Amazing Grace
The woman who turned fashion into a story-telling art, the fashion director who shaped the way the style bible looks at fashion, got her go-ahead in the industry from that same magazine. Winning a Vogue modeling competition at 18, she reveled in the London swinging sixties scenes, before she turned the tables on her career and started working behind the spotlight, as British Vogue’s junior fashion editor.
New York became her home in 1987 when she decided to cross the Atlantic to work with Calvin Klein, but it was only a year later that she joined US Vogue, soon after becoming the magazine’s Creative Director. In 2016 she decides to focus a little more on her own projects, becoming Vogue’s Creative Director at Large.
Peter Lindbergh, photography; Naomi Campbell; hair, Julien D’Ys’ makeup, Stéphane Marais; USA, 1990 (pages 284-285)
Arthur Elgort, photography: Christy Turlington in Yohji Yamamoto, Konstantin Goncharov, and Irina Kuksenaite; hair, Oribe; makeup, Sonia Kashuk; USSR 1990. Picture credit: ARTHUR ELGORT CONDÉ NAST PUBLICATIONS © (pages 320-321)
Ellen von Unwerth, photography; Kirsty Hume and Vikram Chatway (Yohji Yamamoto); hair, Ward; makeup, Fulvia Farolfi; USA, 1997 (pages 106-107)
Arthur Elgort, photography: Christy Turlington in Yohji Yamamoto, Konstantin Goncharov, and Irina Kuksenaite; hair, Oribe; makeup, Sonia Kashuk; USSR 1990. Picture credit: ARTHUR ELGORT CONDÉ NAST PUBLICATIONS © (pages 320-321)
Ellen von Unwerth, photography; Debbie Dietering in John Galliano with Rebecca; hair, Peter Savic; makeup, Laurie Starrett; Jamaica, 1994 (page 87)
Grace: Thirty Years of Fashion at Vogue is an essential read for anyone in love with fashion as art. From 1972 until 2002, thirty years of influential photographs published in British and US Vogue, fashion editorials created in the brilliant mind of Coddington, introduce her iconic work, serving as both memoir and monograph. Cecil Beaton, Guy Bourdin, Patrick Demarchelier, Arthur Elgort, Steven Klein, Peter Lindbergh, Steven Meisel, Helmut Newton, Norman Parkinson, Irving Penn, Mario Testino and Bruce Weber, the masters are all here, under the Welsh fashion maestro’s magical wand: Her fashion fantasies and fairy tales include Bruce Weber’s Snow White featuring Aretha Franklin as the Wicked Queen, Annie Leibovitz’s photography at the Paris couture starring Puff Daddy and Kate Moss, and the iconic shoot of a bikinied Campbell in Irving Penn’s studio. “I like to bring fashion to life,” she says, “so in my head, I write a script.”
