Superstylists a generation apart, Grace Coddington and Lotta Volkova meet to trade their secrets, stories and strategies for conjuring up the perfect picture.
By Alix Browne
Illustrations by Jean-Philippe Delhomme
Superstylists a generation apart, Grace Coddington and Lotta Volkova meet to trade their secrets, stories and strategies for conjuring up the perfect picture.
Conspirator, agitator, muse, collaborator, and, yes, not least, the person responsible for putting the clothes on the model, the stylist has over the years come to assume one of the most powerful positions in the kingdom of fashion. You will find one behind most great designers, while photographers lean on them even as they resist their influence.
There are former stylists at the heads of more than a few major fashion publications (hello, Edward Enninful and Emmanuelle Alt), and then there is Grace Coddington, who was working with photographers to produce exciting, groundbreaking fashion shoots long before stylists were even called stylists. Her career began as a junior fashion editor at British Vogue in 1967 after a car accident cut her modelling career short. Having worked her way up to becoming the magazine’s senior fashion editor and after a short spell as a creative director at Calvin Klein in 1987, Anna Wintour asked Coddington to join her at US Vogue. The pair began at the magazine on the same day in 1988, and together turned it into a stylistic and commercial powerhouse, its scale and influence synonymous with fashion’s broader transformation from insider’s playground into the industrial-scale arena of commerce and entertainment that it remains today. During her long career, Coddington has been an eyewitness to, and key player, in the golden age of print magazines, witnessing stylists move from anonymity to centre stage – her own fame launched by her initially reluctant role in R.J. Cutler’s 2009 documentary The September Issue – helping them go from uncredited workers to marquee names.
Names that have reached more recent fashion ubiquity, such as Lotta Volkova, the Vladivostock-born, Central Saint Martins-educated, Paris-based in-house stylist for Demna Gvasalia at both Vetements and Balenciaga. After working for her own label – now on permanent hiatus – and getting her first styling break with photographer Ellen von Unwerth, Volkova met Demna and Gosha Rubchinskiy, with whom she has created a collaboration that goes beyond simply styling and reaches into design, photography, casting and modelling, in the process, further stretching the definition of what a stylist can be. And in a world where digital media have been transforming the way fashion is presented, perceived and consumed, Volkova has shown how powerful Instagram can be in taking a stylist’s vision from the personal to the public.
System brought together these two formidable fashion forces at Coddington’s office in the Chelsea neighbourhood of New York. Coddington was dressed down in black trousers and a charcoal grey sweater with small slits at the wrists; Volkova exuded head-to-toe executive realness by way of Demna Gvasalia. Despite being generations apart, the pair turned out to have many things in common, starting with a love of storytelling and a disdain for being told what to do. They also, rather endearingly, appeared to be somewhat in awe of the other’s work.
Grace Coddington: I was blonde once. It was an absolute disaster because it made my skin look green. It was awful and then I had to wait for it to grow out a little bit.
Lotta Volkova: Oh, wow.
Grace: Red makes my skin look white, which is what I like.
Lotta: It’s the worst when you have hair that you don’t like.
Grace: When I broke up from a marriage, someone said, blondes have a better time. My friend dyed it in the bathroom. It was so painful because it burns your scalp. I liked the idea, and I kept it for about a year.
Lotta: Did you have more fun?
Grace: Not really, no.
Lotta: The worst I ever had was blue. It really didn’t suit me somehow. Dirty blue.
Grace: Black was awful. I had jet black.
Was that the Vidal Sassoon days?
Grace: Actually a lot later – he would never have dyed my hair black.
As stylists, people who think about clothes all the time, do you ever not want to have to think about getting dressed?
Grace: That’s why I think I dress the way I do. I wasn’t always like that; I used to really think about getting dressed when I was younger and had a slightly better body. Now I don’t want to think about clothes. The most I think is how can I trick everybody into not realizing that I’ve put on a hundred pounds? Seriously, it’s about a weight thing. So that is my only concern. I think if my sweater is shorter then my legs look longer – it’s all those little tricks.
Lotta: I hate dressing up every morning. It’s a real struggle.
‘When Anna Wintour was at British Vogue, she started that whole thing of placing the stylist’s name on the page. We were like, ‘Oh shit, what’s this?’’
But you haven’t settled into a look, Lotta. Every time I see you, you have something new going on.
Lotta: I’m always kind of obsessed with certain things. I’m quite an obsessive person, so whether it’s some toy earrings or whatever…
Grace: I get obsessed too, but I project it onto my poor models in the picture because it doesn’t work on me anymore.
Lotta: Sometimes it doesn’t work on me either. I completely understand. I still try!
Grace: Well, you look good in it!
Lotta: Thank you! That’s sweet.
When you are working, do you gravitate toward things that you personally like? Or are you able to separate your personal taste from what you think the shoot or the client needs?
Lotta: For me, it’s always quite personal. It’s an extension of what I like, what I am, what I’m interested in, and introducing that into my work. Like alternative cultures, talking about music, talking about different lifestyles, different fetishes. I’m for sure projecting what I’m interested in onto what I do.
Grace: I think your approach has actually had a big effect on fashion.
Lotta: Thank you! I find my approach quite old school, to be honest.
Grace: Yeah, but other people don’t.
Lotta: That’s ironic!
You’re considered quite revolutionary.
Lotta: I don’t know, it’s quite natural. I’m into weird stuff. That’s it.
Grace: And you’ve sort of found a perfect fit with Demna, in a way. Or maybe it just looks that way from the outside.
Lotta: For sure, but I had been working for quite a long time before I met Demna. I had been styling for 10 years, since I was quite young. On the scene, in London on the club scene, and making
clothes here and there and taking pictures. I studied photography, in fact…
Grace: At Saint Martins.
Lotta: Yes. So I never wanted to be a stylist. I started styling when I came to Paris. I remember working for a long time and feeling quite frustrated because it was hard. I had all these ideas, but people would say, ‘Oh, it’s too much.’ They just wouldn’t go for it. And then I remember I met Gosha
Rubchinskiy and Demna, and it was the first time it felt really fun. We were just having fun and exploring ideas: like, ‘Wouldn’t it be crazy if we did this.’ And they went for it. They were into the same things as I was, so it just kind of worked.
