Katie Grand - Stylist

[softgrey]

The Grand manner
(Filed: 23/03/2005)

How did a 'nerd' from Birmingham become the coolest stylist in British fashion? Emily Bearn meets Katie Grand

Katie Grand's 'capsule wardrobe', which consists of about a thousand skirts and jackets and a hundred or so pairs of shoes, is accommodated in her three-bedroom house in Kentish Town.

*

Grand in 2002: 'homespun'

Her surplus wardrobe, which contains every item of clothing she has bought since the age of 15, is housed down the road and fills a storage unit the size of a pantechnicon truck.

'Alaïa,' she explains, briskly taking me upstairs into the corner of a room the size of a squash court filled entirely with clothes rails. 'Then we go along, alphabetically, to Balenciaga… Chanel… loads of Comme des Garçons, Courrèges…' Grand sweeps down several metres of rail, rapidly plucking at T-shirts and jackets as though they were long-lost friends. ('Marc Jacobs! Lovely!… And you can never have enough vintage Jean Muir!') 'I've got so many clothes but I never get, you know, confused by them. I always decide exactly what I'm going to wear within seven minutes of waking up.'

It is perhaps in part thanks to such decisiveness that Grand, a 33-year-old freelance stylist from Birmingham, is reputed to have become one of the most influential figures in the fashion business - 'one of the most powerful stylists in the world', according to The Telegraph. 'What Katie does - and Katie says - is as influential as it gets,' according to the Evening Standard.

It certainly appeared so last August, when she casually told New York Magazine that 'There's something very interesting about working-class Britain in the early 1960s.'

The remark unleashed a maelstrom of newspaper headlines, announcing the imminent arrival of British 'granny chic'.

'It all started when an American journalist asked me what will be in next season,' she explains, talking in a vestigial Birmingham accent. 'I was obsessed with Coronation Street at the time so I just said, "Oh, it will all be about Coronation Street." I suppose I was being a bit precocious.'

For the less precocious reader, it might be helpful to explain why Miss Grand has become such a force to reckon with. The secret, as one fashion commentator puts it, seems simply to be 'an uncanny knack for getting in with all the right people'.

She was at Central St Martins College of Art and Design with Stella McCartney. She then became the lover of the photographer Rankin and, for seven years, worked with him as the fashion director of the magazine Dazed & Confused, which he founded.

'We were both forceful people, so there was sometimes a bit of a clash,' she explains, gently extricating a herbal teabag from her mug. 'We were incredibly young, so we wouldn't care if we were screaming at each other when there were visitors to the office. Things would get thrown around all the time.'

What sort of things? 'Computers. Filing cabinets. You know. It was all about screaming and swearing. That was just the time and the mood. I look back and I love how arrogant we all were.'

She now juggles a lucrative career as a freelance stylist - her recent clients include Miu Miu, Prada, Calvin Klein and, currently, Louis Vuitton's men's and womenswear - with editing Pop, a biannual fashion magazine, which, according to one insider, is 'so hip it makes Anna Wintour tremble'. (The latest issue appeared last month.)

The front of Pop's second issue was inspired by a New Order album cover

For the cover of her first issue, four years ago, she invited her friends Stella McCartney, Phoebe Philo, Luella Bartley and Liberty Ross to pose as pole dancers. Subsequent covers were to include a near-naked Madonna in bondage cords.

Given her unimpeachably fashionable reputation, Grand appears reassuringly homespun. When I first knocked on her door there was no reply, but a call to her assistant, Mandi, confirmed that she was minutes away: 'You'll see her approaching down the street soon,' I was briefed. 'She's got long hair… tallish… she looks stylish but not… well, you know, not…' Not very smart, certainly.

She has a gap-toothed smile and curly, hopelessly unruly hair, part of which is wrestled into an elastic band. Her slightly ramshackle appearance is accentuated by a nondescript T-shirt and a pair of baggy, elasticated black trousers: 'I've just been running,' she explains apologetically. 'But I am not a tracksuit-during-the-day kind of person. Never. Strictly never.'

Her house would certainly suggest that fashion is her main concern. She lives with her boyfriend, Steve Mackey, the bass-player in Pulp, but - beside Grand's wardrobe - neither of them appears to have amassed many possessions. The drawing-room is bare save for a couple of low-slung sofas and chairs, and the kitchen shelves are piled with fashion manuals rather than recipe books.

'Mewch was amazing to work with,' Grand remarks - referring, I assume, to Miuccia Prada, as she scours her vast, retro-style fridge in search of apple juice. 'She's just got this incredible dynamism. She's got a great knack of always being right. And Marc [Jacobs -- confusingly, this is an industry in which no one appears to have a surname] is amazing, too. He's just got this incredible feel for what people want to wear.'

The same might be said for Miss Grand: 'I think for this decade it's not about a total look,' she says. 'It might just be about a cashmere sweater. I think after the decadence and heaviness of winter, summer might be a little less embellished… fewer brooches… maybe a bit younger. The Margaret Thatcher look was definitely a big part of winter, but summer will be different. I've got a big, big thing for floral prints at the moment.'

And, a few seasons down the line, Grand's considerable clout might ensure - heaven forfend - that we all have a big, big thing about shoulder pads: 'In ten years' time there could be a 1980s revival,' she explains confidently. 'Even now, there's something about looking at an image of Paula Yates in an Antony Price dress that looks very right.'

