Grace

Grace Coddington is so talented. I wasone of the people that did not know of her geiouse until I saw the September Issue. Some of her work on the big screen brought tears to my eye's it was so beautiful. I now get to read about her and admire her some more.

The book itself it really well written, very fun to read and grace's illustrations are just so adorable. she tells her life since her childhood up to working with the most amazing fashion icons, truly interesting, you can't stop reading. This is a must read for any fashion lover

If you love sophisticated fashion and have been a dedicated Vogue fan like me you will enjoy this book. Grace Coddington lived the life many of us dreamed of from 1960's through all those beautiful eras since.

Excellent book, not just for current Vogue readers and fashionista's. It's a journey through fashion, music and London in the 60's, then fashion and art in the 70's, then fashion and photography of the 80's, and so on..... an amazing life.

Excellent book, not just for current Vogue readers and fashionista's. It's a journey through fashion, music and London in the 60's, then fashion and art in the 70's, then fashion and photography of the 80's, and so on..... an amazing life.

I think the previous negative reviews are much too harsh. I let these reviews put me off and they shouldn't have. No, it isn't deeply self reflective but it doesn't need to be. It's a book predominately about fashion and its a good read.

When searching for this book on other sites the store's price couldn't be beat. With free shipping and an affordable price this was an easy choice for a Christmas present for a friend who works in the fashion industry.

The interesting dynamic about Grace was her secondary ability as a model who could remodel herself, and you will have to read the book to understand the great wisdom in that statement. Suffice to say, they threw away the mold when they made her.

Grace Coddington was a fashion model in the 1960s, appearing in Vogue and other magazines. When she was 28, she moved to the behind the scenes side of fashion magazines and became a junior editor at British Vogue, later moving to photo editor. After a brief stint with Calvin Klein, she became creative director of American Vogue. Her whole life has been about fashion and photography. Along the way, she’s met and worked with many of the greats of fashion. Given my fascination with the subject, I thought I’d love this book.

The book, sadly, is merely ‘okay’. It’s flat, told in a ‘and then I’ format that brings to mine youthful ‘what I did on my summer vacation’ writings. Grace admits that she’s only read two books in her life (although obviously she’s had to have read hundreds of magazines in her work life), so it’s no surprise that she doesn’t have a fluent writing style. If you’re interested in the fashion world, you’ll like this book despite the lack of flow. Just to know who was doing what when is kind of interesting.

The most fascinating part of the book, to me, was that I finally know the why behind photo spreads in fashion magazines that barely show the clothing and are sometimes down right surrealistic. The spreads are art, not a catalog, and they have themes that have nothing to do with the clothing shown. Exciting to look at, they draw the reader into the *idea* of the clothing.

The book has many photographs, and is illustrated with Grace’s cute little drawings.

The standard disclaimer applies. I received this book as a promotional copy from GoodReads and what I can only assume was an overzealous use of the 'request this book' button.

In all the technical ways that a book can be so this one was completely adequate. The author is a sufficiently skilled one and has many diverse stories to tell from her life and she shares them with openness and skill. Her career in the fashion industry for several decades is clearly one worth writing about as she seems to have met everyone who was ever anyone or even had a chance to be anyone. Unlike many memoirs her presentation is detailed without being egotistical and on a personal level she seems quite a nice person. She describes her own problems with anxiety around people and crowds in a way that I find very easy to relate to and sympathize with. Grace Coddington presents to her readers a good life well-lived.

I was rather astonished though by the almost dismissive manner in which she related events from her own life. She seems to have managed to divorced half a dozen husbands with barely a mention of them. Major milestones in her life fly by only hinted at in some cases. Perhaps this was intended to emphasize her career rather than personal life but it did rather leave me wanting more of Grace the person rather than Grace the public figure.

In the end though this was completely impossible to wade through. After 120 pages of name-dropping about people I'd never heard of (but obviously should have) I quickly skimmed through the rest and put it aside. It's well-executed but not for everyone.

