Grace Coddington: creative indeed

By Julie Kavanagh

On a summer night in New York one of the gays in a huddle outside Rawhide on Eighth Avenue calls out, “We love you, Grace!” as she walks home. In Paris, at the autumn ready-to-wear shows, a giggling Japanese girl asks if she can be snapped next to her. Grace Coddington, the creative director of American Vogue, who turns 70 in April, has been a quietly revolutionary presence in the fashion world—first as a model, then as an editor—for half a century. But only since the release of the film “The September Issue” in 2009 has she been recognised in public—greeted by strangers who witnessed some of her creative battles and now see her as a reassuringly human face of fashion.

The object of the documentary, which recorded Vogue’s most commercial edition taking shape, had been to spotlight its editor-in-chief Anna Wintour. But an unexpected narrative began to emerge in the daily tug-of-war between Wintour and Coddington—one demanding a legible display of wearable, contemporary fashion, the other drawn to images that are poetic, quirky or historical; Wintour embracing the cult of celebrity, Coddington resisting its edicts and undermining of editorial freedom. Exasperated by the prospect of eight months of fly-on-the-wall intrusion, Coddington at first refused to co-operate, but ended up forging a mischievous complicity with the camera. With her inimitable hennaed mane and stomp-stomp warpath walk, she stole the film.