By Sean Federico-O’Murchu, Chris Boyette and Oscar Holland | CNN

André Leon Talley, the former longtime creative director for Vogue and a fashion icon in his own right, has died at age 73, according to a statement on his official Instagram account.

Talley was a pioneer in the fashion industry, a Black man in an often insular world dominated by White men and women.

In 2017, at an event at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Talley described the challenges of promoting diversity on the glossy pages of fashion magazines.

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“I worked behind the scenes. I did it in dulcet tones, and I was persistent and tenacious….I always assumed a very quiet role. I didn’t scream and yell and shout….That was the best strategy, because that was the world I moved in. After all, it was Vogue, darling,” he told host Tamron Hall.

Talley was born in Washington DC but at two months old, his parents brought him to Durham, North Carolina, where he was raised by his grandmother, Bennie Francis Davis, whom he called Mama.

In his 2020 memoir, “The Chiffon Trenches,” he described his early joy of immersing himself in books at the city library in Durham. “My world became the glossy pages of Vogue, where I could read about Truman Capote’s legendary ball, given at the Plaza, in honor of Katharine Graham,” he wrote.

A signature moment in his youth was the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy and the presence of…