A fashion love story, on both sides of the camera

By Taylor Nicioli, CNN

(CNN) — It’s a simple but elegant black and white portrait of a women in a vintage nightgown — long, white and frilly — standing in a field of tall grass, as a gust of wind sweeps the dress behind her.

The model, looking off camera, and leaving the viewer to wonder at who or what, is former American Vogue creative director Grace Coddington; behind the camera was fashion photographer and film director Willie Christie.

The photo is just one of many of Christie’s previously-unseen shots of Coddington, images largely taken in the 1970s when she was working as a fashion editor at British Vogue. This was a time that marked the beginning of Christie’s career, and the height of their romance. It’s memorialized in Christie’s new book, “A Very Distinctive Style: Then & Now,” a dynamic collection of work mining his personal archives as well as editorial work, campaigns and collaborations with rock ‘n’ roll stars like David Bowie, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd and more.

“At that moment, I was very into vintage clothes and things like that, and the dress had a romance about it, which I love. That was also something that (Christie) really was very good at capturing,” Coddington told CNN in a phone interview.

“Our lives were very intertwined with each other in terms of his career and my career… and that picture reminds me of that. It was a beautiful period of my life,” she said.

A fashion industry meet cute

Christie and Coddington first met in the early 1970s on an assignment for British Vogue. Christie was then an assistant to Clive Arrowsmith, the most “sought-after fashion photographer at the time,” and Coddington a junior fashion editor for the publication, Coddington wrote in the foreword of Christie’s book.

With the budget for only two hotel rooms, and Arrowsmith wishing to share one with model Ann Schauffuss, his girlfriend at the time, Coddington recalled her and Christie spending the days surrounding the shoot awkwardly shuffling around their shared room, dancing around each other for privacy and to get dressed separately in the bathroom.

Their first date was actually a few years later, when Coddington was in need of a plus-one date for a charity ball she had been given two tickets to — Christie was the only man with a tuxedo that she and her assistant Patricia McRoberts (Christie’s prior girlfriend) knew at the time, she said.

Just a few weeks later, they moved in together.

Christie remembers his first time photographing Coddington — a shoot for London newspaper “The Evening Standard” in 1973. The publication was looking to write an article on Coddington, which she agreed to, but only if Christie shot the photos.

“I was full of trepidation before that shoot, because although we were living together, the fact that I actually had to photograph her for the first time kind of filled me with anxiety,” Christie told CNN. “Because this might have become a great flaw in our relationship — she could have thought ‘Oh, my God, he can’t take a photograph of me, I can’t stay with him any longer.’”

Fortunately, the shoot was a resounding success. From that moment Coddington and Christie were an unstoppable team, developing ideas for their own personal photoshoots as well as editorial commissions — Coddington styling while Christie visualized. In Coddington, Christie had found his “perfect collaborator” and “first muse,” he told CNN.

Their first Vogue collaboration came in 1974, with the creation of a 1940s nightclub scene featuring the model Marie Helvin staged as a cabaret singer, wearing a collection of glamorous evening gowns. (Her piano player, meanwhile, was the shoot’s hairdresser, styled in Christie’s own white Saint Laurent suit.)

Romance on film

Coddington recalled weekends the pair would frequently spend at Christie’s mother’s house in Wantage, England, tucked away from the bustle of big city London. On one particular occasion, just before Christmas in 1975, they trekked up into the Berkshire Downs — Coddington with that vintage dress and wide-brimmed hat, and Christie lugging his camera, a Honda generator and a single studio light.

In the image of Coddington standing in the field, Christie was looking to tell a love story, inspired from the old black-and-white movies he watched often, such as an adaptation of the literary classic “Wuthering Heights.” The aesthetic he hoped to recreate with “The Moors and the hills, all desolate and alone,” Christie explained. “And you know, women are being rejected and men are being foul.”

To the side of Coddington stands a perfectly imperfect wooden signpost that Christie had quickly “banged together,” a prop to add to that vintage look and storytelling aspect of the piece, he said. With Coddington lit up by the single studio light, a backdrop of quintessentially British stormy clouds added a “punch of drama,” he said.

“There’s a longing there, because romance is losing, gaining, losing. People get together and they break up, and then there’s unrequited love,” Christie said.

Coddington and Christie were married in 1976, in a “wonderful seaside wedding in Derval, France,” Christie remembered. They split up in 1978, however, with Coddington left “heartbroken,” she said. Christie had begun focusing on his career in film, putting his all into shooting commercials, directing music videos and writing screenplays — and there had been another woman, Christie admitted.

Coddington moved to the United States to work for Calvin Klein, and later become the creative director of American Vogue in 1988. She later married her current partner Didier Maligein; Christie married his current partner Amanda Nimmo in 1991 and they have two children together.

Though Christie is based in England these days, he often takes the time to visit with Coddington on trips to New York. On October 19, Coddington and Christie spoke together on Christie’s new book at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York.

“I am supposed to ask if you were ever starstruck by any of your models or actors that you photographed,” Coddington asked Christie during the talk.

“Well, I was by you,” Christie replied.

“Willie Christie: a very distinctive style: Then & Now” is available now. 

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