Written as a series of well-illustrated articles, the book reflects Grace's background as a fashion editor. She says it's ironic that since she's read only two books in her lifetime that she is writing a book, but she has overseen thousands, if not millions, of pages like these.

The description of her childhood pulled me in. You can feel the stateliness of beautiful of the inn her parents ran and the changes in lifestyle brought on by a full house in the summer and the emptiness of winter. There is plenty for a lonely girl to explore in the woods and the bay. Grace attends a strict Catholic school. She speaks of her shyness around the other girls. With her family as members of the Church of England, she is an outsider.

While Grace's parents ran this picturesque inn, they would never own it. By primogeniture it was inherited by Grace's mother's brother, and when he died it went to another brother. In this regard, Grace is much like Pamela Churchill Harriman in coming from a family where resources went through the male line with no thought to the future of the daughters, and the view that a high school was sufficient education. Grace, like Pamela a generation before, made her way in the world.

Grace is to be credited for her achievement despite the odds and competition. She writes as though her career just fell into place. I don't mind the understatement, but there is no reflection on the competitive environment or the hard work, patience and savvy it had to have required for success.

The narrative, for me, never reached the level of the prose used to describe her childhood. There were some good topics but they were often punctuated with names I didn't know and descriptions of what Grace and others wore. I'd love to know more about minimalist housekeeping with the first husband, or how one starts a restaurant which he seems to do so easily. The insight in to the fashion sense of Russia and China at the dawn of their opening to the west were absent from the description of the on site fashion shoots. There was not enough on how the magazines were run or how pages and stories were and are selected and put together.

At the end, Grace touches on aging and beauty, but nowhere does she approach any discussion on the requirements for models in today's fashion industry. The photos she presents show the generational changes in the female fashion image with no explanation. Her awareness of this change seems to be limited to nostalgia for glamor of the 50's and 60's. She writes of the falsity of plastic surgery but nothing on why fashion editors continue to promote unrealistic youth and body images or the decisions and pressures she faced in making artistic choices that either led or followed the trends.

I was not surprised nor disappointed that Grace did not "dish". The parts on Anna Wintour were appropriate and descriptive enough so that you understood her presence and leadership in Vogue and what their relationship was and is.

As a very creative magazine editor, Grace knows how to make a page look good. Her line drawings make the book. She is also generous with color photos of her life and work.

Because of what it lacks, this is a 2 star book. For its honesty (however limited in scope) and the importance (in the fashion industry) of the person it comes from I give it 3 stars.

I never saw The September issue- I left Vogue behind about 3 years ago when I felt they became too elite for my tastes-but I love Grace Coddington. She's a wonderful narrator and, after 50+ years in fashion, has a lot to say. Most of it is a mix of her personal life (born in Wales, she became a model and worked for some top photographers), fashion and photographers, and the models, writers and celebs she has worked with on shoots. She's an engaging narrator and, while never going into too much detail about her emotions, you get a sense of her life and her accomplishments and what all this meant to her-it's am impressive body of work. If you're interested in Anna Wintour, great, because she's frequently mentioned. But the charm of the book is the handsketched drawings and witty chapter descriptions-and the love she shows for cats and her pride at her styling and editing. Many of the photographers and photo shoots she mentions are displayed in the book, along with credits, which was a great addition to the behind-the-scene details. This took longer to read than I expected, and, I think it helps to have a knowledge of fashion, but was a pleasure.

Grace Coddington was born and grew up on a fogbound, thinly populated island off the northern coast of Wales. She lived a middle-class life as the daughter of the manager of the 32-room Trearddur Bay Hotel. "It was a plain building with whitewashed walls and a sturdy gray slate roof, long and low, with the understated air of an elongated bungalow." It was a family run business for families who liked to get away from civilization and rough it on the windswept beach with the icy Irish Sea slapping against the shore. Here a pretty little Welch girl grew up playing and dreaming of the fashion world she read about in the magazines or saw on the nearby village movie screen.

