Grace Coddington’s conversation with Anna Wintour, upon the launch of her new book , is impossible to synopsise, because how do you tie a discussion between two friends and colleagues of nearly six decades in a neat bow? In reality, a report on the talk feting the third volume of Coddington’s career-spanning fashion portfolios, could have read as a selection of pithy one-liners as the powerhouse pair reminisced about birthday parties (“Grace likes her birthday and she likes a birthday cake”) to bob haircuts (“I tried to have that [Vidal Sassoon] haircut. It never worked for me,” said Wintour), and (“We had no conflict there; it was all for the cameras”), as they batted memories back and forth while an audience of friends, from Manolo Blahnik and Hamish Bowles to Joe McKenna and Jamie Hawkesworth, watched on, chuckling, in the V&A lecture hall.
The hour-long chat was a celebration of fashion at its most agenda-setting – V&A members got lost in blown-up pictures by Steven Klein, Annie Leibovitz, David Bailey and Norman Parkinson, all styled by “amazing Grace” as Wintour calls her – but wistful nostalgia (bar a couple of free flight and hotel mentions) was not invited into the theatre. Rather, said Wintour, the content officer of Condé Nast and global editorial director of , Coddington’s new photography tome “serves as a powerful reminder – in case we needed one, which we certainly don’t – that Grace is at the absolute height of her powers.” Every shoot, from the Steven Meisel 1992 editorial, which Wintour admitted to hating at the time and saw many readers cancel their subscriptions, to the Leibovitz-shot 2003 portfolio of designers as characters in Alice in Wonderland, which cemented Grace’s friendship with then rising designer Nicolas Ghesquière, has shaped the flame-haired 85-year-old editor today.
“It’s never simply a shoot with Grace,” said Wintour, who took Coddington to US with her on her first day as editor-in-chief in 1988, even after Grace said she was “always making trouble” during the time they crossed over at the British title. “It’s a script. It’s a film. It’s a play. It’s a daydream. Perhaps it’s a short novel. Usually it’s romantic, but also very witty… It’s less about following culture, but really creating it.”
The final (audience!) question – “what is it like to work with Anna Wintour?” – went some way to explaining the foundation of their relationship: respect. “You allowed me to do these incredibly extravagant pictures, stories, which if I was just an independent on my own, I would never have been able to get together,” said Coddington. “But you somehow trusted me. What I love is that we’re still friends.”
Grace: Now by Grace Coddington is published by Phaidon on 22 October for £79.95