Grace: It’s great when two things collide and it clicks.
Lotta: Right, it just clicked.
Grace: That’s when the world really started noticing.
Grace, did you have a similar turning point in your career where suddenly everything clicked?
Grace: No, I think it was much more gradual for me. I’m much older and when I started things moved much more slowly. And in my career everybody was anonymous, whereas now, nobody is.
Everyone is a star.
Lotta: And there are so many people.
Grace: I don’t think anyone even knew who I was until the [September Issue] movie came out.
You were always well known in the industry though.
Grace: A few people in the industry knew me. But one never had one’s name credited on the page.
Lotta: Really? That’s interesting.
Grace: It was Anna Wintour who brought that to British Vogue. The first thing she did was put everybody’s name on the page. All the stylists. I don’t call myself a stylist; I call myself a fashion editor, but that’s only because I’ve been with magazines now for 50 years. She came into British Vogue in 1985 or something like that. We at British Vogue, the team there that she kept
on, were like, ‘Oh shit, what’s this?’ We weren’t quite sure we wanted our name on the thing. We were never interviewed; even the editor-in-chief of the magazine was never interviewed. Beatrix Miller, the editor-in-chief of British Vogue was an amazing woman, but she never did interviews; she didn’t want to. It just didn’t come into the equation. You were just one of those people who worked behind the scenes.
Did that level of anonymity contribute to the magic that was fashion and fashion magazines – as if they just appeared out of nowhere?
Grace: I think so. I’m against this looking into everybody’s closet all the time. Everybody knows everything because everybody Instagrams everything they are doing every five minutes of the day.
Lotta: Guilty as charged!
‘When I was younger, I looked really weird. Being pretty was never a priority for me; it was more about exploring extreme looks.’
For the record, Grace and Lotta have both put up their fists and are facing off! [All laugh]
Grace: It’s your generation Lotta, and it’s what you do. It’s fine if you want to do it, I just don’t want to do it. I don’t see how that is terribly interesting to anybody that I’m drinking a Starbucks or
whatever. Back in the day, that kind of looking into people’s lives didn’t exist. Even the big stars, like Elizabeth Taylor or whatever, the news about them, if they were getting divorced, it was a long time before everyone found out. Whereas now, if someone’s getting divorced you know before they do. It’s
weird!
Lotta: We are missing the sense of freedom that you could be doing whatever.
Grace: Because now you’re going to get caught!
Lotta: You had more time to develop, to try things. That’s something that is not there any more for sure.
So here is a question for both of you: what was the first story that you had your name on as a stylist or editor? Do you remember the first time you saw your name in print?
Grace: It was probably a rather boring story in British Vogue. And that was the 1980s, which was not really my moment. There are other stories since then that I’m happy my name was on and there are times when I say take my name off. They never will, but at times I don’t like something I’ve done, and quite often I don’t.
Lotta: For me, I think it was the second shoot I did as a stylist, with Ellen von Unwerth for Sang Bleu, a magazine about tattoo culture. I cast a whole bunch of girls and we went to this rockabilly bar north of Paris and shot all these girls in Alaïa and lots of leather. Ellen chose me to style. When I moved to Paris I was sort of struggling. I had had a brand before, a small menswear brand, in London, and when I moved to Paris in 2007, it was hard to keep working in the way that I had been working,
which had been much more DIY and easy, very much more underground. And then I met Ellen in a club and she said: ‘Oh my god, I love your sense of style, what do you do? Come over, bring some clothes, we’re going to do a test shoot.’ And I remember going to her house with a pile of vintage stuff and we had two girls who were dressed in lingerie by the end of the day. We had all this cheerleading stuff. It was really fun. And she said we should do more stuff. That’s how it started, kind of by accident and definitely because of her. Even if I was styling some stuff on my own for my brand and taking the pictures.
Grace: Wow, a one-man show.
Lotta: Well, when you’re 18!
That brings up another good point: when you think about what a stylist is or does, there is no one definition that applies to everyone.
Grace: I hate it when people ask me to define what a stylist is, because I can’t. I can say what my approach is, but I can’t really define what a stylist is. I’m used to calling myself a fashion editor
because fashion editors work full-time for a magazine and can’t work for anybody else.
Lotta: That’s very different.
Grace: That stopped for me a couple of years ago.
And you’ve become a stylist!
Grace: I’m not sure I’m a very good stylist; what I want to do is a ton of things.
You and Lotta both do a ton of things.
Grace: That’s the interesting thing. The job that I started out doing was very narrow and was only styling shoots or very occasionally, a fashion show. That’s a whole new thing. People didn’t have stylists helping a designer; it was the designer who did it all.
Lotta: That was something that was introduced in the 1990s.
Grace: Yeah. Well, I’m very old!
Lotta: I was reading your memoirs about when you were a model and had to bring and do your own makeup and hair, and carry the accessories and the big bag of shoes and stockings. It’s impressive how the industry has changed in that way!
Grace: Now, you just arrive with dirty hair, looking rough and someone works some magic.
Lotta, what’s your idea of being a stylist?
Lotta: It’s collaborating with a photographer on image-making. I do my own casting a lot of the time; it depends on the shoot or magazine, of course. Sometimes the photographer is the starting
point and you try and interpret their work or it’s the model, a character, and you try to tell a story. It really depends on the situation. And then, of course, I work on fashion shows and consult for brands. And that has added a very powerful status to being a stylist. You become more influential in that sense and the job has changed in that way. It’s true that there are quite a few stylists consulting and working on brands.
Grace: Every show seems to have one now.
Lotta: Yeah, but there are still a lot of designers who don’t have stylists, who do everything by themselves. Like Alessandro [Michele] at Gucci and Hedi [Slimane] before. But I think it’s about whether you want or don’t want an opinion from the outside. Sometimes it’s important or useful to have someone come in and look at a collection a few days before the show and collaborate with you on how to put it together. Whenever I do shows, it’s a collaboration between the designer and the
stylist.