She eventually went off to London to take a two-week course in how to be a fashion model and presto, she was soon a paid model, although some of her first modeling assignments involved her modeling her birthday suit as she ran through the woods like a gazelle.

Her timing for entering the London fashion scene was perfect. The fashion business was much simpler and all models did their own make-up for example. The city was just beginning to come into it's own both in the music and fashion world. She did very well and became a favorite of most of the soon-to-be famous fashion photographer super stars. She made friends with many of the soon to be famous models, actors, photographers and musicians.

The memoir is full of photographs of Grace modeling and Grace working as a stylist and creative director of Vogue Magazine both the British Edition and later the NYC edition. One of this reviewer's favorite pictures in the book is on page 173 and it shows Grace powdering the cheeks and nose of Prince Charles for his official investiture photograph, at Windsor Castle, 1968. He is wearing his crown; fur lined royal robes and holding a scepter in his right hand and gripping his bejeweled sword with his left hand. For a commoner to be so close to his royal highness must have been a huge thrill for the gal from a tiny island off the coast of Wales.

As a former photographer in Grace's age group, this was a wonderful trip down memory lane for this reviewer. She was constantly describing the photographers, other models, and clubs and fashion industry of that amazing period in London history. For younger readers, this may have seemed like all Grace was doing was saying she went here, there and everywhere and saw everyone who was anyone. However, for members of her generation her descriptions of past places and events were great because we all lived through that era and it was familiar to our generation.

The pictures in the book are fascinating. Even the 2012 group portrait of some of the Vogue photographers she has enjoyed working with was fascinating. It's nice to see pictures of Mario Testino, Ellen von Unwerth, Annie Lebovitz, Bruce Webber, Herb Ritts, David Bailey and various others.

The book is lavishly illustrated with pen and ink drawings by Grace. She has also sketched the models parading in fashion shows rather than trying to describe their outfits.
Obviously she is very fast with her sketching and hates to be interrupted while working along the fashion runway. "My system at the shows is to draw, sketch, put down everything--every single outfit--and worry later whether I liked it or not. Occasionally, I will put a star next to a favorite. Because I don't write about fashion, I don't take notes."

From early in the book Grace points out that she is a very private person and likes her privacy. She and Didier, and her cat family, "hardly ever socialize," because she concentrates so hard on her work, she doesn't suffer fools or foolish questions.

For a woman who hated public intrusions into her private life, she remained below the horizon until the release of a recent documentary titled, "The September Issue." Once talked, pressured, into contributing to that project by allowing herself to be filmed at work, she suddenly became a celebrity that is now recognized on the street and in the subway. She has found that novelty interesting, although she still guards her private life. That's probably why some readers of the book will feel that they haven't learned much about her inner person or her inner beliefs about fashion. They obviously haven't believed her when she has said over and over in her memoir that she is a very private person.

As Creative Director of Vogue she is still too busy to waste much time talking about her philosophy when she can instead continue to push fashion to new frontiers.

After 50 years in the fashion business she says, "It's hard for me to define what is modern, because I am not."

This is a page-turner about fashion and one humble woman's amazing career in the field. Even she is amazed at her spectacular voyage from the misty, wind-swept island of nowhere to the shining apex of the fashion universe.

i saw the documentary which preceded this book THE SEPTEMBER ISSUE. there you discover that grace, a former model does the creative side of american vogue magazine by being in charge of the fashion shoots. she does a great job at this and has a wonderful eye for the editorial presentation of fashion. BUT, and this does make me uneasy, both grace and her boss, wintour, look as if they haven't eaten in decades and their models are generally anoretic teenagers who will be all washed up by their twenties. so, on one hand, i do find this fascinating, and on the other hand, i find it appalling. i am having a harder time getting past this problem witheach new Vogue product. i was sent the book for free so no issue there. i have not bought VOGUE in years because of this uneasiness. grace does seem wholly unaware that this problem even exists.

