http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lesley-m-m-blume/grace-coddington-talks-un_b_329008.htmlGrace Coddington turned out to be the scene stealer in "The September Issue". I was hoping to see the production of the making the September issue, glimpse into the mindset of Anna Wintour, and I got to see them. But the surprising part I came away with was that Grace Coddington turned out to be the most interesting and intriguing figure in the movie. She is a big part of keeping the integrity of the creative quality of the fashion spreads. The productions she conjured up were extravagant, with heavy period costume and motion picture references, and she was very open in the documentary, even though later I'd read that she had really resisted the idea of filming their production at the beginning. She came across as a bit romantic, sentimental, very imaginative, and bit melancholy, but very persistent and insistent(all important elements a person needs to have in order to survive at Vogue as a photo editor). I was very impressed by some of the results from the location shoots, with one of them which took place at an actual cafe in busy Manhattan. It's difficult enough to do the typical Vogue fashion shoot in a studio, with all the people running around, but to do it in a cafe-even though they had cleared the customers, but working with the space and trying to set up the lighting and the equipments, trying to work around the chairs and tables-they produced some amazing photos under the circumstances. The lighting in some of the photo spreads was incredible-elaborate, atmospheric and rich in tones.
There were a few scenes which reminded the audience the harsh reality in this seemingly glamorous business. The hallway scenes were among some of them. The camera kept going back to this hallway as this is the space for the photo editors and assistants to do their last minute organization of the clothes before going in and presenting their ideas to Anna. Another glimpse of reality was watching Grace Coddington eating her plastic boxed lunch at her desk. The facade of glamor and extravagance only exists in people's minds. There were parts when we saw Grace in Paris fashion shows, on locations in France doing another photo shoot, working with a team of people, which all seemed very dramatic and glamorous, and then the scenes of her eating the boxed lunch in her room, and her rolling the rack of clothes back and forth in the hallway, gave us instantaneous reality check of what day to day life is like inside Vogue.
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