Grace: A Memoir - Hardcover

Grace Coddington; Michael Roberts

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0701187980 ISBN 13: 9780701187989

Publisher: Chatto & Windus, 2012

Synopsis

For decades, Grace Coddington’s personal touch has steered wildly imaginative fashion spreads in Vogue magazine. Then came The September Issue, the behind-the-scenes documentary that turned the spotlight on a woman with a no-nonsense attitude and an unerring visual instinct. Overnight, the flame-haired Grace became a heroine for fashion insiders and the general public alike.

Witty and forthright, and illustrated throughout with vintage photographs and exclusive line-drawings, Grace: A Memoir shares the excitement and vision that go into producing so many unforgettable fashion images. Here are the designers, models, photographers, hairstylists, make-up artists and celebrities with whom Grace has created her ‘stories in pictures’ – whether it be Jerry Hall conquering the USSR or Tom Ford falling down a rabbit hole in Annie Leibovitz’s version of Alice in Wonderland.

Grace’s own life has been as dreamlike as one of her madcap fashion spreads. Brought up in windswept wartime Anglesey, she arrived in London, aged eighteen, and quickly became a face of the Sixties. The muse behind Vidal Sassoon’s Five Point Cut, she posed for Bailey, Donovan, Duffy and Norman Parkinson in Swinging London and jumped into a pool in Saint-Tropez for Helmut Newton. Surviving a serious car-crash, she later became a fashion editor at British Vogue and during the Seventies and the Eighties started to create the fantasy travelogues that would become her trademark.

Friendships bloomed – with Bruce Weber and Calvin Klein, whose offer of a job took Grace to New York. While two early marriages to restaurateur Michael Chow and photographer Willie Christie were brief, her romance with the hairstylist Didier Malige has endured. And her professional partnership with Anna Wintour – with whom she has collaborated for over twenty years – continues to have an astonishing influence on modern style.

About this title

About the Author

GRACE CODDINGTON is a former model and the creative director of American Vogue magazine. The author lives in New York, NY.

Review

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
 
“[A] splashy, dishy, very giftable memoir.... Charmingly forthright.... 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.”
—Janet Maslin, The New York Times Book Review
 
“Coddington...has a winning voice and admirable common sense.... Who wouldn’t want to spend a few hours in her company anyway?”
—The New York Observer
 
“If you have a stylista (or stylisto) on your list, buy this book.”
—Toronto Star
 
“Grace is candid, but not salacious—if no gloves come off, it’s because Coddington never wore any in the first place. [Grace unfolds] in a very conversational, matter-of-fact manner.... Coddington isn’t shy about speaking her mind on industry issues.... But she also reveals some of the tenderness and friendship behind all the air-kissing.”
—Nathalie Atkinson, National Post
 
“Worth a read for the name-dropping alone.”
—Los Angeles Times
 

Edition details

• Publisher: Chatto & Windus
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0701187980
• ISBN 13: 9780701187989
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 416