Visit my blog with link given on my profile page here or use this phonetically given URL (livingasseniors dot blogspot dot com). Friday's entry will always be weekend entertainment recs from my 5 star the store reviews in film, tv, books and music. These are very heavy on buried treasures and hidden gems. My blogspot is published on Monday, Wednesday & Friday.

Outside of fashion, Grace still strikes an impressive figure. Perhaps it's her hair. Grace (2012) is the memoir of Grace Coddington, the British-born former model and current creative director of American Vogue magazine. Thrust recently into the spotlight through the documentary film The September Issue (2011) about the inside workings of the magazine, Grace is easily recognizable.

Coddington, "The Cod", writes of her early years, her loves and lovers, her personal and professional partners, and of course fashion designers, models, celebrities, stylists, photographers, make-up artists, hairdressers, assistants, and bosses. Every aspect of the complex and complicated interconnected web of production to prop to final photograph is mentioned in an easy-to-read style, with a veritable list of who's who in the business.

From inspiration to fully fledged photo shoot, Coddington explains how some of the most memorable Vogue features were created, and how fashion publicity has changed over time. Many of the features she describes will be instantly familiar to loyal long-time Vogue readers. As Coddington describes her favorites, from clothes to people, it will either affirm or question readers' own interests and trends, and re-ignite a passion for the retro, the past, and a much-loved piece or move readers along to the current vogue.

Of most interest, she accompanies the text with an impressive amount of personal photographs and Vogue fashion spreads (British Vogue to American Vogue), but also with many of her own line drawings.

Her memoir is no back-stabbing expose of everyone in the fashion business. Quite the opposite - it is a nostalgic reflection of her experiences and influences over fifty years in the business, and told with candor, humor, and extreme grace.

First things first -- the design of this book is superior to the writing. This is a charming, well-constructed book enlivened by the author's adorable drawings and many photos.

Grace Coddington knows a lot, has seen a lot, and has experienced a lot. This book does a fairly good job of communicating her life and her perspectives, but if you are looking for a memoir that provides you with some keys to the Grace Coddington character, well, this isn't the book. For all the anecdotes in this not-short book, Grace Coddington remains a sort of mystery.

Part of the problem is probably the quality of the writing. This is breezy and meandering prose. It reads as if it is a transcription of a long series of interviews. And even after the writer, or her editor, or her ghostwriter tightens things up, it remains an invaluable record, but not a terribly well-written piece of work.

If you grew up like me, poring over fashion magazines, enraptured by the glamour, dreaming of the excitement, wanting to be an editor, and oh, let's not forget the CLOTHES!--then this book will enrapture you equally.

Reading every nugget of this memoir had me glued, gasping, wowing at how Grace has basically worked with every important mover and shaker in fashion from the 60's, 70s, 80s, 90s, and 00s. That's FIVE decades, my friends. Names that are living legends in their own rights, such as Cecil Beaton, Patrick Demarchelier, Liz Tilberis, Arthur Elgort, Galliano, and many more.

Grace was fortunate to be born at the right place at the right time with the right looks and the right friends. However, having accomplished so much, she herself has become a living legend and massive contributor to fashion today. This book is aspirational, inspirational, and will undoubtedly become a classic 'fashion bio', along with Diana Vreeland's DV.

If you truly love fashion, and i mean TRULY LOVE it, then this is your "Fashion Legends 101", which is required reading.

This could be seen as the book a sophisticated Welsh woman would write for the American market. There is a hint of laughter as she describes the peccadilloes of her rather extraordinary family and the summer hotel they maintained on the Welsh Atlantic coast. This idyll lasted until Grace was about three and World War II caused the hotel to be closed and British and North American soldiers were billeted there.
She developed a taste for fashion as a child in Wales; she read her big sister's copies of Vogue and developed a taste for making her own clothes using Vogue patterns. This interest foretold her future in fashion at first British Vogue and then American Vogue. When the time came for her transformation to becoming a young working woman she found a coupon in Vogue for a London modeling school and she was away. The rest, as they say, is history.

