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WMN role models: Grace Coddington

From model to editor, overcoming a turbulent past

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Voluminous and botticellians red hair, pale complexion and bright red lipstick. Grace Coddington is one of the best known and most appreciated fashion editors ever. Creative Director of Vogue America since 1988, is a constant presence that boasts some of the most legendary services of the magazine. Grace's life begins very far from luxury, in an island in Wales, a place isolated from worldliness, where fashion and glossy magazines are things that you cannot always afford. She herself in the documentary film “The September Issue” tells of how she eagerly awaited the release of Vogue, the only contact with that glamorous world that gave her hope of dreaming. Before becoming a journalist, she worked for a long time as a model, thanks to the victory of a competition, posing for photographers such as Norman Parkinson and Frank Horvat. It's the sixties, Grace becomes one of the most popular and demanded faces. But at the age of twenty-six years her promising career suffers a hard stop due to a serious car accident that leaves her disfigured. Forced to five plastic surgeries she returns to work in fashion, as a junior fashion editor of Vogue. That terrible accident changes her life. They are difficult years, weaknesses and insecurities emerge before unknown. Grace understands that she has lost the greatest opportunity of her life. Little known to most of the public, is the documentary on the “The September Issue” of Vogue to give her the true fame. The Coddington on success has very clear ideas, it feels fragile and certainly not lasting. Her is a continuous and exhausting work behind the scenes, at the side of Anna Wintour, cold and icy. Always very discreet and far from the spotlight, Grace is passionate about the romantic image, the reality combined with the imagination, a truly unique world in which to be able to take refuge. There's something unique about this red-haired lady and the tremendously polite manners. Grace possesses a brilliant mind made up of dreams and great Visions told through the pages of the magazine. Dreams, the key word that best describes his personality. It was repeatedly thought that the former model used a fantasy world to escape from reality too harsh and abrupt towards her. It is not uncommon for the moments of despair and depression that Coddington has gone through and is still suffering from today. Accustomed to working with her own image, then nipped by the accident, Grace hasn't renounced her passion, while suffering continually. Working on the other side has certainly allowed her to express her artistic talents. Among the haunted ghosts, the relationship often contrasted with the Wintour, its stormy past and the eternal sensation of not being up to its own role. Today, at 77 years old, still full of ideas and grit, she has new projects in the pipeline: the production of a personal perfume, a photographic book and a capsule collection in collaboration with Louis Vuitton where her obsession with cats is finally well celebrated!