More recently, Roberts’s projects included writing the introduction for his close friend and collaborator Grace Coddington’s 2016 book with Phaidon, Grace, and directing the 2017 documentary Manolo: The Boy Who Made Shoes for Lizards, about the life story and creative journey of the shoe designer Manolo Blahnik. As a follow-up to his 2007 book Shot in Sicily—a photographic document of the Italian island which he first visited in 1987, and where he settled permanently in 2019—he released his final book Island of Eternal Beauties last year as a love letter to a place that became his home. In keeping with his restless spirit, it even featured an entirely new creative venture for Roberts: mosaics.
Roberts’s versatile talents and playful sense of humor have been remembered by his friends and collaborators following his passing. “Michael Roberts really made me see what was possible: he and André Leon Talley were two Black people at the top of the industry,” said Edward Enninful, editor-in-chief of British Vogue. “I would see his stories in Tatler and think, wow, there’s a Black man who is doing it on his own terms. Michael was always very generous, kind, encouraging, and funny. And above all, so talented.”
“Michael’s legacy is beauty,” writes the former Vogue editor William Norwich. “Towering beauty. Yes, hipness, elegance, wit and humor, and beauty. For some it will be his art and illustration that they love and remember best, others his photography, the fashion work for Italian Vogue and the covers of the Tatler, for others, his razor-sharp writing and editing. For others, those closest to him, his loyal and essential friendship. There was a magical convergence of talent in London in the 1980s—Anna Wintour, Tina Brown, Grace Coddington, Gabé Doppelt, Sarah Giles, Manolo Blahnik, and more. In this Camelot, Michael was a king. Eccentric, and a dreamer. Ever surprising. Not from privilege, his creativity and sense of beauty and humor was his destiny. He is a power of example to generations younger and still to come that a life in art, and in style and fashion, isn’t about the parties, it’s about the work.”
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