A memoir must be egocentric, and this one is no exception. I found it rather tediously so. That said, the adventures of Grace in London, Paris, and New York are an interesting look at the post-war and later years of fashion, now relegated to the picture books. There is an excellent series of photos of those days, and a wonderful selection of drawings of herself, her friends and her cats.

Here a name, there a name, everywhere a name dropped. What a dull book about what must have been a life of some interest.

This is the book for you if you like paragraphs that are something like this, "Jerald and I did a marvelous shoot in Paris. We waited until there was some morning fog and the model was Sarah Picknoseington, whom I adore. At the last minute I cried out, "No, wait! Use these Versace earrings and dug a pair out of my personal bag. The photos were great."

If you find the above mildly interesting, imagine page after page after page of such "adventures."

This book is like a laundry list -- a memoir with everything but meaningless facts edited out.

As someone who worked in the fashion industry as a writer/blogger for a few years I was excited that Grace Coddington wrote a memoir. I knew of her work but didn't fall in love with Grace until after watching "The September Issue." "Grace" is an enlightening memoir that goes into her childhood, modeling career, her romantic relationships, and her styling career. There's no real structure to the book as the timeline meanders rather than going in a straight line so reading the book is probably best enjoyed a chapter at a time rather than trying to devour it all at once. Her drawings of people and animals are charming and I felt like I got to know Grace's personality. To echo some other reviews, the memoir is a collection of anecdotes and events but you don't really know her feelings about them. If you're looking for an in-depth portrait of Grace Coddington then this is not the book for you. If you're curious about Grace's life and insights in the fashion industry or looking for a gift for a fashionista, pick this up.

Grace Coddington, a British model turned fashion stylist/editor extraordinaire, has crafted a memoir whose best feature is its social history from the 1950'2 and 1960's. Coddington knew anyone who was anyone in the incestous world of fashion, and the parts about her life as a model in both England and France are delightful, as is her account of her early life in a remote corner of Wales. The book's black and white photographs are fascinating and her personal ilustrations--doodles, really--are charming.

While the early part of the book is honest and reveals Coddington's great love for fine fashion photography, the book takes a sour turn when the author movies to New York City to work with Calvin Klein--a job for which she's not especially suited--and eventually, Anna Wintour at American VOGUE. While Coddington's loyalty to Wintour is to be respected, this part of the book isn't much fun, and devolves into a hodgepodge of name-dropping.

This is a book true fashionistas will enjoy.

If you are a follower of the fashion industry, you have to read this book.
And, if you have been around long enough to remember the 60's fashion
expolsion, you will be more than delighted with Grace's memoir.

She traces her life from a childhood of modest beginnings to her present-
day life. Her in-depth tales are vivid and intimate. I truly felt as though
I were there with her. Grace talks candidly about her personal life - her
loves, marriages, and friendships. She tells of her life as a model, as well
as the party scene during that time. Grace walks through her transitions from
working at British Vogue to Calvin Klein to American Vogue. She names names and
gives very personal accounts of her impressions/relationships with each person.
(This includes rock personalities, models, celebrities, designers, Anna, and more.)

Her down-to-earth style will speak to your heart. Her illustrations are dear,
as is her love of her cats. The photos are excellent. I highly recommend this
book.

Wow! If you are into fashion or just curious about all of the beautiful, talented and artist people, this is a must read. It's a "Who's Who" of the fashion world. What young person hasn't dreamed of becoming a famous model, travelling the world and meeting other beautiful people. Well Grace Coddington has certainly done that and more. I am a little more than envious as she made out with Mick Jagger when they were both young. (He was a heart throb when I was young) She worked as a model for Elle, Queen, Vogue, Mademoiselle, Harper's Bazaar, and others. She was married to Michael Chow at one point. She has been photographed by some of the most famous photographers in the world. She is friends with many of the top designers and artists. The book is filled with pictures which tell a story of their own. If you have ever wondered how some of these people got started or what their personalities are like, this is a tell all. If there is such a thing as reincarnation, I want to come back as a designer in the fashion world. What a life!!!!!!