Grace: I think that’s what we both are – a collaborator. I mean personally, I don’t like working on my own. I like collaborating with someone.
Lotta: Me, too.
Grace: No matter what it is. Even if I’m doing my drawing, almost. It’s a conversation. And that is what I miss about not being full-time at a magazine. You could nip around the corner to the next
office and there was always someone to have that conversation with. When you are on your own, you can’t. You are endlessly calling people to have a discussion with, but you can’t get hold of them
because nobody ever answers their phone these days. So then you feel very lonely and it makes you feel a little insecure, I think. The greatest thing is collaborating, when you feel that moment when you’re both driving toward the same thing. It’s very exciting.
Lotta: And it takes your work or the project to another level. I’ve done my best work when I was collaborating with people. A lot of the time, people tell me I should do my own thing. But I’m not
really interested in that.
Grace: People have said to me, ‘You should go be editor of Vogue.’ Noooo! [Laughs]
‘Before Vetements happened, I remember I felt that whenever I went to a fashion event or job I had to dress up, you know, put on heels.’
Lotta, when people say ‘your own thing’ does that mean you should design a collection and get all the credit, or start your own magazine?
Lotta: I don’t know. They have different interpretations. I did my own brand when I was young so I’ve kind of signed off on that.
Grace: When you are young, nothing is better than you. You’re brilliant!
Lotta: It was quite a whirlwind that I got myself into back then, to be honest. And I learned so much from it. Basically, I learned how to organize myself. In the beginning, it was very random and all
over the place and very chaotic, which was kind of fun, but then you realize you have to deliver!
Chaos can get exhausting after a while.
Grace: It makes me feel sick actually.
Lotta: I am quite comfortable with it! I really admire people who have their own brands, but it’s not something that I am interested in for the moment. Things may change, but…
Sometimes it’s better to be able to come in and do your magic and leave, and not have to be responsible for all the other things.
Lotta: I’ve never been at a magazine full-time. I have a couple of titles here and there, but it’s always freelance. Maybe that’s something I’d like to try one day. We’ll see!
Grace: But where? There’s no money in magazines any more. That’s the sad thing.
Do you think magazines still hold the same status as they did in the past? Does doing a story for a magazine still mean more than styling a show or a campaign?
Lotta: For me, it’s still very important. I love magazines. I love the press. I love books. I love buying magazines, and not the same ones every month. Every time I go to a store, if there is something I like, I buy it. It’s important to have this printed object in your hand. I like to look through pages and read real books, put a bookmark there or underline things. I’m quite materialistic in
that regard.
Grace: It’s so nice to hear that from you, as part of the digital generation. It’s really a struggle for books. I made a real point of wanting my memoir to be something that was a pleasure to hold and turn the pages of. That to me was as important as the story.
Lotta: You are a stylist after all!
Grace: I love magazines, absolutely love them. Until the day they die I will love them and feel that that’s the only place I can really truly express myself, even if there are many things going into a shoot that you can or can’t control. It’s the closest thing I’ve got to being able to express what I feel I can contribute to – this sounds a bit big-headed – the world. But pictures I think are important to the world.
‘You book five days and by the time you get on the plane, it’s whittled down to three; then the model has a job the next day, so you end up with one shoot day.’
It makes total sense to hear you say that, because I think of you first and foremost as a storyteller.
Grace: Somehow it seems people don’t want storytelling any more.
They no longer have the attention span for it.
Grace: That’s the problem. I still labour on and say I see it as a narrative, which always gets a big sigh and ‘Can you just get out and do the pictures?’ But I always have to have a narrative.
Lotta: I like to have a narrative, too. Sometimes it’s like an abstract narrative.
Grace: The reader doesn’t have to understand the story; it just gives you a reason. Ellen von Unwerth is an amazing storyteller, and the narrative just grows as you go along. We always used
to put her daughter into every story or whoever was there.
Lotta: I think spontaneity is also quite important, to be able to act in the moment and take it somewhere. I never prepare looks in advance actually. Do you prepare looks?
Grace: Oh, no.
Lotta: Me neither. Just do it all on the spot.
Grace: I sort of say, do I have a shoe that will go with that outfit? Just give me the runway one so I’m covered. But then I’ll take, say, six pairs of sneakers.
I noticed it was all sneakers in that story you just did for British Vogue.
Grace: That was the old lady being modern. Edward [Enninful] looks at me and thinks of old British Vogue and how I was always doing romantic stories and that, ‘Grace is so romantic’, so I had to do something that just took it down a peg because otherwise I’d be back right where I’d started and I don’t necessarily want to be there. The only thing I could think of was to stick a sneaker on her
and ruffle the hair and make her look a bit of a mess.
It was like you doing Corinne Day.
Lotta: Who shot it?
Grace: Craig McDean.
Maybe Craig was channelling Corinne Day. There was a mattress on the floor and for me that’s British Vogue and Corinne Day.
Grace: I had all these very over-the top romantic clothes, there was a lot of romance in the last collections. I took one of my favourite red heads, Natalie Westling, but I decided she looked too
sweet in all those pretty pretty clothes, so we had to toughen up the photograph. We were working in the studio with back projection due to a small budget – unlike the old days where money was no problem and one had plenty of time to figure it out.
Lotta: Big budgets! That’s something I unfortunately missed!
They are not always good.
Grace: No, but they did allow me to do some things that I think are quite memorable, like the Alice in Wonderland story I did with Annie Leibovitz. I could not do that today.
Each dress customized for the story. Every big designer on the planet playing a part.
Grace: We planned it for months. Endless meetings about casting, who would play which role, and it was so much fun to do. We shot for nearly a week in Paris and even then we didn’t get it all done.
Can you imagine having a week to shoot?
Grace: And Annie went to Paris a few days in advance to check out all of the locations, check the light. You don’t even get a pre-light day anymore.
