- Published: 1 December 2012
- ISBN: 9781742755625
- Imprint: Random House Australia
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 416
Grace
A Memoir
- Published: 1 December 2012
- ISBN: 9781742755625
- Imprint: Random House Australia
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 416
Grace Coddington’s splashy, dishy, very giftable memoir, Grace. Ms. Coddington’s work as an editor does not outglam her youthful adventure stories. But it’s at the heart of this book, and she presents it with both passion and whimsy. She fills the book with comedic little sketches and handily caricatures many friends and colleagues. Her captions are wittily self-explanatory. Here is a lightly expurgated version of what she writes to Azzedine Alaïa, known for his tightfitting designs: Tell me, Azzedine, does my rear end look big in this?
Janet Maslin, The New York Times
The first time I heard about The September Issue was when Anna Wintour called me into her office at American Vogue to tell me about it. She said "Oh, by the way, I've agreed to this crew coming in to make a film about Vogue" (the theme of the film was originally supposed to be about putting the Met Ball together but it just grew bigger and bigger). She told me a documentary crew would be turning up to film all the discussions, meetings, fights and frustrations of creating an issue of the magazine and they would be in our office and on our sittings too. And it's just about everything I don't want to hear. As if it's not difficult enough putting a complicated photo session together without having onlookers hanging around. "Don't expect me to be in it," I said, sensing Anna's eyes glaze over as she gazed past me out the window. I could feel her blanking me out, the way she does whenever she doesn't care to hear what someone is saying. My reaction to this irritating intrusion was naturally one of horror because my feeling has always been people should be focused on their jobs and not all this "I want to be a celebrity" shit. Afterwards, I found out it took almost a year to even persuade Anna to say yes. I'm sure she agreed in the end only because she wanted to show Vogue is not just a load of airheads speaking rubbish all the time. By then we all had enough of The Devil Wears Prada. For me it was always Vogue. As a teenager, I would make a special trip to Holyhead to buy a copy ... there were usually only one or two in stock. What I particularly loved were the photographs, especially those taken outdoors. They transported me to all sorts of exotic places - places where you could wear that kind of thing. Apres-ski wear under snow-topped fir trees! Beachy cover-ups on sun-kissed coral islands! Entering Vogue House on a cold London morning in January 1968, and moving through that unremarkable wood-panelled lobby at the fashionably late hour of 9.45am, I realised with a sudden shock that this would be my first ever day job. The building wasn't unfamiliar to me because, as a model, i had been there many times, taking the lift to the sixth floor to be photographed in the Vogue studios. Now everything would be different: I was a fashion editor.
Grace Coddington
If Wintour is the Pope . . . Coddington is Michelangelo, trying to paint a fresh version of the Sistine Chapel twelve times a year.
Time