Fantasy channel

Puff Daddy and Kate Moss take it to the bridge, Linda Evangelista karate kicks a piper, two dogs get married - just three of the pictures in Grace: 30 Years of Fashion at Vogue. This extraordinary book, which probably weighs more than most of the models contained within it, is a retrospective of the work of Grace Coddington, creative director at American Vogue, who has spent three decades imposing her vision on the pages of that magazine and its sister British edition.

She is the Shakespeare of style, a hugely influential figure whose idea of applying narrative to fashion shoots absolutely transformed the industry. "I hate fashion trends," she says. "So in my head I write a script to make it less fashion. The girl could be a cowgirl in cowboy country. She could wear certain things - maybe even a certain hat, go to a certain coffee shop and something unexpected could happen there - and this often makes the best picture. I like to think it's more human."

Such spontaneity is admirable, but leafing through the pages of Grace it quickly becomes apparent that each shoot is the result of weeks of intense planning and concentration. If only because of the locations. Following the death of Chairman Mao, Coddington made sure that British Vogue was the first magazine to do a fashion story in China. Ditto for the Soviet Union, although they had to smuggle out film in Jerry Hall's make-up bag. "If a shoot comes too easy," says Coddington, "you can be sure it won't be a good one."

The photographers too are truly global. Grace features work by some of the most famous people ever to peer through a viewfinder. There are David Bailey's monochrome austerities, Guy Bourdin's fetishistic fantasies, the playful hallucinations of Annie Leibovitz, the impressionistic tableaux of Ellen Von Unwerth and even some old- school romance courtesy of Cecil Beaton. Think of all the egos to be tamed, the vanities to be set alight; it's a wonder a single frame was ever produced. And yet the photographers seem to love her. "Grace has an incredible dedication, says Helmut Lang. "I think she'll be seen as one of the biggest contributors to fashion of the century."

Coddington was born in Wales in 1941. Her real first name is Pamela and it seems likely that she started using her middle name Grace as a kind of self-fulfiling prophecy. An introverted child, she grew up in Anglesey but barely noticed, hardly lifting her head from the pages of Vogue until, suddenly, she found that she was a beautiful young woman.

Soon other people noticed too. In 1959 she entered and won the Vogue model contest, just in time for the Sixties to begin.

She was photographed by Snowdon, who she would later employ, modelled for Mary Quant and blew the mind of Vidal Sassoon, who planned to showcase her in a series of shows around Britain. Just then, disaster struck: Coddington was in a car crash. "I smashed my face in the driving mirror, and my left eyelid was sliced off," she recalls. "Luckily they found my eyelashes."

Cosmetic surgery allowed her to keep working. She modelled throughout the Sixties but in 1968 was told by Lady Clare Rendlesham of Queen magazine: "You're too old to model. You should be a fashion editor." That sounded like a good idea so she landed a job at British Vogue.

Throughout the Seventies and Eighties she turned the magazine on its head, injecting colour like collagen, bringing a sense of artificiality and adventure, projecting her visions on to Bianca Jagger and Marie Helvin.

"The more fantasy the better," became her mantra. There's a photograph taken in 1974 which sums up the times: at a party somewhere impossibly glamorous, Coddington is draped around Helmut Newton, David Bailey stares at the camera over the rim of his glass, Angelica Huston poses like a hippy secret agent while Manolo Blahnik, comfortable in the knowledge that he is to high heels what Gustaf Eiffel was to high buildings, simply embodies the word "louche".

Coddington was with British Vogue for 19 years, leaving to become design director with Calvin Klein. It was a blip. Less than two years later she joined American Vogue, where she has worked ever since. "She has an eye," says Anna Wintour, the magazine's legendary editor- in-chief, "an instinct for knowing the look that would inspire".

For proof, look no further than the pages of Grace. From the early pictures (Penelope Tree living up to her name with an arboreal hair- do) to the last (a Bruce Weber portrait where the model is completely obscured by fabric and flowers), this is the life's work of a woman who has taken a shallow business and given it real depthu Grace: 30 Years of Fashion at Vogue is published by 7L/Steidl and distributed by Thames & Hudson, (pounds) 85

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