Before he became the king of the front row, before he was the friend and confidante of Karl Lagerfeld, Diana Vreeland and Michelle Obama, André Leon Talley was a young boy being raised by his grandparents in North Carolina, going through the pages of Vogue magazine and dreaming. André told Kay Sheehy on Arena what Vogue meant to him as a child:

"Opening the pages of Vogue was like going on a huge trip… It was a luxury voyage, an escape into the world of art, literature, poetry, dance, music, Rolling Stones, The Beatles, literature, Truman Capote, Eudora Welty. It just opened up my mind to a world outside of my surroundings that seemed so exciting and that's what really it meant to me."

André was influenced early on by his grandmother and by former Vogue editor, Diana Vreeland, who gave him his first break. Kay asked him what the two women taught him. They were from very different backgrounds, André told her, but they had common ideals:

"They believed in the same values: discipline, honour, decency, empathy towards your fellow mankind, passion, curiosity. And they believed in maintenance. Maintenance was next to cleanliness, cleanliness was next to godliness and you maintained everything. Mrs Vreeland polished the soles of her shoes with a rhinoceros horn."

The Chiffon Trenches, André Leon Talley's new memoir, contains the revelation that he was serially sexually abused in his youth. He mentions the abuse to Kay, but he doesn't dwell on it. When he left North Carolina, André says, he wanted to go to a bigger world, a world of excitement, beauty and style – the world he'd been dreaming about since reading about it in Vogue at the age of 9 – and he found that world in New York:

"By the time I got out of North Carolina and went to Brown and came to New York, I wanted that world and that world came to me because I earned it because I was smart, I was disciplined, I had respect for people and they accepted me. Diana Vreeland had Andy Warhol hire me at The Factory."

André credits Vreeland with making his career: "She saw in me things I did not see in myself". And working for the most famous artist in the world isn't a bad way to begin your career in the arts world, even if that work also sometimes had its hazards, such as the artist occasionally asking to take a Polaroid of André's penis, to which the young man would reply, "Not today, Mr Warhol, not today".

Through Warhol, André met another big influence on his life and career, Karl Lagerfeld. Because of his love of Vogue magazine and all things related to fashion and the arts, André was very familiar with Lagerfeld long before he met him. He spoke to the renowned German fashion designer for Warhol's Interview magazine, asking him not the stock fashion world questions, but questions about 18th century furniture and the Versailles and when the interview was over, Lagerfeld invited André into his bedroom.

"And instead of pouncing on me, he just took his trunks and opened his trunks and started throwing clothes at me. Silk shirts and scarves. He said, 'This will look good on you. Take this'. So he immediately took to me because he took to my knowledge."

As well as Interview, André worked at trade journal Women's Wear Daily and W magazine, before finally taking up a position at the magazine that had inspired him since childhood: Vogue. To hear the full, tremendously entertaining conversation between André Leon Talley and Kay Sheehy, including how he danced with Diana Ross on New Year's Eve in Studio 54, and racism in the fashion industry, go here.

The Chiffon Trenches by André Leon Talley is published by HarperCollins.