This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing, My chance to talk with artists, policy makers and performers, to hear their stories or inspires their creations, what decisions change their careers, what relationships influenced their work. If the fashion world were a kingdom, Grace Coddington would be queen. The English model turned Vogue fashion editor, creative director and stylist has been telling stories through clothes since age eighteen.
Born in nineteen forty one on a small island in the north of Wales, Grace Coddington moved to London as a teenager. With electric red hair. She became a model and took the fashion world by storm, landing on the cover of British Vogue in nineteen sixty two, where six years later she'd begin her editorial career as a junior a fashion editor. Eventually, Cartington ended up at American Vogue, where she spent more than twenty five years as its
creative director. For a master of style, Grace Cardington's own aesthetic may surprise you. Well, start off with how I dress. I don't wear jeans and things like that. I just wear black. But I have a reason for that. I mean, I have several reasons right now, I'm a little bit older and my little bit fatter, and black looks better on fatter, older people because they makes them look slim
and young. Yeah. But the other reason is that I spend my whole life with clothes and looking at clothes and judging clothes, considering clothes and making clothes form into a story or something like that. So I want to have a kind of clean palette on myself. So that's thinking, Yeah, it's distracting. I mean, I I don't want to think too much about what I'm putting on in the morning.
I mean that said I do change. There's an infinitesimal difference between now and you know, five years ago, where maybe the pants were a little bit wider, a little bit narrower, the sweater was a little bit tighter, a little bit, you know, and I wear the black version of today rather than the black version of five years ago. So but you asked, like, who wears fashion? Fashion? What
kind of people? What kind of people? Because I let me just sayd the interject that I'm magnorant, because I assume there are people who wake up and obviously they have a budget and they go to places that make clothes that are smart clothes that don't cost as much money. And then there's people who are going by very simple clothes and they get a nice blazer, and then it's all been out a Republic khaki pants and white button
down shirts and some little menu of eyes. There are options if you're not wearing a uniform to work, let's say. And then there's people who have limitless resources and can buy anything out there in the world that they want in the world of fashion, and I'm wondering, are you only making your clothes for them? No, I mean, I think it's my efforts are supposed to be to inspire, you know, to inspire people, and I'm hoping that people will not just copy copier designers look, you know, Piece
for Peace. I'm hoping that they will actually put their own personality into it, you know. And I think, you know, when it gets to the magazine, you show it in lots of different ways rather than just the way it came down the runway, because otherwise everybody really would kind of be dressed the same and it would be embarrassing if you're just wearing black people don't notice that it's the same. I think that, um, there's um there is
a very sort of ostentatious way of dressing it. Um. It's not the kind of look that I admire or but I do like people that have fun with it. You know, fashion is something to have fun with. I think, yeah, yeah, it is, you know, resources in the body. Well, I mean actually a lot of people have fun who don't have the body. And sometimes that's okay because they've learned to deal with it, you know, but compensated. You know.
What I don't like to see is people that are a little older than they should be wearing you know, let's say, a very short skirt or something that's the Yeah, do you have those delineations in your mind? Yes, but yeah, yeah you shouldn't. I mean, you should be the age you are. It's nothing wrong with any age, even as
old as me. You know. It's okay. It's funny how you say that, because I mean, I have simple and a very short I mean almost you could write it on the back of a napkin list of my fashion dues and don't for men, And whenever I see grown men with a baseball cap on backwards, I want to go, oh, no, you look like an idiot. Men's training to look boyish, the same women slating straining to look you know, younger
than But I expect that more from women. Yeah, we've been meaning that that women are constantly being abused, if you will, by the notion that as they get older they're less desirable. They're not as you know, young and beautiful, and men trading in their wives for younger women. But men, I don't understand it if they worry about it all the time and then and then never again to feel comfortable in their own skin. And I think that's such a shame. I mean, I'm a great one for not
believing in plastic surgery and things. You know, you were born in Wales and you grew up we were born and raised on the island in Wales. Yes, for yeah, I don't him come off the island for a very long time an island often yeah, but it was well no, actually the island I was born and was probably probably about the size of Manhattan. But um, but that was off another island, so it was you know, the island