Like so many people, I was charmed by Grace Coddington and the imaginative work she does for Vogue when I saw "The September Issue." Coddington is primarily a visual artist and not a natural writer. This is a girlishly written book, but not without interest. The book is best when she writes about her early life in Wales and working as model in London and Paris during the late fifties and swinging sixties. The book held less interest to me when she wrote about the eighties to the present. The best part of the book are the photographs of her and the intriguing fashion spreads she creates for Vogue. Coddington herself comes across as an amiable woman who appears to hold few grudges and has a gift for surviving in a ruthless profession. At the end of the book, she writes about herself as an aging woman in a refreshing way. She wears no makeup except lipstick and sees no need to have cosmetic surgery. Coddington is a brilliant, self-invented woman whose true self comes across not in her writing, but in her work.

The fashion-obsessed will love this behind-the-scenes commentary on famous shoots, shows and run-ins, but Coddington's work lacks the emotional draw of most memoirs. While her story is glamorous - from growing up in austere Welsh surroundings to being transported to the glitzy world of London fashion - the writing is choppy and blunt. She delivers some of life's most moving moments, like countless husbands and lovers, failed relationships and pregnancy, nearly devoid of emotion. But the book provides an interesting glimpse into the life of someone who's early love of picture books foreshadowed a monumental career in visual storytelling, both in front of and behind the camera. Her unique ability to capture fashion combined with a sense of place is what sets her apart.

I enjoyed The September Issue and was hoping this book would be a continued exploration of Grace Coddington, a person I found creative, unpredictable, and thoroughly interesting. Unfortunately, her memoir paints her as the most vapid, shallow and uninteresting cliche to be found in the fashion industry. Nowhere are there insightful thoughts like in The September Issue (my favorite was her photographic advice to always keep your eyes open and not buried in a phone). Instead we're treated to such revelations about her true character ("I only hire beautiful assistants") and shallow narcissism, mostly about her clothes, hair and men. In one anecdote she recounts an attack on Anna Wintour by an animal activist. An interesting subject to explore, but all we get from Grace is a vague description of what went down ("Or whatever it is those anti-fur activists do...") It's a sentiment you'd expect from an out-of-touch, pampered and stupid Upper Eastside socialite, and - sadly - that's the picture Grace gives us in this book. A profound disappointment.

Grace Coddington may not be a writer by trade, but with a little help from Michael Roberts, any number of intriguing (and fun!) snapshots, photographs, and magazine spreads, and a smattering of her deliciously naive sketches, she has made Grace: A Memoir into an entertaining (albeit admittedly fashion-centric), if not tell-all, at least a tell-some, first person glimpse into behind-the-scenes at Vogue magazine. I love the juicy, gossipy details of the shoots for Vogue layouts I have seen and find fascinating those I haven't - her descriptions really make me want to go look up each and every issue.
Ms. Coddington gives up details and tells tales on herself as much as on anyone else, and definitely seems more real, relatable, and down to earth to me after reading her memoir.

Like others here, I became introduced to Coddington through the movie 'The September Issue'. In that film, she was far more interesting than Anna Wintour so I was hoping the book would be just as interesting.

Perhaps it is for a different demographic. To me, the book was interesting, but not interesting enough to keep my attention. I don't know what I was exactly expecting, but 400+ pages was a little much for this subject.

I suppose there are those who would find it riveting, but I was not one. All in all it wasn't horrible. The 2 stars is for my interest level and the length, not as much the style or subject. There's something for everyone, but I'm not that someone.