Lotta: I think it’s important to take your time, to spend time. It doesn’t just all come in one day. Whenever I shoot I try to have a minimum of two days. Whenever we go on a trip, and I shoot quite a lot in Russia or Ukraine or the States, I try to secure five days – but it’s always really hard. It’s always a fight.
Grace: You book five days and by the time you get on the plane, it’s whittled down to three and they haven’t told you that the model has actually got a job the following day millions of miles away and in the end, you shoot it in one day. I always think girls look better if they’ve been able to rest; I’m better if I can rest.
We talked about spontaneity, but there has to be a balance between planning everything out and flying by the seat of your pants.
Grace: I don’t think spontaneity has to do with time; you need time for spontaneity as well. In fact, maybe more time. If you’ve put it all together, you can just have your assistant dress the person.
Lotta: Oh no, I could never do that.
Grace: But most people do.
Lotta: So I’ve heard! [Laughs]
Grace: I always get in the dressing room, less recently because I can’t walk very well, but normally, I’m the one tugging the thing on. There is a relationship you have with the model and it’s a moment where you can say, ‘For God’s sake, show the front of this dress no matter what the photographer says to you! Don’t let him turn you around!’
Lotta: Interesting! I never tell models that. That’s a good tip! I tell the photographer but sometimes that can become overpowering.
Grace: Because if the photographer thinks you’re telling him what to do…
Lotta: It can get a bit tricky.
‘People tell me I should do my own thing. But I’m not interested in that. Then other people have said to me, ‘You should go be editor of Vogue.’ Noooo!’
Jedi mind tricks.
Grace: If you see the girl edging away from what you wanted, you just catch her eye…
Lotta: That’s such a good tip!
What are some of your other stylist secrets? Or your five rules of styling?
Lotta: First rule is to break the rules.
Grace: Don’t listen to what you’ve been told beforehand; it kills you. You might end up deciding to do exactly what you’ve been told beforehand, but you have to start afresh each time.
Lotta: I find that quite challenging sometimes. Being told by the magazine, being told by the advertisers… I’m a quite responsible person, so I feel a responsibility to do what I’ve been asked to do. But you’re right, sometimes it creates a weird cloud over everything. It really blocks your creativity.
Grace: With Vogue, I think you have to be very responsible, but I just feel I have been so much part of that magazine for so long that it is second nature not to do something stupid. I have to go by my own instincts in a way. I sometimes do see it through Anna’s eyes and then I get confused, but I have a great sense of responsibility. It’s funny because when I became a freelancer, I became aware
of all the things you can’t do at Vogue, like shoot in black and white, and there are lot of girls you can’t work with. And I was like, ‘Shit, I don’t know how to do this.’ It was weird when you have the freedom; sometimes it’s good to have guidelines or restrictions.
Something to push against.
Grace: Yes, you do have to have something to push against. Sometimes, at some of the independent magazines, you can’t see the clothes at all. I always go on about this, but if you can’t see the clothes in a fashion photograph, then it’s not a fashion photograph. It is as simple and as clear as that. I keep quoting myself on that because I think it’s true. It doesn’t mean it’s a bad picture,
some people perhaps don’t need fashion photographs in their magazines.
Where do you stand on that, Lotta?
Lotta: I like to make images; I’m very interested in photography in general.
Grace: Me, too, but I love fashion photography; it is just much more difficult if you have that challenge of having to show the clothes, while creating a picture that doesn’t look like an ad. To try
and make that combination is a very narrow line.
Lotta: I like it when a picture looks real.
Grace: There are plenty of real situations when you can see the clothes and that is the conversation.
Lotta: For me, it is not a necessity. For example, when I worked for independent magazines, you would go on a trip and just take pictures with a photographer and models, almost randomly, and
you ended up putting a lot of still lifes in the layout. Of course, you have to cover certain credits, but I am a bit freer in that process, so if you just see a corner of a shirt, then that is fine with me.
Grace: That is not fine with me at all!
Lotta: I am easy with that. The most important thing is the image, the picture; I am not that interested in fashion to be honest.
Grace: I am very interested in images, too. And that is the difficult thing, to try and do both.
Lotta: We always try to do both, we have to in a way, but I am open to using other types of images that don’t have that much fashion. You can have a vintage tank top or something.
Grace: That’s fine, we just don’t do that at Vogue, but that’s fine.
Lotta, it’s interesting to hear you say you are not that interested in fashion.
Lotta: Not really. I’ve never really been.
Grace: If you dress the girl, like really dress her, and you love the look and you are obsessed with it – and as you said before that you get obsessed, I get obsessed, we both get obsessed – and
then the photographer does it as a head shot, how do you feel?
Lotta: No, no no no! That is a no. I do communicate to the photographer that it has to be a full-length picture if it is an important look, if it is an advertiser, and then he has to get it. I say that even if it is not always true.
Grace: I say, ‘That’s my favourite look’, because I have seen what’s he got is not what I am looking for and I can’t see what I need to see. I remember photos with Bruce Weber. The girl would
look fabulous and everyone would be very happy and he would start shooting. Then before you know where you are, there are 10 boys and 16 dogs on top of her. So I start crying, ‘Bruce, this is my
favourite dress!’ And then everything stiffens up – and I realize I’ve ruined his picture.
Lotta: I know what you mean. I communicate to the photographer, ‘OK, this is one of the most important looks of the story; it will set up the whole fashion theme and a direction, so it has to
be done in a certain way.’ I mean, I am lucky enough now to work with people who respect what I do and will listen to me, so it is more of a collaborative process. Sometimes if a photographer has
deconstructed an image from what it was originally, but when I step back and see where he has taken it, and it is really strong and interesting, then I will go with it. I will try to work my way around it and see where we can go.
Grace: Yes, but you still come away a little upset.
Lotta: If the final product is good, then that is fine with me.
Grace: But the trouble is it doesn’t stop there because it is all in the editing as well.
Lotta: I am quite lucky because I work with people I really trust and I really like and we communicate on the final edit, on the layout. I think they are allowed to have their say, too.