in Wales. The island I was born on was called Holy and that's off another island called Anglesey where is that what part of the country way north Wales? North Wales, right off the tip. And you left the island when you were how old? Um? I think I left when I was about seventeen eighteen. I guess to university. Oh no, please, no, I'm totally uneducated. Have no education. I have no education. Now. I went to school until I was like seventeen and
a half or something. Did you graduate high school? Um? Pass on that. I didn't care. People bear their souls. I know, I know. That's why I'm joking. Actually, UM, I got scripture and art. Yes, I went to a convent and um, and it took me several times taking it, and I got scripture and art. I'm very, very very nervous when taking an exam, and I would sit down at the exam. Um, I put my pen to paper and I just simply couldn't write a word. So I failed all my exams. You know, I was. I was
just like rigid with nerves. I'm a bit like that talking to people too, So I warn you. UM, you know, I'm a little bit better now than I was a couple of years ago. So when you're there, you have how many siblings in your family? I had one sister and a sister and your parents. What did your dad do for a living on the island. My parents ran
a small hotel right by the beach. It was really lovely. Um. It was kind of a holiday hotel that was only open in the summer months of tourism there in the summer. Well you know, bye bye bye Long Island standards now, but by I guess North Wales standards. Yes, So they had a business. They had a business. They had this little family hotel that was right practically on the beach, very small. I think about twenty people could stay. There was fashion clothing. I mean I have only the most
tired images in my mind of it. Was your mother into clothing or someone into your family or was it Barbie or something whatever the equivalent was. I think, very kind of fashionable in you know, my grandmother was an opera singer. I wish I could sing. I wish I got something from her, but I didn't. Um and um. They had a sort of huge house on one side
of the island. And then m and my father came from Derbyshire, which is northern Ish England, and they met and then they they ran this hotel and my mother was all the pictures I see of her in her youth. She was very she was very chic. But she used to make a lot of her clothes because I think there weren't too many shops there that sold high fashion, so so she she knitted a lot. She made her own clothes, and she always looked amazing that I remember.
I mean, she wore suits and things. Although they know it's way in the country, and it was very dressed up, but it was that period, I suppose in the forties when people dressed up, they conscious they didn't wear jeans. I don't think jeans existed in those days. Well with cowboys hurting sheep maybe, but I think all of us have. Even when I was young, you know, my dad said to me when I was going to I was going
to graduate from high school. And I grew up with a big family and my father was a school teacher and he had no money, you know, And he said to me, we're going to go to a store and we're gonna buy you a suit. And I bought this three piece suit back when people still wore three pieces. I bought a three piece suit from It was Pierre Cardin. Yeah, but this was a discount place they sold discount, but even I could recognize what was beautiful. When did you
start to not agonize what was beautiful? When did you start to decide you wanted to teach other people what was beautiful and dress other people? How did that? How did that begin? Well? I think it began because um, when I eventually left home and went to London, I then, um, I started modeling. So I was modeling for um ten years or so. So I was very immersed in the fashion world obviously there, and it was such a great
time of fashion. It was the sixties, ah, and the whole ready to wear thing was beginning to happen, and it happened very strongly in London. I think London was a wonderful place to be at that point, and it was you know. Then I started obviously getting older towards the end of my twenties, and other people, like other models, famous models like Twigi came along and so um, I decided that maybe I should stop with this modeling lark and I got offered a job at Vogue. So I
was pretty British. I was super lucky, and so that was in when I started there. So so that it's the way back. So I guess that's when I started telling people how to dress. I slightly used to tell people when I was modeling. It was a very different situation then too. Now you know, they didn't have these huge teams of people that they have now on a shoot. Um, why do you think it involved that? Why are there
those huge teams of people? Know what happened? Um? There so much more at stake, so much more at stake, and time became money, and everything had to be done quicker. And you know, when I was modeling, you would go on a trip for two or three weeks, and even you know, through the first ten or fifteen years working at Vogue, and now it's two days if you're lucky, and you don't get further much than l a because you know, everything because everything is so so expensive. You know,
photographers don't have the time, models don't have that. Nobody has the time. They don't have the time need to be well that they probably need to be on the other side of the Atlantic, and that happens all the time. They go from you know, and they zip, well, it's not even a question of going home. They barely have
a home. Those poor girls you know, they literally a ripped from one airport to another and leap off a plane, are expected to look beautiful, and you have twenty four hours to Only you with any authority could say those poor girls, Well I've been in that position, those poor girls.
