Vogue's Grace Coddington: A Woman Whose 'Brand' Is Positioned for the Future

American Vogue creative director Grace Coddington swears that she didn’t set out to steal the limelight from Anna Wintour in the making of “The September Issue”, now open in theaters. TMagazine says Coddington pushed back again and again with director R.J. Cutler, until Wintour ordered her to participate.

Karen Elson Pulls On Her Grace Coddington for Vogue August 2008From all press reports, Coddington emerges as the sympathetic, passionate American Vogue muse, deeply enmeshed in a didactic relationship with queen Wintour, who continuously molds Coddington’s vision into commercial fashion bites for American women.

Cathy Horyn writes that Coddington demonstrates flint in her relationship with Anna Wintour.

More importantly, Vogue’s eccentric  shows a ground floor relationship with creating beauty. I say “ground floor”, because this is where we find Coddington in a clip from “The September Issue”: on her knees, dressing her ‘girls’ for the fashion shoot.

The September Issue, Grace Coddington Shoot

Coddington looks nothing like a Vogue fashionista. Rather, she appears as a red-maned goddess, an independent, die-hard, romantic Lilith in Wintour’s garden of Eden.

Grace Coddington via Flickr’s Ming_the_MercilessWe learn more about the witchy-looking, no makeup, Vogue creative genius from The London Times: Coddington was born to hotelier parents on the island of Anglesey, Wales, in 1941 – a million miles away from both the perfumed salons of couture and the ruthless and highly competitive business of the fashion business. A gangly, nervy, pale-skinned schoolgirl, convent-educated, she subscribed to Vogue and ran up her own outfits on a Singer sewing machine. She moved to London, enrolled at modelling school (at that point “teaching” involved learning etiquette, even how to curtsy), but her big break was winning the Vogue model competition.

“The September Issue” ends up being a look back into the world that was hot then, but upside down now.

In 2008, the Moderns ruled, although Cultural Creatives had elbowed their evolution into our consciousness.

Today, Anna Wintour’s world is filled with management consultants, helping her boss Si Newhouse Jr plot a go forward strategy for Conde Nast.

Besides ploughing through Wintour’s expense accounts, the recommendations from McKinsey & Co, due during September’s London fashion week, will recommend significant changes in the publishing company.

The word is that only The New Yorker is safe from major tampering.

Cool Cucumbers

Neither Cultural Creative Coddington nor Modern Wintour appears to be sweating the outcome, but perhaps for different reasons.

Grace Coddington & Didier Malige at Hamptons bookstoreGrace Coddington insists that she is happiest with her cats, long-time friend, Didier Malige and an inspiring good book. Her values are trending spot on, in our 21st century “what’s goin’ on” world.

Anna Wintour is defined by Modernism, much more-so than her Smart Sensuality French Vogue counterpart Carine Roitfeld, profiled earlier this week. Roitfeld has a leg in each values set.

Giving Anna Wintour all the respect due her, the question is: does the ice-queen editor have the sensibility to embrace new values — or will they just be a hollow read?

Grace Coddington & Anna WintourThe focus may be on cutting Wintour’s expense account, but the real questions, asked more than once, is what version of American Vogue is relevant for 21st century Smart Sensuality women?  This could be yet another life moment when Grace Coddington steals the show? Stay tuned. Anne

Read also: American Vogue: Back to the 3Rs