Bound To Stay Bound

Booklist - 10/01/2025 *Starred Review* Fashion king Talley is brought to tender, glorious life by the award-winning team of Weatherford and Sanders (A Song for the Unsung, 2022), who take readers into the late Vogue editor’s young life and journey to fame. Raised in Jim Crow–era North Carolina, Talley didn’t fit in in many ways. His was a world of contrasts: prejudice and bullying outside, deep love from his grandmother at home. Kind treatment in church (“André’s first fashion show”) but “unwanted touches from grown-ups who swore him to silence” (an author’s note offers contact information for organizations that help abused children). Talley created a life revolving around his love of everything French—a world gorgeously rendered by fashion illustrator O’Neal, whose compositions show the sharply dressed, 6’6” Talley as a majestic, towering paragon of style—and his genius and determination led him to fashion heights, including a string of firsts as a Black man at Vogue. Weatherford and Sanders affectionately celebrate Talley’s rise from a boy obsessed with fashion magazines to an important, sought-after style icon while not shying away from the prejudice he faced along the way. Another stellar profile from Weatherford and Sanders that belongs in any picture-book biography section. - Copyright 2025 Booklist.