You know. I've been in that position, so I know how tough it is, even if you're eighteen or whatever to get off a plane you've been flying for and feel fresh and you know, and everybody looking at you and expecting, and you know, I personally get off a flight and I feel all sort of puffy. And we're a little older than those girls. Yes I am. If you started in British Vogue what year so you're there in,
how would you describe it? I only have ignorant references to like swing in London and what London was like that that was, you know, kind of full on swing while it was even it had been for a while. It was through the sixties, swinging cultural epicenter, music, art, fashion, everything. That's what was so fantastic. It was all relating to fashion, you know, it was everything was into relating fashion, and
you know all that pop music and things are so great. Yeah, well yeah, in this country, in the sixties, they shot the president, they shot his brother, and they shot Martin Luther King. Yeah that was over here, so London. You were having a good time and we were all having a great time, and we barely heard about that. You know, what kind of work were you doing at British Vogue? The same as I'm doing here. I was literally yeah,
that was a fashion show. You started out as a fashioned, as a junior fashion editor, which simply meant I went a little slower than other people. And then I became a regular fashion editor, and um, then I was kind of the fashion editor, somewhat in charge, you know, the main one there for quite some time. And you were a British folk till when um I was there until I think, yeah, I have seven You moved from London to New York. Whose idea was that, um, Calvin Klein, Um, Well,
a lot of things kind of fell into place. UM. I had lost my mother shortly before, so until that time, I always felt I couldn't they still in Wales. Yeah, yes she was. Um. I had a nephew that I was bringing up and he was like twenty, so I felt I could leave. And I always wanted to come to America. Not always, but in the last of those three years in England, Um, I started looking to America and what was happening here and working with American photographers
and namely Bruce Bruce Webber. Actually he's the one that kind of introduced me to this country, to the culture, to everything really, and I became really excited with it. And I also had a boyfriend who lived here, so I was kind of looking to come here. And it was a time where the editors changed at British Folk, and actually Anna Winter went there as as the editor, and she'd been a friend of mine for years, so
that was kind of great that she came. But I just thought it was a good moment to move and I got offered this fantastic job at Calvin Klein. Like Calvin, I'm doing what I was. I was called design director, but I mean I wasn't designing. I was just UM in the design room working with all the team of people. And when the decision for Calvin for you to come here, so your British Vogue to working for a designer. You're out of Vogue publishing for a while, right, And how
long are you with Calvin? Not very long? Because I really missed publishing. I mean, I I a do a Calvin. He's fantastic and he's you know, they're still good friends, and but I really missed. They involved doing a lot of different things, and um, I just felt that being in the same place and working with the same person, it was it was just not for me. And I don't think I was doing them any favors. How long did that last? A year and a half? Brief? And was the Vogue operation in the US had open arms
for you, they were ready. Well what happened was right at that time is um Anna was given was made editor in chief of So you know, as soon as I got that news, I'm like yeah, And I called her up and said, um could I have my old job back, but at American back? And she said she was like very immediately she is I mean, I don't know if you know her at all, but because she's you know, she doesn't did it around. She's she's very decisive and no kidding. She immediately said, yeah, I'm starting
on Monday. Do you want to start with me? So I did? She was it timed up when she was crossing over, you were walking the door with her. Amazing and that was close. Yeah, yeah, it was. I'm not interested truly, and I'm loath to talk about she's a counterpart if you were to talk about Anna in the way that she's scrutinized in the media and so forth. But why do you think it was Anna viewed to forget about who she is and what her contribution to
this is. But was she viewed the same over there as she was in the US, or when Anna came
over to the US, did a different woman emerge? Because I was invited to have dinner at her house and I went with my wife and I She had a twenty people over to her house down there, and I was so thrilled because I was amazing host right that she was lovely, She's incredibly warm, and she's a fantastic host, and she makes everybody down to the smallest person feel you know, important and at home and things like that. So you know, she's this other persona that everybody seems
to have about her. Is it's wrong? But I mean that said, is she at as your vogue And that's a big deal thing, you know, So before you even start, as you walk in the room, that's who you're going to meet with. Those responsibilities and that mantle too. You know. You know, I think she can be intimidating to people. I mean, I've just known her so long, so we get on really well. You know. That's not to say that I can push her push you know, push her around. I can't. Um, But um, I was hope. I was
