December 18, 2012

Grace Coddington Talks About Her Memoir, Bad Manners, Balenciaga And Anna Wintour In Rare Interview

This is a very good example of the “Technological determinism theory,” that ‘a society’s technology drives the very development of its social structure and cultural values.’

If you could wave your magic wand, what would you love to see happen in the fashion industry? How would you like it to change?

Fashion changes all the time, that’s the nature of the beast. I’d like fashion shows to be smaller. I’d like all the superfluous people that go to the shows not to be there. And I wish you could just go to a show and just focus on the clothes. I wish the designer would spend more time making the clothes, finding the best fabrics and actually having an idea of their own, instead somebody else’s. Because people are driven to do so much, they are always looking at what other people are doing rather than sticking to their own vision.

We’ve seen a democratization of the fashion industry in the past 10 years, where, thanks to the Internet, all anyone needs is a camera and a computer and they can be a stylist.

They can but they can’t. I have very high standards, so I think it takes more than a cell phone. Bloggers sit in in the front row [at the fashion shows] and all their energy seems to be spent on dressing themselves, which I find a shame. But it’s the way things are going; it’s not just the fashion business, it’s every business. It’s super fast for me because I’m English and I tend to be slow. It’s quite abrasive for me. I’m still at my snail’s pace.

I do and I don’t embrace the digital world. I keep saying that if I retire and go to live at home no one’s going to talk to me because I don’t really use a computer. No one’s going to connect: No one writes letters, they don’t even telephone anymore. I find it very hard to connect with the photographers I’m working with. You can’t phone them because they don’t pick up, and now they don’t even respond to texts! I don’t know why everybody makes it so difficult to communicate. I guess there’s so much going on that they don’t have time to address; but the quality of life and the quality of work suffers.

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