André Leon Talley: Style Is Forever,” a new exhibition at the SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah (August 15 through January 11) and the SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion + Film in Atlanta (October 15 through March 1), tells the singular story of a man who grew up in the racist Old South and came to conquer the world of fashion—and it tells that story through clothes.

Long before André came into my life, he’d already led a fascinating, complicated, and mercurial one himself. He was a distant, almost mythic figure to me—a curious mixture of bravado (even braggadocio), glamour, kindness, and faith. I learned later that he was brought up in Durham, North Carolina, mostly by his grandmother Bennie Frances Davis, who worked as a cleaning lady at Duke University for 50 years. Her clothes, if few, were imm

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