Jonathan Hodge- Senior Project CR #2

“Describe a Moment and Analyze”

As part of my documentation (and research guide), I thought it would be a good idea to jot anecdotes while I read Grace Coddington’s memoir. In the moment, all I knew was to read, reflect, and write. After finishing each chapter, I look back on mu notes. Time after time, paragraph after paragraph, I seemed to have picked up on the smallest of details inked by Grace and questioned how those small moments could of helped her get to the place she is today. Experience with the military, first love, Parisian rendezvous, she has this “cosmopolitan it girl” vibe that the magazines seem to love.

That was…until she wrote. “I felt overwhelmed [at the sight of so many Black people in Jamaica].” Umm..what? What she was describing was a moment in her career in which she was able to leave Wales and travel to the Caribbean for a fashion shoot. What caused my annoyance, was the fact that she was an adult who before than had not seemed to give thought of this other side of the world and the culture found within. It made me want to read André Leon Talley’s memoir more than ever. Perhaps, it could have been, that I was getting to wrapped up in this white woman’s life story to begin with, instead of looking to find the original purpose of me reading her memoir.