Grace Coddington Is Even More Interesting Than We Thought

Among the insights contained in More Intelligent Life‘s sensitively written profile of Vogue‘s Grace Coddington is that she was once briefly married to Michael Chow, who founded the restaurant Mr. Chow. (It only lasted six months, because, Coddington says, “I was useless at being a restaurateur’s wife — much too shy to table-hop.”) And when Anna Wintour took over British Vogue, in March of 1986, Coddington — who’d been working as a stylist at the magazine for six years — quit within a few months. In the words of one fashion writer, Coddington had been doing “sprawling, National Geographic-style photo essays — more than 20 pages long — in which the clothes were so smoothly integrated they barely registered as fashion photographs at all,” but, says Coddington, “Anna was much more into ‘sexy’ than I was.” [More Intelligent Life]

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Nicola Formichetti cast Rico “Zombie Boy” Genest — the dude who tattooed a human skeleton all over his skin — as the face of the very recently relaunched Mugler men’s line. [Nicola Formichetti’s Blog]
We would like to note in passing that this Guardian article about how very exciting the whole John-Galliano-is-a-racist-asshole thing made Paris fashion week this season (it totally gave us all something to talk about!!!) refers to Nicola Formichetti as a “she.” He’s a man. [Guardian, via Isaac Likes]

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Skate your way to a broken ankle, with DSquared2! [TLF]
Also in the running for stupidest footwear of the day is a pair of furry boots styled to look like an animal’s hoof. Yours for $1815. [TLF]

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Today in collaborations we thought we’d never see: Matt Groening and Comme des Garçons. [On The Runway]

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• As expected, Japan fashion week has been canceled. [WWD]
• Top models of Paris fashion week: all white, just like the top models of New York and Milan fashion weeks. What a whitewashed season this was. [WWD]
• Saks Fifth Avenue‘s Suzanne Johnson, who manages the chain’s flagship Manhattan store, was asked whether Saks would continue carrying products by Hitler-loving designer John Galliano. She replied, “We have values like I hope everyone else has. What happened was not right, and we would not want to carry his merchandise in honor of our customers and my employees that work in the store. That decision is being carried out.” Saks corporate later clarified that Johnson only meant Galliano’s own collection, not the one he designed (until recently) for Dior. It’s not clear whether Saks ever carried John Galliano women’s wear, but in any case it is no longer selling Galliano’s men’s collection. [P6]
• Bravissima is launching a full clothing line called Pepperberry, designed (like its lingerie) for ladies with boobs. A 60-piece collection will be in stores and online March 21. [MW]
• Hunter, the maker of rubber boots (including those Jimmy Choo croc-stamped ones that cost $400), is also launching a clothing line. [WWD]
• Rachel Feinstein: “I want to be everyone’s friend. When Marc Jacobs asked me to be in his campaign a couple years ago, I didn’t say yes right away. I was excited, but I knew it would come at some price, so I really thought about it. What people don’t understand is that there is no gain at all for an artist to do something like that in a public eye. As a movie star or fashion designer, the more publicity you get, the consensus is that it’s a good thing. But I make maybe six pieces of art a year — and the more the general public knows about me, the less it helps in the small sphere of the art world.” [NYTimes]
• Adidas is launching a major new advertising campaign, and the celebrity enlistees include…Katy Perry. And Romain Gavras directed the TV commercial. Weird. [WWD]
• Consumer Reports finds that the average American woman owns 17 pairs of shoes, only regularly wears three, and spends an average of $49 on each pair. Sixty per cent of women have bought a pair of uncomfortable shoes because they were really, really pretty, and 46% of women have bought comfortable shoes despite the fact they were ugly. [USAToday]
• The Phoenix Art Museum is the lucky recipient of a 200-piece vintage couture collection, including items by Balenciaga, Charles James, Madame Grès and Givenchy. [WWD]
• You could buy this brass Stella McCartney envelope necklace for $295. Or you could dig out the $20 version you bought at Urban Outfitters in 2007. That’s permitted, too. [TLF]
• Urban Outfitters founder and…wannabe billionaire cheesemaker? Richard Haynes is ruffling neighborly feathers with his new 392-acre Pennsylvania estate, which he is renovating extensively. “The work-in-progress already has given rise to expansive greenhouses and a cheese-making complex that, some neighbors fret, has an unsettling whiff of commerce.” [Philly.com]
• For 2010, Tod’s saw its profits rise by nearly 30% over 2009’s results, to $146 million. [WWD]