a Charleston-style fringe skirt attached to a bra and bikini. Many connecting wires were damaged from years in storage, and my clumsy handling of the industrial pliers made me fear damaging the delicate pieces. But I remained calm, determined to solve the problem I’d been given.

After careful study, I realized the restoration wouldn’t be as difficult as I’d feared. By lunchtime, I was making satisfying progress—just as Mrs. Vreeland made her entrance. Having idolized her through Vogue since childhood, I suddenly feared meeting this legend who would judge my work, sensing this moment held greater significance than I could yet understand.Somehow, I felt my future depended on her judgment. I tried to stay out of sight, pretending to work behind a column while keeping an eye on her. She walked with quick, delicate steps on her toes—she couldn’t stand the sound of heels clicking against the floor. The room was so quiet you could hear a pin drop as she glided across with her dancer’s grace. Even on an ordinary day, she carried herself like royalty. She knew how to make an entrance.

The first thing I noticed was her navy-blue Saint Laurent peacoat, then her Mila Schön double-faced jersey pants and glossy scarlet Roger Vivier python boots, polished to a patent-leather shine.

She was utterly herself. That famous walk—pelvis forward—was real. Her wafer-thin frame, real. Her dramatic makeup (which she called “Kabuki”), absolutely real. She wore red rouge smeared with Vaseline at her temples, exaggerated to the point of theatricality. No greetings, no small talk—but as she passed the mannequin wearing my Lana Turner-inspired fringe, she stopped and boomed, “Who did this?” I couldn’t tell if she was thrilled or horrified. Someone answered, “The new volunteer, Mrs. Vreeland.”

She moved on, and I thought, She hates it. Three minutes later, after she’d settled at her desk and removed her coat, an assistant told me Mrs. Vreeland wanted to see me. That summons could mean anything—I hoped it was good. Something had happened in that brief moment when she passed my work, though I still don’t know exactly what.

When I entered her office, she was having her usual light lunch: a small glass of Dewar’s White Label Scotch and a dainty finger sandwich from Poll’s on Lexington Avenue. “Sit,” she said briskly. Her expression told me she liked what I’d done.

She pulled out a yellow legal pad and a sharpened pencil, leaning slightly forward. A tiger’s tooth hung from a gold chain around her neck. “Now, what’s your name, young chap?” she boomed, straightening her already rigid posture. Her voice, strong for such a slight frame, reminded me of my grandmother calling me home for dinner. “André,” I said.

She began writing in bold, sweeping script—so large I could read it upside down. Next to my name, she wrote: The Helper.

“Now,” she said, setting the pencil down, “you’ll stay by my side night and day until the show is finished! Let’s go, kiddo. Back to the gallery. Get moving!”

I was amazed by the sheer number of accessories Mrs. Vreeland owned—though not surprised by how seriously she took them. My grandmother had taught me to appreciate fine details: the perfect shoe, the hat that framed a face just right, the small touches that made an outfit extraordinary. Growing up, it was part of our tradition to cherish beautiful things—like the glazed kidskin gloves and good leather shoes reserved for Sundays, along with special undergarments and my grandmother’s lace-up corsets, which looked straight out of the Gay Nineties when they lay drying on the chest.

I don’t know how Mama managed to collect so many fine gloves, but she did, carefully budgeting for them. Though she’d never given a thought to someone like the Duchess of Windsor, they shared one habit: never leaving home without a spare pair in her bag, just in case.

Not long before Mama died, I found a stash of unworn vintage Dior gloves from the 1950s in Paris and brought them home for her. She was buried wearing a pair, and of course, I tucked a fresh one inside her coffin—just in case.gave her a church fan with a picture of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., a tin of her favorite snuff, and some extra handkerchiefs—just in case the ones she was wearing got dirty. For her funeral on that cold March day, I chose the hymn “No Tears in Heaven,” a memory that stays with me always. I was glad I sent her off with the right things, knowing how proud she’d be to enter Heaven wearing those Christian Dior gloves, pulled snug just below her elbows.

My grandmother and Mrs. Vreeland were the most important people in my life, and their wisdom still guides me in everything I do. Though they’re gone, I feel them with me always—like two guardian angels, one on each shoulder. I talk to them often, in the quiet language of memory.

At the end of the day, what matters most to me isn’t the glamour and glitter of the world I move in now, but my deep Southern roots. Fashion books may be full of juicy gossip, but that’s not what truly counts. What matters is knowing where you come from and who you are.

The love and protection of these two women still steer me through life. The unconditional love that left this world in 1989 keeps me going, even through the hardest times, with quiet whispers of gratitude.

When Mrs. Vreeland’s eyesight began to fail in 1986, she took to her bed—the same year she missed the Met’s opening-night gala for an exhibition on Indian costume, a show she would have adored. That evening, I went with Carrie Donovan instead. It was a dazzling night, a testament to Mrs. Vreeland’s brilliance, but her absence hung over everything. Diana Vreeland was never late, let alone absent from a party meant to honor her.

The next morning, I called her right away. Dolores, her secretary, handed her the phone immediately.

“André, come for dinner tonight,” she said without even a hello, her voice as lively as ever. “I want to hear all about last night.”

I didn’t ask why she hadn’t shown up in her new pink Yves Saint Laurent outfit. I just agreed and hung up, still wondering. That gloomy December evening was the first time I saw Mrs. Vreeland in bed.

Her explanation was simple. “André, I’ve had such a wonderful life, and now I’ve decided to take it easy. Look at all the designers I’ve helped—Oscar, Bill, Halston. I’ve done enough. Now I’m going to relax and enjoy life. Quite simply, I’ve had it!” Like Miss Havisham—but without the dust—she retreated to her room.

When she told me this, I thought of my grandmother and me watching Dr. King’s funeral on our old black-and-white TV. As a soloist sang, If I can help somebody, then my living will not be in vain, Mama turned to me and said, “That’s the motto we must live by.” Though worlds apart, she and Mrs. Vreeland shared the same purpose: to help others. And because they did, their lives were not in vain.

Both women carried themselves with dignity, even in old age. Mrs. Vreeland was as polished in bed as she had been at Vogue, and by the time my grandmother retired, I’d given her more Chanel suits and Gucci bags than she could ever use. Her finest dresses were made from fabric sent by Karl Lagerfeld himself. If the two of them had ever strolled down Fifth Avenue together, heads would have turned at the sight of those two magnificent, elegant women.

After my grandmother passed, I…When Mrs. Vreeland passed away, I inherited her house and most of the belongings I had always connected with her. Of course, she had her own family, and after her death, they chose to clear out her apartment and sell many of her possessions at auction. She had once given me a beautiful jade belt buckle, which I keep on my living room table—it always makes me think of her.

During the auction of her estate in 1990, I was in Paris, but I placed a phone bid on one item: a Napoleonic-era scarf she had framed and hung in her husband’s bedroom. I won it for $700, and now it hangs in my home.

But like with my grandmother, what Mrs. Vreeland truly left me wasn’t material. She gave me the strength and confidence to move through an often harsh world with beauty and grace. She gave me the rare gift of feeling completely loved for who I am. And above all, she left me the memory of her radiant, unforgettable smile.