Grace: That’s a world I don’t know. Because, I mean, it’s new-ish that a photographer sends in only one option per picture; 20 years ago, they had to send in a choice of 20 options.
Lotta: I find that a bit tricky.
Grace: Oh, it was awful because inevitably something would be chosen that was not the way they saw it. So, on one hand it is better now, but on the other hand…
Lotta: We try to be quite strong about that: this is what we want to do, take it or leave it. It’s perhaps a weird way of thinking, but it is also important. A lot of the times you work on an editorial, it
is for free, so it is supposed to say what you really want to do, your point of view and the photographer’s point of view …
‘If you try to work with any of the bigger photographers now, they are so used to having 15 location vans and the best lunch thing…’
But if you trust the editor who assigned the story to you, aren’t you open to their art direction and opinion?
Lotta: I don’t know; to be honest, I think the important person is the person who is on set, who had the real idea, the photographer. They are artists and that is the whole point of doing it.
Grace: Yes, and it is a collaboration, so he takes your baby and changes it in the layout… It would be nice if your opinion was sought in the layout, but often it isn’t. With independent magazines, I find there is more collaboration, that is the joy of working for them. They send you the layout day by day and then say, ‘We had to get rid of a picture for this reason or another’, and they do absolutely involve you. They have to really because you are doing it for free!
There is a balancing of power there…
Lotta: When we work for some of these magazines, we don’t just work for free, we actually pay for the shoots with our own money. I don’t mind, but I have invested money and so I want it to be
what I wanted it to be, and they kind of respect that. You are telling them that is the way it has to be. Often with magazines, I don’t even discuss the idea, we just go for it. I always have a strong idea and who I want to shoot it with, and where and in which way. I really like the fact you can just go off and do what you want and then you kind of regroup.
Grace: But if you are involving your own money in that… It is so weird how much one needs for a shoot. It is almost like how long is a piece of string? I remember when I worked at British Vogue, there was literally no money, no budget, everything was free. You would borrow a table or take it from your own home because you knew they didn’t have exactly what you wanted, and it would just cost you a few taxi cabs. I remember going to Africa for three weeks with David Bailey and I spent
£20. And that was mostly buying cigarettes, and then at the other end I have worked at American Vogue where the budgets would sometimes run to significant sums, not any more, and it was
incredible. When I learned that independent magazines expect the stylist to invest their own money, I was horrified.
Lotta: It’s a balance – but that is why it has to be exactly what you want it to be.
Grace: For the kids starting out, it’s tough. Because they don’t have the money.
Lotta: If you don’t have whole agencies and production companies involved, you can do things very low key and very cheap. For example, Harley [Weir] and I went to Russia about five years ago1 and we would go and stay in a cheap hotel and get all our friends to come and help. Then we’d go out to party and see models that night who would feature…
Grace: But that was exactly how my life was at British Vogue back in the day. But if you try to work with any of the bigger photographers now, they are so used to having 15 location vans and the
best lunch thing…
‘You say to the model: ‘For God’s sake, show the front of this dress no matter what the photographer says to you! Don’t let him turn you around!’’
But when did that change? For some magazines that has never been the norm. When did others start to get so enormous?
Grace: In the 1990s, that whole thing, the glut and everyone competing and models’ prices skyrocketing.
Linda Evangelista not getting out of bed for less than $10,000 a day. Or was it $15,000?
Grace: We thought it was a joke, but it was a reality. I remember working with a young model doing pictures for Calvin Klein and at the end of the shoot, I had to sign her model-release form
and because it was a Sunday she was paid $15,000 for the day and I almost fell over. When I got paid, and Calvin said to me, ‘How much do you want?’ I said, ‘Oh well, if you like the pictures pay me something, but if you don’t, that’s fine’. And he was really nice, and I can’t remember how much I got in the end, but it was quite a lot and I was shaking. And he said, ‘I think you had better take it in cash back home with you.’ So, I stuffed it in my knickers and flew back to London. It was hysterical. But I
was so shocked by what he thought was a normal amount of money to pay me. He paid my air fare and hotel obviously, and I was expecting I would get £100 maybe, but it was certainly a lot more
than that! It was hysterical because I was literally shaking; I was crying and in shock, but it put my kid through school. I think it was probably 1983.
Back then, were there other stylists you were aware of doing this kind of commercial work?
Grace: In the 1980s, Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar were very competitive as to who could offer the biggest deal. Suddenly, it was crazy money; there were limousines, and jets flying everywhere.
Lotta: I think there were also fewer people in the industry then.
Grace: There were no independent magazines. I mean there was i-D, The Face and Details, but that was like a little Village magazine that no one outside of New York saw. It is extraordinary how it’s boomed and boomed back again…
Lotta: When you work with young designers, you hardly ever get paid, but I think it is important models get paid well for what they do, models especially because…
Writers are not getting paid much either!
Grace: Writers hopefully have a long life, but models don’t.
Both of you modelled…
Lotta: Not professionally, never ever. Nothing compared.
You walked in shows.
Lotta: Yeah, but only when we didn’t have enough models or a friend asked me. When I was younger, I looked really weird. Being pretty was never a priority for me; it was more about exploring
extreme looks for me.
Grace: Me, too. When I was modelling, you arrived with your look. Your Vidal Sassoon haircut or whatever. And I was chosen because I had a Vidal Sassoon haircut not because I was Grace
Coddington, because no one knew who Grace Coddington was. There was a newspaper that once a year used to publish a top-10 model article and I was always number 9, or maybe 10, but you know there was Jean Shrimpton and all those girls. It was totally English, so it didn’t come across to America and we didn’t compete with the girls here. So number nine was pretty far down the line. But it was also because I was a little bit cool in those days: I half lived in Paris and half in London, and I always came back with all the latest accessories from Paco Rabanne or Dorothée Bis or Emmanuelle Khanh. I was booked for that as much as myself.
Lotta, is it hard for you to even imagine a time when things were slow and anonymous?
