Vogue. Everyone is familiar with it, and if you’re not, what have you been doing your entire life? Vogue magazine has been coined the world’s most influential fashion magazine reaching a wide audience of readers each month. Vogue’s style is unique and iconic worldwide, so who is behind the magazine’s creativity?

Grace Coddington has been the creative director at American Vogue since 1988. Her more than 20 year reign at Vogue has reinvented the magazine’s style. Coddington could be considered one of the most valued opinions in the fashion world.

Coddington was born in 1941 in England. Grace grew up reading British Vogue as a teenager, citing British Vogue as one of her only contacts to the fashion world as she lived miles away from the nearest designer shops. At 17, Coddington was lucky enough to have someone submit pictures of her to the Vogue Young Model Competition, which she won. Coddington’s relationship with Vogue would begin here making her one of Vogue’s employees with the longest tenure.

At the age of 28, Coddington moved away from modeling and began working as a Junior Editor for Vogue. She assisted with Photo Edits for 19 years before moving to New York City, where she began her relationship with American Vogue working as creative director under Anna Wintour.

Coddington could be considered one of the first stylist’s. The profession didn’t officially exist when she first began her career with Vogue, but Grace always had an eye for what looked good due to her prior years of experience as a model.

Her productions are always elaborate and beautiful. Anyone doubting that fashion magazines do not embody art have clearly never seen a Grace Coddington production.  Time magazine said “If Wintour is the Pope…, Coddington is Michelangelo, trying to paint a fresh version of the Sistine Chapel twelve times a year.”

Ally | Elite.