Vogue's Grace Coddington to Speak at LACMA

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Grace Coddington — a major model during London's swinging sixties, a Vidal Sassoon hair model who rocked the influential five-point cut before anybody — has quite the history. She moved on from modelling as she got older, and became an editor at British Vogue, then American Vogue. And she stayed under the radar for years, creative directing major fashion shoots with famous photogs. She is literally the no. 2 person at American Vogue, and has held that job for many years.

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But her anti-devil stance in R.J.Cutler's The September Issue — she and editor-in-chief Anna Wintour battling over shots and Coddington being amazingly straightforward and honest — suddenly made her a media star against her will when the documentary was released in 2009. She's recently come out with the book Grace, A Memoir and has done interviews in the last two weeks with The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. With her wavy mass of heavy long red hair, no makeup and all-black clothes — about which she's completely unfussy, in contrast to the models on the shoots she meticulously styles — she's the ultimate "anti-fashion" icon in the New York fashion world.

Now Coddington's coming to L.A. (you have to wonder what this ultimate New York figure thinks of Hollywood style) and is doing a talk at LACMA for the museum's Costume Council on the night of  Dec. 10. It will be in the Bing Theater there, and we can expect every fashion-interested person west of the Mississippi to turn up. Afterwards, there will be a reception and Coddington will sign books. It will be interesting to see how this media-shy media star deals with Hollywood attention, especially as there's bound to be a celebrity fan or two turning up.