Vogue creative director Grace Coddington is having a hard time adjusting to the magazine’s digital revolution. “I’m really scared — can I keep up with it?” she wondered in a Q&A with September Issue director R. J. Cutler at an IFC-hosted screening this week. “We’ve been having meetings recently about all the Condé Nast magazines going online and things like that, and I’m like, ‘I don’t want anything to do with it.’” Coddington also isn’t thrilled about Fashion Week moving to Lincoln Center. “I’m very upset because it’s so close to Vogue, I can walk,” she told us. “When it goes to the Lincoln Center, it’s a bit far to walk but I’ll probably get slimmer walking to the Lincoln Center.” However, she might be slowed by fans stopping her on the street, which she said still happens frequently when she takes the subway to work and works out at her 57th Street gym.
Coddington’s film career might not be over, though she won’t be in front of the camera. Cutler revealed he’s working on a project with her based on her book, Catwalk Cats. “We think it’s going to be a big animated feature film about Grace Coddington’s feline family,” he revealed. Would Coddington provide voice-over? “We’ll see what happens,” he replied. “That’s not the plan.” In the meantime, Cutler is promoting the February 23 release of The September Issue DVD, which boasts 90 minutes of unseen footage from Cutler’s 320 hours of tape, including:
• André Leon Talley shopping in Paris, in which he explains how to dress for a summer vacation at Karl Lagerfeld’s house.
• The extended scene of Talley discussing the “famine of beauty” with Vera Wang.
• Footage of Coddington’s cats.
• Anna and Bee Shaffer being mother and daughter.
If you buy the DVD from Barnes & Noble, you also get a third disc with 25 minutes of unseen footage of the planning of the Met Gala.
And as for Bob Richman, the cameraman Anna told to hit the gym, he has lost weight. “When Anna Wintour tells you that you’re overweight, the next thing you do is go to the gym, as André pointed out,” Cutler said. “But the truth is, I mean, for crying out loud, that poor guy, he’s lugging around a 50-pound camera on his shoulder for nine months, following Anna around, and she’s like giving him her back as much as she can, and then he spends a weekend leaping up in the air, modeling to rescue her September issue, and what does she say when she sees the pictures? ‘You look fat.’ So, God bless her.”
