Beautiful. Willful. Charming. Blunt. Grace Coddington's extraordinary talent and fierce
dedication to her work as creative director of Vogue have made her an international icon. Known
through much of her career only to those behind the scenes she might have remained fashion's
best-kept secret were it not for The September Issue the acclaimed 2009 documentary that
turned publicity-averse Grace into a sudden reluctant celebrity. Grace's palpable engagement
with her work brought a rare insight into the passion that produces many of the magazine's most
memorable shoots. With the witty forthright voice that has endeared her to her colleagues
and peers for more than forty years Grace now creatively directs the reader through the
storied narrative of her life so far. Evoking the time when models had to tote their own bags
and props to shoots Grace describes her early career as a model working with such world-class
photographers as David Bailey and Norman Parkinson before she stepped behind the camera to
become a fashion editor at British Vogue in the late 1960s. Here she began creating the fantasy
"travelogues" that would become her trademark. In 1988 she joined American Vogue where her
breathtakingly romantic and imaginative fashion features a sampling of which appear in this
book have become instant classics. Delightfully underscored by Grace's pen-and-ink
illustrations Grace will introduce readers to the colorful designers hairstylists makeup
artists photographers models and celebrities with whom Grace has created her signature
images. Grace reveals her private world with equal candor-the car accident that almost derailed
her modeling career her two marriages the untimely death of her sister Rosemary her
friendship with Harper's Bazaar editor-in-chief Liz Tilberis and her thirty-year romance with
Didier Malige. Finally Grace describes her abiding relationship with Anna Wintour and the
evolving mastery by which she has come to define the height of fashion. NAMED ONE OF THE
BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY FINANCIAL TIMES "If Wintour is the Pope . . . Coddington is
Michelangelo trying to paint a fresh version of the Sistine Chapel twelve times a year."-Time
