Anna Wintour, Virginia Smith, Sally Singer and Grace Coddington attend the Rag & Bone Women's fall 2013 fashion show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week at Skylight Studios at Moynihan Station on February 8, 2013 in New York City. (Photo by Ben Gabbe/Getty Images)

Grace Coddington says that young designers could stand to have "a few things going wrong in their life. I mean, I hate to say it, but it teaches you a hell of a lot, you know." Coddington continues, "I think they need time, and I think too many of the young designers really think that they can step right out of school and …

Grace Coddington's forthcoming memoir is excerpted in this month's Vogue. The passage is full of anecdotes about London and Paris in the 1950s and 60s — the life of a struggling newbie model, an engagement ended by an affair, flights over the channel with a pilot boyfriend who liked to do loop-the-loops, "snotty French…

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…

For the first time since its famous all-black issue of July, 2008, Italian Vogue has printed a magnificent 17-page editorial, featuring twelve black models. The story is definitely reaching for a languid, finger-curled, Harlem Renaissance feeling. Let's explore.

• Model Coco Rocha unearthed and published the Steven Meisel photograph that Anna Wintour famously killed from Grace Coddington's 1920s-themed spread in The September Issue — previously only glimpsed ever-so-fleetingly in the movie. So this is it. It's purty. [OhSoCoco]

• Worst-selling, that is. Swift's April Elle issue sold the fewest copies of the year, and her covers of Glamour and Marie Claire were nearly as bad. Blake Lively bombed on Vogue and Esquire, but weirdly sold well for Allure. [WWD]

• Katy Perry, shot by Alexi Lubomirski for the subscriber cover of the new Harper's Bazaar, looks gorgeous, if a bit crusty-lipped. She also looks a lot like Jean Patchett on the iconic Erwin Blumenfeld Vogue cover from January, 1950. [JustJared]

• Detmar Blow on Alexander McQueen: "Money changed him and then drugs changed him. I remember reading of how he had flown his boyfriend somewhere for £130,000. What did Issie get? Some clothes. I find that quite shocking."

[New York, September 10: Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour, Vogue Fashion Editor Virginia Smith, Vogue Creative Director Grace Coddington attend the Rag & Bone Spring 2011 fashion show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week. Image via Getty.]