GRACELAND

She has red hair and pale skin just like me, only difference is, she is American Vogue’s creative director of the past 20 years!!!! She creates some of fashions most enduring pictures- fantastical, romantic and softly nostalgic images that transport and inspire the reader, and still make them want to buy the clothes. She once said "I like fairy tales, and I like dreaming. I try to weave the reality into the dream, when readers pick up Vogue, I want them to smile. Everything should be a little tongue in cheek, a little dare-to-go-there." The Lady I am in awe of is the one and only Grace Coddington.

Grace won a Vogue modelling contest at eighteen and headed off to London from her hometown of Anglesey, a remote Welsh island. Abandoning a highly lucrative career as a leading model on the sixties London scene (alongside such swinging contemporaries as Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton), Coddington signed on at British Vogue in 1968 as a junior fashion editor. Within no time she established herself on the other side of the camera, coordinating photoshoots with the likes of Cecil Beaton, Sarah Moon, David Bailey, Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin. Grace continued her panoramic romanticism at British Vogue until 1987, when Calvin Klein hired her to be his design director. She then set sail for American Vogue the following year and became the creative director in 1995, a position she still holds today. Grace became famous over night when RJ Cutler placed Grace at the centre of his documentary in 2009 “The September Issue “ which was based on the making of the Vogue September Issue '07, after which she became a household name.

Grace creates a short story with each shoot, narrative epics that are artistic, enchanting and gloriously detailed. Anne Wintour, the editor-in-chief of American Vogue spoke on Grace’s work “The ways she works is so meticulous, and planned out, it’s not like she turns up on the day of the shoot and just expects the magic to happen. Grace has it all worked out beforehand. She always says it’s all about the casting, but it’s all about everything as Grace is concerned. She doesn’t leave much to chance.”

Examples of her work below... Which more than speak for themselves....