hoping you were going to say that you can. And how we play games with each other, I think a little bit, you know, Um, But at the end of the day, we respect each other. But you know, I push her as hard as I can, and she pushes me as hard as she can, you know, And it's a good game because you know, I think what comes out of it is something that's quite strong. Coming up, Grace Coddington talks about the one group of people she
won't dress. As Cottington was making fashion come off the pages of American Vogue in the late nine nineties, a fictional TV character named Carrie Bradshaw was taking it to the streets. In the very beginning, we couldn't get our hands on anything. Nobody wanted to give us a thing, nobody, and we had a teeny teeny teeny. We talked about animic. We had a tiny tiny budget for the whole per episode, and it was about I think towards the end of
the second or even the beginning of third season. I can't remember which that it was Fandy that loaned us a baguette and that was like the gateway. That was, you know, the floodwaters. Everything shifted to hear Sarah Jessica Parker reflect on the Sex and the City years. Take a listen and here's the thing. Dot Org. This is
Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing. Grace Cottington is the closest thing to fashion royalty that there is a successful British model turned fashion editor and creative director of American Vogue for more than two decades. But beneath her porcelain skin and iconic red hair, Cottington is still a shy English girl with a dream, pushing herself and everyone around her to aim higher. Much of her work can be seen in her most recent book, Grace
the American Vogue Years. There are listeners can't see me do this, but I'm leaving through this book of yours and I want to go, who's this photographer for hair? Stephen mizel Is. There is Mizelle. I mean, I look at a picture like that which I can't describe to our That was the whole story we did on the twenties. And actually that's the story that UM appeared in the film that kind of made people know who I was the September issue, and that's that's the story that I
am fighting for. One picture which is also in the book and I printed in the book, but it never made it in the magazine. Um, I'm fighting to keep this picture in and no, not that one. It's another one in the same story, UM, which it's all about the twenties, that story, and in September issue, you're fighting to keep this, to keep this one picture, I think
it's the other way. You have to thumb the other way, and that's to keep And then, well, now I'm looking at it and I think, you know, maybe I shouldn't have put it in the book. I could not decide whether to put it in the book because largely everything in the book has been printed in the magazine, and it takes on once it's been printed. It takes on another life. Somehow, people recognize it, they know it, the picture becomes stronger because of it or whatever. So it's
a funny thing. If they haven't, if it hasn't actually been printed, usually they disappeared into no man's land. But because of the movie, and I keep holding this picture up and you know, shouting and screaming and stamping my foot and complaining that it's been thrown out. But now as I look at it, and I look at that picture, for instance, to compared to the one over the page that you were looking at before the two ladies, which is part of the same story, the other picture is
so much better, you know, it's more. Ultimately, all I can say is maybe, you know, maybe Annah was right, and she may which maybe Anna was right when she threw it out. Homogeneity of expression. All these women seem to be going through the same thing. When I connect with it, it's it's because I'm not into the clothing, women's clothing. I look at all this time, I go, oh, that all looks you know, I guess that turns on
some kind of women should go for that. And I'm looking at the faces of these people who are obviously they're there for a reason, like, is there ever an idea that you're going to have clothing modeled by people when you cut the heads off, and don't even bother involving the expression of a woman's face. I think that, yes, And it's really important. I mean, for me, the casting of a photograph is the most important part of it,
you know. So I see this and I go, oh my god, like look at her, you know, I mean, how compelling, how strong, and all the whole thing is just it's all of one and the colors and the lipstick and the eyes, and I'm like, oh my god, that's just gorgeous. The minesel that's here that I favored, the two women in the in the in the in the bar or whatever. The twenty shot that was shot where oh here in New York. And how long did it take to shoot that that one? Well, you know,
it's always a series of pictures. It's like twelve fourteen pages or something, so that I think that was maybe a three day shoot a little bit, but you know these days it's never more than two days. The actual picture probably took I don't know, half an hour. Now. The obviously for that part of the process, well, obviously when you're you're including the faces and the and the mask, if you will, of the of the model and the work you do. Are there some women you've seen over
the arc of your nearly fifty year career. I mean, when was the time you walk through the room and even just to yourself, said, oh my god, look at that woman. Miss you just really is such a creature. It does happen. No, no, no, it does give me one. It's probably not walking in a room. Um, you know, I I recognized the beauties from I don't know, the runway or somewhere like that, or from other photographs maybe, But who's the most I wouldn't the most, but no, no,
