It’s proving to be unexpectedly challenging to respectfully describe André Leon Talley. Indeed, Mr. Talley, who died on Tuesday at age 73, was a bona fide fashion editor, but that was just one of many facets that have made him one of the most fascinating personas in the global fashion industry. In over the nearly five decades that he was active in the fashion world, he chronicled the culture we lived in but he also contributed to it, in the process becoming a star in his own right with a firm place in fashion’s iconography.

The 2003 recipient of CFDA’s Eugenia Sheppard Award was also a trailblazer, the first Black man to make it to the upper echelons of fashion and society, with an inspiring career that took him from working for Andy Warhol at Interview magazine and Diana Vreeland at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute to WWD and Vogue magazine, rising to the role of Creative Director, a position of power and influence on the global fashion landscape.

He was a close confidant of Diane von Furstenberg, Yves Saint Laurent, Karl Lagerfeld, Paloma Picasso, Bethann Hardison and Manolo Blahnik, and championed talents, including John Galliano from the very early stages of the British designer’s career. There is no shortage of fabulous photos of Mr. Talley with the equally fabulous and chic, from Diana Ross to Marina Schiano, Loulou de la Falaise, Iman, and Grace Jones.

His is indeed the loss of a fashion persona and trailblazer, but also the loss of one of the last few remaining links to the golden era of fashion, one that we now look at with a sense of nostalgia. He knew more about the history of fashion than anybody I know in fashion, and his own career was illustrious (and, of course, fabulous). When he spoke, you listened, as my colleague Karyl J. Truesdale and I did over lunch at Majorelle on a hot summer’s day in 2018.

“I was at Studio 54 four nights a week, and I loved dancing with Diana Ross,” he told us. “It was a very electric moment that has never been repeated. Andy Warhol was alive, and he was extraordinary. It was a big melting pot of culture, and you could go to the Factory and see Caroline of Monaco, Grace Jones, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Jean Michel Basquiat. It was society mixed with art and art mixed with society….of “downtown meets uptown”…Jane Holzer…Barbara Allen… all of the Interview people, and Studio 54…great energy, great friends, great style! Halston was very much a part of the nucleus back then. He had a central point in the world of the 1970s with Martha Graham and Liza Minnelli. He was also dressing socialites. Everything was just brilliant in the 70s.”

Many of his friends and admirers took to social media to pay tribute to Mr. Talley.

“I adored André,” CFDA Chairman Tom Ford said. “He was brilliant. Just when he would say something so completely shocking and worthy of Marie Antoinette, he would then counter it with a statement so sharp and right on that it reminded you of exactly why he was able to have come so far in the world.”

“No one saw the world in a more elegant and glamourous way than you did,” Diane von Furstenberg said. “No one was more soulful and grander than you were. The world will be less joyful now. I have loved you and laughed with you for 45 years. I will miss your loud screams and your loyal friendship.”

CFDA CEO Steven Kolb called the ALT universe “one where even the smallest detail was grand, and everything he said was as if he was typing in all-caps. To know him was a privilege, and to be in his presence was exciting. He was a true renaissance man whose journey to the top of the industry was fearless and an inspiration for many others to follow.”

Anna Wintour recalled the way he championed the designer community, inspired generations to work in fashion, his sense of discovery, and his colorful faxes and emails. “Yet,” she said, “it’s the loss of André as my colleague and friend that I think of now; it’s immeasurable. He was magnificent and erudite and wickedly funny—mercurial, too. Like many decades-long relationships, there were complicated moments, but all I want to remember today, all I care about, is the brilliant and compassionate man who was a generous and loving friend to me and to my family for many, many years, and who we will all miss so much.”

“You were grand and glamourous, complex and marvelous. Capes, caftans, and style. A trailblazer,” Tracee Ellis Ross said.

“They don’t make them like this anymore,” Claudia Schiffer noted. “He was a groundbreaker, a mentor, and lived fashion to its fullest during the most opulent and theatrical eras of style.”

British Vogue Editor-in-Chief Edward Enninful struck a poignant note. “Without you,” he said, “there would be no me. Thank you for paving the way.”

RIP ALT.