Lotta: Fifteen years ago when I arrived in London and I was studying at Saint Martins, we were a few friends making clothes to go out to parties and doing photo shoots to document the way we
looked, but it wasn’t on a professional level. That is the difference; we were just having fun, being free, exploring and experimenting on an underground , but it wasn’t in Vogue. It wasn’t on a professional level.
Grace: My underground was Vogue, even as a model.
‘Back in the day, if stars like Liz Taylor were getting divorced, it was ages before everyone knew. Today, if someone’s getting divorced you know before they do.’
We touched briefly on reality and pictures being based in reality. I look at both your work and there is an element of fantasy connecting the two of you. This idea of storytelling, sort of being outside of reality…
Grace: Right now, I am very much inside reality. If the moment is about everything being mundane, then I want to do that. Right now, that is what I want to do; I don’t want to do fantasy. I did a bit of a fantasy story the other day, but it turned into that for 15 different reasons. I wanted it in a flower garden and we didn’t have any money, and it’s hard to find a flower garden because we’re in
the middle of winter, so we built a flower garden in a house. It was with Steven Klein, so it went 10 stages on and it became crazy. But I have also done stories with him that I’ve been very excited
about, which have been very mundane and real. I like that it was a woman, her kids and her husband reading a newspaper. I like that kind of reality; I’m not too into street reality.
What is your relationship to reality, Lotta?
Lotta: What you find fantasy in my work is just a different reality.
For you, it’s your reality because it’s not mine?
Grace: Like crazy dressing is fantasy, but to that person, it is probably not fantasy.
Lotta: We talk about different sides of underground culture and stuff like that, so for me, it is sort of pretty real. That is my role in the industry, to talk about those things; it is not necessarily fantasy,
because it actually exists.
Grace: I love the idea of documentary; I love documentary movies. I think they are very interesting and I wish I could work with documentary photographers, but as soon as you put your model in there, it is no longer documentary. And they don’t know what to do with it, because they are not used to directing anybody, so you can’t.
Lotta: I read in your memoir about that photographer when you were still a model, shooting for either Vogue or Elle. There was a documentary photographer and you were walking around the square and you couldn’t find the photographer, and you came back so confused…
Sounds like something Hans Feurer would have done.
Grace: No, it was much much earlier, in the 1960s… It was Saul Leiter.
Lotta: I love that – you didn’t know he was there?
Grace: He was a really famous guy and I was so excited to work for him and we got dressed in the dressing room in Vogue House and they said, ‘He is outside in Hanover Square, just go out
there and turn left.’ So, I went outside and walked around the square and couldn’t see him anywhere.
And he’d done the whole shoot?
Grace: There was no fashion editor with me because I guess, she didn’t want to be in the pictures. So I came back upstairs and said I couldn’t find him. And they were like, ‘He’s done!’
So, where was he?
Grace: I don’t know.
Lotta: Mystery.
That is such a good idea. Genius.
Grace: Back in the day, there were those documentary photographers, even Frank Horvat in a way was documentary. I worked with him a bit. We felt it was very documentary because what he did was strip the girl down, not as much as we do now, but it was new in those days. In the 1950s, everyone was so covered with makeup and hair was so done, and he just wanted the girl to walk in as she was, with no make-up on.
That must have been so revolutionary.
Grace: It was because you had to pull off your 15 pairs of eyelashes and uncover yourself. He did these pictures, which were very raw and beautiful. And he used a 35mm camera, which was newish at the time.
What are your perspectives on where fashion is in terms of its power within wider contemporary culture? There are certain periods when fashion and fashion imagery are a driving force and I feel like we have been through a phase when fashion really didn’t have a lot of power or a lot to say. But now
we are starting to get back into a period in which fashion feels more relevant and someow more connected to the culture.
Lotta: I find it very relevant and very powerful; it has a strong voice these days. Almost even more than art in a sense because it is really influenced by culture and what is going on around.
Grace: It is totally influenced by culture, yes.
Lotta: I find a lot of artists’ work is about closing yourself in your bubble, while in fashion, people really collaborate a lot more. That makes it really influenced and influential in that sense.
Grace: I am struggling with it at the moment. My feeling is that it is coming back round from being so extreme to being a little more whatever normal is. And it is walking away from that sneaker-undone-no-make-up-no-hair kind of thing. I feel like it is just cleaning up a bit; it had got to such an extreme place where walking around with jeans with holes in, which I hate. I think you have to be a little more aware of how you dress.
Lotta: I am talking more about gender, for example, which is being highly explored now in shoots. Fashion has become a bit more political.
Grace: It has become very political.
Lotta: It is talking about strong actual subjects, like recently, the idea of beauty has changed and people are starting to work with different types of models with different shapes, trans models and so on. That is not very new, but it is something that has been going on a lot more over the last five years, and that is important.
‘Becoming a freelancer, I became aware of all the things you can’t do at Vogue, like shoot in black and white, and there are lot of girls you can’t work with.’
I was talking with other fashion people about how we are in this era of inclusivity, but size seems to be the last barrier. We can have all genders and races…
Grace: But the clothes have to fit!
So that is fashion’s problem.
Grace: If you are using a sample size, you have to really think it through. It has to be a sample that fits her and doesn’t make her feel bad when she is being photographed because she can’t breathe in it or whatever.
But fashion is so slow to address these hinge moments, and there have been moments, even this season; I think in McQueen there was a larger model, but only one.
Grace: I think she does it really well at McQueen actually, Sarah [Burton]. She did it in the show the season before, too and the girl looked really gorgeous. Fit her in where she fits in, don’t force it for the sake of it.
Lotta: We have been using girls, boys and trans-people for Vetements shows. For me, the most important thing was their character and look. Then we worked around the body type. We were flexible.
Grace: Yes, but you were making the clothes, too, so you could do it.
Lotta: And there is more room there.
Grace: Try and do that at Chanel! It won’t work there.
Lotta: It has to make sense, absolutely. But then it became like a trend, the street-style model, alternative faces, and everybody started trying to put them in their shows.