who's the newest person that I'm intrigued by. It's a young model called Natalie Westling West. Yeah, and then everybody will say she's she's an American. Um, but everybody thinks I only like her because she has a ton of red hair. So and so I suffer because I tend to like girls with red hair. It's just something I like about the coloring. So when a red haired person walks by, I do notice them. Do you ever think
about dressing men? And well, I have to, particularly if you work with Bruce, you do, you know, But I usually actually in that case let him dress them because he's much better at it than me. I'm incredibly bad at dressing man. It scares me to dressed man. I mean, I know, I don't know why. I just I can't. I can't from something hanging on a hangar, see whether it's going to work on the guy or not. You know, I am when they're actually dressed in it, someone else
has dressed them. I say, they either look right or they don't. But but um, you know, I tend to not like men to be too dressed up like a thing. I like them fantasy about simple. I have a fantasy about Anna. I have a fantasy that Anna was, assuming she was married, she has a daughter. Assume that if you dated Anna it would be just. It could be potentially painful. She'd be like, oh, Frank, don't wear that.
Shut I'm not sure how she's right or whatever. That she gets involved in how we dress men in Vogue. Of course she does. The men are secondary in Vogue. The men are extras and there, and they're don't tell them that, I mean less. They get like it's a celebrity get only celebrity men. Get into voke that we don't work with male models at all, not even as props standing behind other women now truly true, true if you look through all those every time. As a famous guy, yeah,
he's usually an actor. Actors do it better, you know then then, I mean better than you know. I worked with musicians too, but they're not used to being photographed or whatever, So it's easier to work with an actor. Why don't you get male models in there? Why they're used to having their picture taken? I know they are, but they're probably grateful, boring. You know that you get much more out of an actor, and there's a story to tell behind him. You know, that's always good too.
I mean we work with people who have a film it's just about to come out or whatever. You know, there's usually a promotional otherwise they would never do. I don't think it's their favorite thing to do unless they're very young. When they're very young, it's it's kind of fine. I guess the term that's used to describe the work you do typically as editor, and so how would you describe it? What does it? What does an editor do? Um? What do I do? Yeah? We we do a lot
of things. I mean editing is a small part of it. You know, we edit, you edit the clothes down to the ones that you want to photograph. Um And everything is around organizing a photographic shoots. So but we also know choose models, and choose photographers and choose the story we want to do. So it's not just cutting things down, it's also creating things. Who decides is on the cover of the magazine, um Anna, ultim you know, for every page of the magazine because ultimately it's it's done with
her knowledge and obviously collaboration. So so ultimately it's the editor in chief of the magazine that makes the final decision, but also contributes along the way. You know, she doesn't We don't just do it and present it to her and she says yes or no. It's it's discussed all the way along at every stage. She's collaborative about it.
Just as movie studios and producers and studio executives have records in which they you'll talk to the guy or the woman who said, oh, we passed on Jaws, you know, we passed on Star Wars. There's there's regrets that they have and where they got it wrong. Even though they've had great success, they don't always get it right. And does that happen with you and I'm assuming when you've been responsible for once once an example, something you think, God,
I wish I could do that over again, something spectacular. Um. I mean I think that about every shoot I do. I think, you know, when when when I am packing up and we're getting back on the plane or whatever or driving back from a studio, I wish I'd say, oh, I'm just getting into you know, I'm just on a roll now, and I wish it could go on forever. And I because now I know that I would have not put those shoes or not done that, or you know, I wouldn't have done the hair like that or something
like that, and maybe that would have been better. And you're always asking maybe about every shoot. You know, if you're satisfied with something, it's it's usually not a good shoot, but you can feel good about it or bad about it. You know, hopefully you feel good about it when you finish. I want to ask you about what two things have popped to mind here? Um? What is about Bruce Bruce Webber, the famous photographer and filmmaker. Um. I was delighted to
get invited to Bruce's house. I know Bruce through my brother Billy, and when my brother, Billy was modeling for the first couple of years of his career. Um, uh, he knew Bruce. You know, Calvin Klein ads and so Bruce found a lot of young actors. I mean, he's amazing at how he hones in on those kids that are, you know, probably starting modeling because they can't go job something else. And uh and Bruce just see something and you know there's there's a list as long as my arm.
