In late February, about three months before the release of “The Gospel According to André,” the documentary about his life, André Leon Talley, former Vogue creative director and “America’s Next Top Model” judge, protégé of Diana Vreeland and Andy Warhol, child of the segregated American South, went to the designer Daniel Day’s atelier in Harlem to have a caftan made.

Mr. Talley, who is 6-foot-6 (he says, though some reports put him at 6-foot-7), started wearing caftans about 10 years ago, when he could no longer fit into the bespoke suits he favored.

He had been on a trip to Morocco and had gone to the souk in Marrakesh, to the same place where Yves Saint Laurent had his trims done in the early years of Rive Gauche, and bought eight undershirts in burgundy and eight in black and a few overshirts. From then on, he declared, the flowing African robes would be his uniform, though the word he uses, whenever he speaks of his own relationship to clothes, is “armor.”

He has a lot of caftans at his home in White Plains, but he wanted something special for the film premiere. He could have asked Tom Ford, who has made all of his capes for the Met Gala in recent years, or Diane von Furstenberg, who is one of his oldest fashion friends.