Grace: It was strange. Everyone thought how fabulous, but if you push it where it doesn’t belong then that sometimes defeats what you are trying to do.
Lotta: Exactly, like the snake that bites its own tail. It is good that people
started…
Grace: It is great that all people are included but make the story work for them.
Lotta: Yes, absolutely.
Here’s a question: what did you never anticipate happening in your career but which ultimately did? What surprised you?
Grace: Generally, having recognition. I never thought I would have that; I thought I would be the way I was, 20 years at Vogue, just a fashion editor, unrecognizable continuously, apart from to a few insiders.
And it changed because of The September Issue?
Grace: Yes, how that changed my life! The doors it opened. I wouldn’t have any work now if it weren’t for that; I wouldn’t have the books. It is insane.
Do you think that’s true?
Grace: I do. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to do them even. Because who am I? Now I am constantly recognized; I don’t do much to hide. I keep saying I am going to dye my hair or cut it off,
but then I don’t. I have tried tying back my hair, but people still recognize me. I would never have thought of becoming a little bit of a celebrity, because I am so not that person really. Although I have
grown into it a bit, because you have to, otherwise you go mental.
I think celebrity comes so naturally to the current generation…
Lotta: Well, everyone wants to know everything about everyone and it’s all very exposed. I do think it is quite natural, Grace. A lot of people in fashion knew about you; you are such a legend and have done so many things. To be honest, I think you are putting yourself down a bit on that level.
‘Everyone said what I was doing in fashion was revolutionary. But, you know, I come from Russia and revolution is a very big word for us!’
It is funny when it crosses over into mainstream culture.
Grace: I didn’t want to be in that movie. I did everything I could not to be in that movie – and I wasn’t just being coy or anything. I really just didn’t want to be there. It got in the way and it was annoying to have cameras come in when you were doing a shoot. I could not stand it. I remember when I worked for Calvin briefly and cameras started coming backstage and I threw them all out. I said, ‘Get out of here, it’s a dressing room!’ You were trying to put the show together and Carrie Donovan from
the New York Times and her cameraman were there. I was like, ‘Get out!’ Then Calvin came in and said, ‘Did I hear that right?’ And I said, ‘Yes, they were in the way.’ So he said, ‘Do not throw out the New York Times photographer!’ Now, of course, there are thousands of them, while those poor models are getting changed.
Lotta: I had a moment shouting at photographers backstage at the Mulberry show the other day in London because they were taking pictures of the girls half-dressed, not even properly checked. I thought, ‘What is the point of these pictures? These are house pictures, the clothes don’t look good.’ But the photographers were so aggressive and violent, and they wouldn’t leave. People don’t really respect it.
Grace: People have always said, ‘Come on, let’s film you on the shoot’, and I say, ‘No, you fucking won’t!’
Lotta: I am against that.
Grace: I am so against that. When they were making that film, they kept saying, ‘We are coming on your shoot’, and I kept saying, ‘No, you are not.’ But in the end, I had to give in because I was told to.
But you got something out of it.
Grace: I got a lot out of it. One often wonders which way one’s life would have gone had it not happened. But I would not have predicted it. A friend of mine said at the time: ‘Wait until that film comes out – your life will change.’ And I was like: ‘Pull the other one.’ But the day that film came out, I walked out of my front door and everyone started recognizing me, it was so hilarious.
What was your big surprise, Lotta, or have you not had one?
Lotta: I think in a way when I became a bit popular and everyone said it was revolutionary.
Grace: But it was.
Lotta: Well, you know, I come from Russia and revolution is a very big word to us!
Yes, that’s true.
Lotta: It changes lives and I was like, here it doesn’t.
Grace: I’m too American.
Lotta: We talked about subjects that have always existed, underground culture and stuff, but I guess it was a change and people started looking at fashion in a different way.
Grace: I remember people saying that it was quite shocking. I guess I missed the Vetements show because of times or something, but someone said, ‘You have to go see Vetements.’ So three or four of us trooped over to some dive off the beaten track in Paris. And you walked in, it was completely black, you couldn’t see anything, and I nearly fell down the steps. We are American Vogue and no one said, ‘Grace, would you like a cup of tea?’
Lotta: Oh, you went to the showroom!
Grace: And I am looking at all these terrible-looking clothes and thinking, ‘What the hell is this? This is not me.’ So I walked out.
Lotta: [laughs] That is so funny.
Grace: No one bothered to say ‘Let me put it on and show you.’
Maybe that was part of it, part of the attitude. But Grace, you must have had that kind of experience in the 1990s? Finding young designers, going to Margiela? The equivalent in other generations. Even an early McQueen.
Grace: I kind of grew up with McQueen and Galliano, and you [Lotta and Vetements] were on the same wavelength. This was a generation much younger than me, so it was really strange after
we had been Chanel-ified for years. It is one thing if you see it in the independent magazines and it is people like youputting it together, using vintage andChanel; it is something else if the whole show is that. And of course, Margiela wasn’t really that, I don’t think.
But the spirit of it maybe was.
Grace: The spirit, maybe.
Lotta: Before Vetements, I remember I felt like whenever I went to a fashion thing I had to dress up, you know, put on heels.
You are wearing heels today!
Lotta: I do like wearing heels I must say.
‘So much of my energy is spent digging my heels in, and saying, ‘No, I’m doing it this way!’ But then if there’s a backlash about it, you have to be a bit punk.’
Every time I see you, you are in heels!
Grace: And I dressed down for you!
Lotta: [laughs] I love that! After working on Vetements with Demna and Gosha, I felt so confident to be in whatever felt right in the moment. If you didn’t feel like dressing up or being pretty, you
could wear a black hoodie and big oversized coat and trainers, and you could go to the show like that. It was just OK, and people were doing that. So I think in a way that is something that they changed.
Grace: That was a breakthrough.
Lotta: You could be anything you wanted to be.
My greatest moment in fashion was when it became fashionably acceptable to wear Birkenstocks! I wore them every summer and then they were fashion, and suddenly I could wear them to the office.
