For more than 30 years, their bond was symbiotic—and oftentimes rooted in silence. "We didn’t have to speak," he says. (They really were close. His colleague Grace Coddington once remarked, "Andre is the only person who’s seen Anna in her underwear." Talley laughs this off while acknowledging he’s been in many gown fittings with her.) "I knew what she was thinking, without words. She doesn’t say many words." Eventually Wintour didn’t utter any at all. Their relationship fell apart over the last decade and he, well, fell out of Vogue.

Talley is clearly in pain. "There was a divide and then an earthquake," he says of the fallout—centered around the 2018 discontinuation of his emceeing the glittering arrivals at the Met Gala. His booming, precise voice cracks as he says, "I felt, at a certain moment, she could not articulate it to me. Something happened." Wintour seemed to once again allow silence do the heavy lifting. "I had suddenly become too old, overweight and uncool for Anna Wintour," he says. "I don’t think she understands what she does to people." He adds that he has "huge emotional and psychic scars" from their relationship.

A source close to Wintour tells PEOPLE exclusively: "Anna considered André a friend for over 30 years and naturally was saddened by the way he chose to portray many aspects of their friendship, but he is of course entitled to tell it as he remembers it. She wishes him the best."

"I love her," Talley says. He knows the reaction to the book so far has indicated he may feel otherwise. "People see my book as a vengeful, bitchy tell-all. It is not. My book is in many ways as a love letter to Anna Wintour."

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