If it's not apparent enough (which is pretty much impossible since I've talked about her in about every other blog post) I adore Grace Coddington. I don't love her just as an editorial stylist and creative director of Vogue. I love her as a person, even though I've technically never met her (but plan to one day, when the first opportunity comes my way.) This love and adoration is completely validated in her memoir, Grace. Click this to buy it now. Do it! I finished the book within a couple of days because I simply couldn't put it down. From her modeling days to her relationship with the famous Editor in Chief of American Vogue, Anna Wintour and everything in between (from working with Norman Parkinson as a young model in Britain, her days at British Vogue as fashion editor, a lunch incident involving a crazed PETA activist and a frozen raccoon, her cat psychic, and all the personal heartbreaks and triumphs) I felt like within those pages, those illustrations (drawn by Grace herself) the photographs from her childhood, and the display of her selected work from the pages of British and American Vogue, I felt like I got to know her as a close friend just like her actual and long time friends, Karl Lagerfeld and Nicolas Ghesquiere. The release of the memoir prompted a media coverage on Grace who usually despises the spotlight and paparazzi -- from a style feature in the New York Times, to the cover and cover story of i-D Magazine's Wise Up Issue, and a Fresh-Air session with NPR -- Grace was finally at the center spotlight, where I personally think, she belongs. She even had a live Twitter chat through Vogue magazine's twitter account and at the end bluntly admitted that she quite enjoyed it despite the fact that computers and technology still frustrates her (she's 71 years old after all!) Read the book over the holiday season and I guarantee that you will love it and laugh out loud like I did (especially during the chapter when she talked about her cats and her cat psychic, Christine.) As for the rest, here's the tail end of her work in the pages of Vogue from the November and December 2012 issues.
Love, KB
p.s. The November 2012 Issue of Vogue has a pretty lengthy excerpt of the memoir, so if you want a sneak peek, read it here.
November 2012
Little Pink Houses
For you and me: quirky feminine pieces in the sweet hue of motherly love and conjugal romance.
Photographed by Arthur Elgort
December 2012
Full Spectrum
Paint the town in a rainbow of artistic colors: stop-sign red, ocean blue, inky violet -- an intense palette to brighten and heighten the holiday season.
Photographed by Craig McDean
