Next time were in NYC we gotta stop by Grace's home because it is as welcoming and perfect as the red haired creative director of American Vogue. Take a peek inside with WSJ Magazine.
WORLD RENOWNED for her magic touch with clothes, Grace Coddington is curating an auction celebrating their absence. Although the irony of that will be lost on no one, Coddington's career in fashion actually began with a nude—her first picture ever, when she started modeling in 1959. "I think I was very naive. It didn't occur to me that it was a weird thing to do, but I thought Norman Parkinson was an extraordinary photographer, and when he asked me to take off my clothes, it was just the same as 'Stand up' or 'Sit down.'" What "Parks" actually got her to do, though, was run around naked in the woods, as she offhandedly recounts in Grace, her 2012 memoir.
Coddington assumed that when Alexander Gilkes, co-founder of the online auction house Paddle8, first approached her it wasn't because of her knack with nudes. "I thought it would be fashion pictures, so I said yes, and then it turned out to be portraits," says Coddington. "If there's one thing I'm known for, it's 'Don't crop a picture.' I want the feet in it. So portraits weren't working for me. And they didn't want fashion pictures—I guess they don't sell for as much—so then they said nudes."
"We felt it was the best way to celebrate the artist and the quality of photography," says Gilkes. "Strip away the clothes and focus on the nude." Hence the title of the auction (viewable at Paddle8.com from May 1 to 16), slightly arch in light of Coddington's role as the creative director of Vogue: "No Clothes." Even though she was keen to curate something within the area for which she is best known, she made peace with its polar opposite by reconceptualizing the nude as a kind of canvas for her work. "We start out on a fashion shoot with a girl who has no clothes on, and we build from that: the hair, the makeup, the clothes. But she starts with nothing."
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