Lotta: Fashion should be about who you want to be.
But some people don’t know who they are, and they look to fashion to tell them…
Grace: …or to describe them. That is the thing. You should just wear whatever comes from your heart.
The thing I really loved about fashion in the 1990s was that it felt like you could find a designer and identify with them. I was a big Helmut Lang, Jil Sander kind of person; when I found those clothes I thought, ‘This is who I am.’
Grace: Are you still that person or did you change?
I am still that person.
Grace: I changed a lot. I flipped from being Kenzo – I wore only Kenzo for a long long time – to only Saint Laurent ready-to-wear – the real Saint Laurent – and then only Azzedine. And then it was all Calvin Klein, it was all or nothing. Recently, it’s been all Céline.
Now what?
Grace: I don’t know.
Lotta: I had a very strong Westwood moment in London. I feel like she is a designer with such a strong identity and you buy into the whole mentality.
But when you were wearing it, did you feel like ‘this is who I am’ or ‘I am wearing Westwood’?
Lotta: I think I adapted it to who I was; I mixed it up more in a punk way.
Grace: I just adopted the entire look. I was boring; it was easy.
Lotta: These days it feels quite different. There is less loyalty and it’s because a lot of brands are doing similar things to each other.
Grace: Copying each other.
Lotta: If one trainer sells well, then another brand will do another version of that trainer. It’s all marketing, with most brands, and even young designers.
Grace: Very much young designers because they cannot go out on a limb.
Lotta: For people outside of fashion, it is less obvious, but for us, when you look at certain brands, you understand what they still stand for and you can ignore this moment. For people outside,
they won’t see so much of a difference between brands. I think that is how people think these days. You are bombarded by images and information, so you compile what you like out of what influences
you. You aren’t just into one thing; you have many different interests; you like many different brands. You buy a pair of shoes here, a dress there, and a jacket from somewhere completely different. I just think that is how it is these days. So it is not very designer driven and not very coherent in that sense. It is deconstructed in a way.
Do you remember a time when fashion was not accessible, I mean visually, pre-Internet days, when fashion shows were only accessible to buyers, editors and the friends of the designers?
Grace: That was so good – and then all the bloggers came and kicked us out of the front row!
Beyond that very immediate effect of the floodgates opening up, how do you feel this, democratization is maybe too big a word, has changed things? We the editors used to control the flow of information, and we would see a collection and say this is what is important from that collection. Now magazines don’t have that power because everyone else has their own opinion and a platform on which to express it. What effects has that had on the fashion landscape and your work personally or professionally as a stylist? Are you now contending with these other opinions?
Grace: No, I’m not. I am just carrying on doing my own thing because I cannot compete with the younger generation. I cannot compete with the whole digital thing because it doesn’t interest me.
Obviously, it is what it is and it is very strong and important, but it is not part of my world. My world is still carrying on doing what it does, loving fashion, doing pictures about what I love and believe in, trying my best. I can carry on at a much slower pace and that suits me fine. I don’t want to compete with bloggers or even criticize them. Who am I to criticize them? It is what they do and how they earn their living, and everyone has their way of earning a living. The fact that their opinion is just as important as mine, I sometimes find a little annoying, but again, it is what it is. And you know, their opinion is not for me, it is for a whole different set of people anyway. So it is fine.
Lotta: I think everyone has a voice these days. The most important thing is to stand by what you do. The danger is everything becoming the same and a little bland. I think that is a real danger. It is important to stand by your interests and beliefs and make it your thing – and that takes strength and confidence, because, you know, there will always be someone who is going to criticize what you do.
Grace: If you listen to everyone…
Lotta: You have to be quite strong and focused, that is fundamental, and you have to be able, to say what you want to say, no matter what, you cannot just listen to others.
Grace: So much of my energy is spent digging my heels in and saying, ‘No, I am going to do it this way.’
Lotta: But that can be really hard.
Grace: Sure it can.
Lotta: If there is a little backlash about whatever you do, you have to be a bit punk.
Grace: It is all part of the process, I guess.
Lotta: You have to be able to ignore it or react against it.
‘I still get obsessed with certain style things, but these days I project them onto the poor models because they don’t work on me anymore.’
This is directed specifically at you, Lotta; do you ever imagine a time when you are considered establishment?
[Everyone laughs]
Lotta: To be honest, I remember a lot of things changed when Demna got the job at Balenciaga and he took me there with him and I started to style the shows. A lot of things changed in a way
that suddenly people reinterpret things that I say. I was just peacefully doing independent magazines by myself, and suddenly, it becomes part of the mainstream and I’m now a voice who gets listened to by the mainstream for the first time. So there is definitely a responsibility in a sense, but what is interesting in my role is to talk about those subjects that I find alternative.
Grace: That is what I meant when I said that you changed fashion. As soon as it is in fashion, it is mainstream. Balenciaga has that name and that stamp of approval, so your relationship with that, going there and working with Demna means that suddenly it became OK, and it became a whole new point of view in fashion. So that is kind of major.
Lotta: I really felt it in a personal way.
Grace: And everyone is ripping them off now, which is very flattering.
Lotta: This season was the first when Demna was designing things in a different way; he was designing things in looks. So this was the first season, I didn’t style the show, for example. I
worked on the casting and that was quite refreshing. It wasn’t so hectic. It was pretty cool to be able to sit back. Maybe now I will have more freedom. I don’t know. I am developing my own personal things, too, and it is an exciting time in that way.
That sounds like a good ending. Anything else you guys want to bring up? I feel we’ve covered everything and more…
Grace: I can carry on chatting on forever; I think we talked about cats the last time.
Are you a cat person or a dog person, Lotta?
Lotta: Both. I love animals. I love racoons. I would love to have a racoon. I’ve never seen a real live one; I saw a dead one though.
Grace: They are very vicious. We had a whole family living under the deck at our house in Long Island. You would see Mrs. Racoon and all her babies in the headlights when we came home at night. It really worried me because they could kill your cats. They are rough. They have very long teeth and claws.