Huge thanks go to my lifelong friend Michael Roberts for taking on this assignment and bringing my voice to life with his wicked wit, as well as for jogging my memory on the things I had forgotten. It’s tough to live so closely with someone over an extended period, but I hope he will agree we had a hell of a laugh. To Eve MacSweeney for her English ear and humor as she thoughtfully edited the book into shape, and for keeping me calm in the final stages when I believed I was losing my mind. To Anna Wintour for allowing me a free hand to write about how our lives have been entwined through all our years together at Vogue, and to Beatrix Miller for recognizing my passion so early on and giving me my first chance to express it.
My assistants past and present will be my friends forever. To Anne Christensen, a fellow redhead whom I always call my daughter. To Jessica Diehl, who taught me to be tough, and Michal Saad, who taught me to be positive. And to Stella Greenspan—without whom I absolutely could not have done this project—for patiently typing in all the corrections (remember, I don’t use a computer), advising me when I went too far, and reading my stories a hundred times and still laughing at them.
To Didier for suffering for three years while I was working on the manuscript reading it over and over again—very slowly—instead of, say, making dinner, and for being so complimentary when he finally read it himself, despite the mention of all my ex-boyfriends and husbands and the insults I directed at his people, the French.
To everyone in the Vogue art department: Martin Hoops for giving up his weekends to work on layouts, the nimble scanners Daphne Taranto and Amanda Camodeo, David Byars for stepping into the breach, Desirée Rosario-Moodie for tracking down photographers and getting permissions, and Julie Bramowitz for valiantly correcting my muddled memory on the facts.
To my agents, Elyse Cheney and Natasha Fairweather, for taking me on, guiding me, and backing me up, even when I stubbornly declared I knew best about something I had never done before. To Jay Fielden, who introduced me to Elyse and got the ball rolling.
Finally, thank you to everyone who has been part of my life. To all the many designers, photographers, models, hairdressers, and makeup artists, who are really the ones that create the pictures. And to my partner in crime Phyllis Posnick, who has put up with me for the last half century while I complained about everything, and who I failed to mention in the book is one of my dearest friends.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Grace Coddington lives in New York City and Long Island with her partner, Didier Malige, and their two cats, Bart and Pumpkin.
CONTRIBUTORS
DESIGN DIRECTORS
GRACE CODDINGTON AND MICHAEL ROBERTS
EDITOR
EVE MACSWEENEY
ART DIRECTOR
MARTIN HOOPS
ARCHIVAL RESEARCH
DESIRÉE ROSARIO-MOODIE
COORDINATOR
STELLA GREENSPAN
Also by Grace Coddington
Grace: Thirty Years of Fashion at Vogue
The Catwalk Cats
(with Didier Malige)
Grace Page 26
