Flashback

Grace Coddington remembers fashion shoots past

NO ONE IS MORE easy-going with a camera in his hand than Arthur. On a shoot, he’s always talking non-stop, joking and laughing, and puffing on his pipe. One of the first things we did together was a tour of the British Isles, where we went in search of bagpipers, country estates, and a clone of the queen. Almost always, the picture you imagine beforehand doesn’t end up happening – it’s the ones you take along the way that do. We never planned for Linda Evangelista to do karate in a kilt, for instance, but it’s one of those photographs that has a charm you could never dream up.

Arthur has four favourite things: his children, the ballet, jazz, and cowboys. So far we’ve done four trips out west: to Jackson Hole, where Arthur briefly disappeared into the Tetons on horseback; to Wyoming, with Tatjana Patitz; to California, where we made the models rough it like pioneers; and to West Texas, where real cowboys don’t need any style advice. Arthur also likes to roam. I’ve gone so many places with him, I refer to him as ‘my travel companion’. Whether in Morocco with Shalom [Harlow] and a camel; in Mammoth, with Kristen Mcmenamy and a lone husky; in China with Linda Evangelista; in Moscow with Christy Turlington and a pair of Russian artists; or in India, with Maggie Rizer and a marriage elephant, Arthur likes a happy accident. At the end of a shoot with Stella Tennant on a hot day in the Hamptons, she said, ‘I could jump in the pool now.’ ‘Wait!’ Arthur cried out. Then he and everyone he could muster lined up with cameras and got a shot of a perfect dive.

In the fall of 2000, the collections went a bit barbarian. Fur was everywhere, and dresses deconstructed with ragged seams. Sitting at the shows, I had a vision in the desert, which I soon brought to life with a little family of stylish vagabonds in the dry lakes of Southern California.

Whether it’s a family of road warriors or a lost astronaut, Arthur will go along with almost anything. For a shoot, Nasa was willing to lend me a space suit, but the capsule had to be built by a props specialist. The way Arthur saw it, the spaceman splashes down, meets and marries supermodel Maggie Rizer, and then really takes off. Grace: Thirty Years of Fashion at Vogue by Grace Coddington will be published in paperback on 1 October (Phaidon, £49.95)

Whether it’s a family of road warriors or a lost astronaut, Arthur will go along with almost anything

Stella Tennant photographed way out west by Arthur Elgort in 2001 for American Vogue