Rihanna captivated the attention of millions of football fans and people across the world with her 2023 Super Bowl halftime performance, but you may not know that the giant red coat she wore for the performance has its roots in Durham, NC.
Rihanna’s outfit was a tribute to the late fashion designer André Leon Talley, a Bull City native and former editor of Vogue magazine. He was a journalist, creative director and stylist—a larger-than-life fashion icon. Talley was often seen in a red sleeping-bag coat, a sartorial choice that became one of his trademarks.
Talley was raised by his grandmother, a cleaning-woman at Duke University; he gained his understanding of style from watching his grandmother get ready for church on Sundays. In high school, he was known for his creative sense of fashion and style. Classmates and teachers remember that he could always be spotted wearing elegant outfits in the hallways at Hillside High School. Growing up in the segregated South as a queer Black man, he endured homophobia and racism for the majority of his life but still rose to the top of the fashion industry despite the barriers he faced.
He stayed in the Bull City after graduating from Hillside High School, receiving a bachelor’s degree from North Carolina Central University prior to completing his master’s degree in French at Brown University. He went on to work at Andy Warhol’s Factory Studio and multiple fashion magazines in both Paris and the U.S. before ultimately landing a job at Vogue. After Talley was promoted to become Vogue’s first Black creative director, he advocated for more Black models on the runways at fashion shows.
On January 18th, 2022 at the age of 73, he passed away at his home in White Plains, New York. His legacy will shine a light on the future of Black representation in the fashion industry.
Talley’s red coat was auctioned off in a collection of his possessions at Christie’s this month as part of the sale of his estate. Part of the proceeds will benefit the Mt. Sinai Missionary Baptist Church in Durham, which Talley attended growing up.
Rihanna and Talley struck up a friendship in 2015 after he complimented, in a Vogue interview, the stunning yellow gown Rihanna wore at the MET Gala, an annual fundraising event benefiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Shortly after the singer’s halftime performance, Talley’s Instagram account, which is still active, shared photos of the two now-iconic red outfits.
