Photograph by Steven Klein
Photographs by Steven Meisel
Photographs by Steven Meisel
If you’re anything like us, you bow at the altar of
Grace Coddington, the flame-haired fashion vet and longtime creative director at
Vogue. You’ve devoured her memoir
Grace — which traces her life and career from her Welsh childhood to her modeling days to her decades working alongside Anna Wintour — and relished her appearances in R.J. Cutler’s
The September Issue. You double-tap every time her delightful hand-drawn illustrations pop up on your Instagram feed (see above). And, yes, you know that her new perfume,
Grace by Grace Coddington, smells like roses and is capped by a topper shaped like a cat — thank you very much.
Now, there’s a new book dedicated to Coddington: Grace: The American Vogue Years, by Phaidon, a follow-up to 2015’s Grace: Thirty Years of Fashion at Vogue. As the title suggests, this sequel zeroes in on her work with American Vogue, chronicling her collaborations with a starry roster of photographers — Annie Leibovitz, Bruce Weber, Steven Meisel, David Sims, among many others — and all from the last 15 years, giving this publication its more modern, contemporary bent. “Grace’s first tome, sunny and sweet, was an ode to the fashion narrative, to picture-making spun or woven around beautiful clothes, all cushioned by acres of airiness with nature to spare,” writes Michael Roberts in the introduction. “This second volume, though equally inspiring, is driven much more by the astounding advances in technological artifice. Wondrous, yes. But also gritty, urban, and coolly disaffected. ‘Putting fashion into the narrative of life,’ as Grace now describes it.” The photographs, nearly 300, are indelible, iconic and — as with everything Coddington — wondrously compelling. Click through the slideshow for a preview.
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