I'm not good at remembering names, but you know when you look back at older pictures of his new son and say, oh my god, there's like Matt Dillon or sure exactly one. Yeah. Um, Bruce is such a a cuddly man. He's like the cuddliest man. As a photograph I had taken that I posted on my Instagram page of Bruce and I cuddling. We were in an opening or a premiere of something and he went and I put my head on his shoulder and I'm hugging Bruce.
Like the moment you see Bruce, you want to get on the couch and women to squeeze him and let's say, let's pop some popcorn and watch a movie. You know, he's just the most adorable man you've ever met? What is it? I'm just using him as an example, meaning what's required in the world. You'd assume the girls, the girl, she fits the clothes, she looks right, there's lights as a camera. What does the photographer bring? I think, you know, each one obviously brings his own thing. I think what
Bruce brought is he um. He came in to fashion photography at a time when everything was very kind of fake and painted, and you know, it was big shoulders and tough on, you know, the working woman kind of thing. And he broke all that and he you know, scrubbed all the makeup off and had tousled hair and and you know, preferred to photograph clothes that were vintage or that had a softness about them or romance about You were there to witness that when he was doing that.
I was right alongside and he was doing that. Did you gasp or you're like, wow, that's the school. I was like, go bruiser, Yeah, grow bruiser, because I was loving it, you know, and then he kind of my my my idea at that time was it was a more sort of English vintage, and then he his was more American and American, Indian and things like they're all
mixed in. And then there was the whole photographer culture of Edward Western and all those people that we're all inspirational to him, you know, and how they looked and how they lived their lives and how you know, he and he introduced me to all that, and that was so fascinating to me. Someone like him who has this great career. I mean, it's one of the you know
that I don't I don't like this word. It's such a Trump word, but I'll use it now because we're in the age of Trump all these top top photography is one of the top photographers in the business. Um the eventually, you know, all things must pass. Or does Bruce adapt? Does Bruce do his thing? I think he's
adapted and it's kind of rolled over. And I've actually done two books that the one you have here is the most recent one, but I did one before and and in the one before there was you see very much the older Bruce and now here's the newer Bruce. Where it's it is. You know, he does embrace celebrities without making them look like stand out. They just become part of the landscape in a way. That is kind of interesting. He um. His his photography is about what's
happening all around you. You know, I'd like to think that we have um a fairly sophisticated listenership, not just in New York beyond and female. You know, I think
I think men are less and that's not true. I guess men more and more and more, UM seek to inform themselves about clothes rather than have it passed on like by my dad, which was I think was my point was that was very common then taste and clothes was something you were instructed about it, rather than going out in the world and acquiring your own taste and UM in that way that I have had people say. Um Simon Dounan, I say to him, what's the tip
for women? And he and whatever? His answer was, you know, bag shoes, you know, jack or whatever. You think you just spend the money on this and then fill it in with this. Do you have any such advice for women as to what to wear? What do you spend
your money on? Um if their budget is somewhat limited, well by one thing that you absolutely love and you're going to wear more than once, So try to make something that's not too extreme, something that's by something more expensive that's going to last, because if it's cheap, it's probably not going to last. That's I mean, I would rather buy one very expensive sweater than six cheap ones
that are can appeal. Well. If when you do retire, if the time comes at you retire, and if Anna decides to put you on the cover for your retirement and you need an actor to be on the cover with you, just as that furniture behind you exactly, I will put the suit on. I will be your furniture, your arm candy behind you on your real good cover. I'm just volunteering that now. I'm a big fan of yours, right, But thank you so much for doing this with us.
Thank you, thank you. It's fun. When speaking at Grace Cottington's seventie birthday five years ago, her longtime friend, colleague and editor in chief of American Vogue, Anna Winter called her the quote hardened soul of the magazine. It's guardian at the gate, it's beacon of excellence unquote. Learn more about Cottington's work in her most recent book, Grace the American Vague Years. This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing