Grace Coddington recently came out with a memoir about her private life growing up, her rise to fame, and the many people she worked with over the years at Vogue.
"Grace: A Memoir" by published by Random House Publishing Group on Nov. 20. The 416-page book is described:
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.
According to Straight.com, Coddington has "worked with Norman Parkinson, crushed on David Bailey, narrowly avoided sleeping with both Roman Polanski and Mick Jagger. Her nickname was "The Cod," a counterpoint to Jean Shrimpton's "The Shrimp."
Other things from the memoir:
"Coddington's dramatic working life, which led her from modelling in London and Paris to working at British Vogue, to a short-lived gig as the design director at Calvin Klein, to American Vogue (where she's been since 1988), is matched only by her tumultuous love life. She constantly falls in and out of love with a series of high-profile men, including restaurateur Michael Chow and hairstylist Didier Malige; her first fiancé was then-photographer's agent Albert Koski, who left her after having an affair with Catherine Deneuve's sister," Straight.com pointed out.
"My feeling has always been that people should be focused on their jobs and not all this fashionable 'I want to be a celebrity' s**t," she says in the memoir.
You can buy "Grace: A Memoir" on Amazon for $19.02.