Andre Leon Talley Gets Rave Reviews From ... Style.com

Some hyperbole from Style.com:

"'It was like Maria Callas at the Metropolitan!' said Oscar de la Renta, employing a little good-natured hyperbole to describe Vogue Editor at Large Andr� Leon Talley's international stage debut, last week with the Martha Graham Dance Company at City Center in New York. 'All the celebrities and friends were there for him,' de la Renta continued. Indeed, Vera Wang, Ralph and Ricky Lauren, Zac Posen, Anne Bass, Nan Kempner, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and the evening�s chairwoman, Kimora Lee Simmons, all poured into the sold-out Midtown theater to witness Talley's dramatic narration of Edward Lear's poem The Owl and the Pussycat, a role Graham originally created in 1978 for Liza Minnelli."

And I wrote this back on December 3rd, but a lot of the new readers never saw it, so:

"Which high powered Conde Nast editor wrote this?

"I earned my Masters degree in French literature in the Spring of 1972. My topic was the pivotal role played by all the fabulous, exotic North African women in the world of poet Charles Baudelaire and painter Eugene Delacroix. My thesis was based on the whole sense of importance of Africa to the conception of Orientalism as it influenced art and literature in Nineteenth Century France, a topic in which I have a keen interest. Delacroix's Les Femmes d'Algiers featured prominently, as did Flaubert's Salambo. I truly loved writing my Master's thesis, and although I still yearned for the world of fashion, I moved on to pursuing my doctorate without hesistation."

Can you guess who wrote this?

One more clue:

"You see (Diana) Vreeland loved black culture. She loved the Saturday Morning Dance Show Soul Train; my grandmother cared nothing for it ... she went hog wild over every manifestation of black style. It all began, I think, with Josephine Baker, who truly was one of the most stylish women to ever walk this planet. Mrs. Vreeland loved to tell the story of watching a movie one night in the balcony of a Paris cinema back in the 30s. She had her elbows on the armrests and was intently watching this film, when all of a sudden, one of the armrests moved. She turned to see what was going on and found out that she had been resting her elbow not on the arm of a seat, but on the head of Josephine Baker's pet cheetah, and that both the magnificent cat and its magnificent owner were now getting up to leave. Mrs. Vreeland watched speechlessly as the cheetah padded in a stately fashion up the aisle of the theater, Josephine Baker walking regally behind, wearing a daring, bias-cut Vionnet dress with no underwear on underneath."

If you guessed that this is the wonderful Andre Leon Talley's ALT, then give yourself a pat on the back. Basta!