Paula Yates hardly seems the most likely fashion icon for the next generation; but Katie Grand has spent a lot of time considering such things. The daughter of a cancer research scientist, she has, by her own definition, been 'obsessed' with fashion since the age of 12, when her father's girlfriend introduced her to the joys of Warehouse.

'I was really nerdy,' Grand says. 'And then kind of overnight I can remember clearly thinking, "I just want to be cool." There are photographs of me aged 12 wearing waist-high tight red jeans with a puffed-sleeve blue sweater and awful hair, and then aged 13 in an ankle-length black gathered skirt, white shirt tucked in, braces, a black tie, black lace tights, navy blue stilettos and a black beret with a veil. It all sort of came together quite quickly.'

At the venerable age of 33, does she ever sense that her interest in fashion might wane? 'No,' she replies, suddenly emphatic. 'Never. I'll still be just as into it when I'm 80.

'It's not something that just comes and goes. But I have a sense of humour about it… Or, at least, I like to think that I do.'

http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/fashion/main.jhtml?xml=/fashion/2005/03/23/efgrand23.xml

 

[bart]

Thanks for the article softgrey, I'm a huge fan of her work. I think as a whole stylists are grossly underrated, but she tends to get at least some of the attention she deserves.

There's oodles of her work on http://www.clmus.com/ which is the site for her agency.

Here's an interview from Hintmag.
http://www.hintmag.com/hinterview/katiegrand/katiegrand1.php

The woman herself.

from Showstudio.com

 

[helena]

thanks softgrey that was good - I always get mixed up between her & Katy england.....

 

[zrzava]

2003 article

Another Katie Grand article...

From : http://saltyt.antville.org/20030126/

Sun, 26.01.2003, 11:11
Pop it goes
What Katie did...
Britain's coolest fashion queen has no trouble getting the A-list to pose for her glossy mag. Just ask Madonna
By Tamsin Blanchard The Observer

She's as likely to be seen buzzing about backstage, chatting to her friends Gisèle or Luella, as sitting, restlessly, waiting for a fashion show to begin, frantically speed-texting on her mobile. Her dark brown hair is usually a fuzzy mess, her skin pale and sleep-deprived. At 32, she is British fashion's brightest, brashest queen bee. And as the show season begins once more, with the cavalcade stopping for a breather after this week's round of haute couture in Paris, before setting off on a month of travels - New York, London, Milan and back to Paris again - pressure is mounting. Katie Grand has a magazine to get on to the newsstands.

Issue six of her glossy, fashion-obsessed biannual, Pop, will be published to coincide with the new collections. The magazine has a circulation of 80,000 but is so trendy it has a an effect on fashion that defies those numbers. The last issue, in case you missed it, featured cover-girl Liz Hurley in black, high-heeled, kinky sex shoes and more mascara than Divine Brown would wear in a week. The first featured Grand's 'gang' - including ex-flatmate and fashion designer Luella Bartley, model of the moment Liberty Ross, and Stella McCartney (the magazine's contributing fashion editor) - all dancing round poles in their skimpies.

Grand has an uncanny knack for getting in with all the right people. She was at Central St Martin's College of Art and Design with McCartney, then became the lover and right-hand woman of celebrity snapper Rankin when he had just founded Dazed and Confused magazine with Kate Moss's boyfriend Jefferson Hack. The fashion photographer Corinne Day worked upstairs from them at the time, and her boyfriend had just directed Oasis's first video. Grand found herself at the epicentre of Cool Britannia, and not only knew its hippest protagonists but - as an up-and-coming stylist - helped to give the era its look as well. Now Grand has such a reputation for being cutting-edge that the fashion establishment is clamouring for her Midas touch.

How, I ask, does a niche magazine such as Pop manage to get Madonna to pose for the cover? 'Stella got Madonna,' she says simply. 'We were sat having a cup of tea and she looked at me and said, "You want to do this, don't you?" and she called her on her mobile. We sent some magazines over and Madonna called Stella back and said it was fine. It was the most smooth-running thing we've ever done.' Easy when you know how. Or should I say, when you know who.

In addition to editing Pop, it was announced last week that Grand has been appointed creative director of the Face. She also styles ad campaigns for fashion houses from Louis Vuitton to Miss Sixty, and works with designer Miuccia Prada, helping to shape a collection that will have the fashion pack salivating, and, in turn, shape the clothes the rest of us buy on the high street.

Although she has friends in high places, Katie Grand is not everybody's cup of Earl Grey. There's a lot of insecurity around - and too many egos.

'I suppose we've always been a loud gang in a way,' Grand says of her fashion clan. 'Luella and I were really aware from the minute we started being friends that we annoyed people. Like there was one London Fashion Week when we wore fluoro for the whole week and just got photographed everywhere. It was just those little things, like not wearing black and heels, and how easy it is to be anti-establishment without doing anything very wrong. Or like being at proper parties drunk and loud and obnoxious and falling over. It's not like we were very influential or anything. It was much more people saying, "Oh, I wish those girls would go and wash!" We were quite scummy really.'

Katie Grand is one of those people you love or hate. But you can't ignore her. Even while we're chatting, over tea in the bar at Claridges, an actor, who is with his agent on the table next to ours, suddenly leans over. 'Who are you?' he demands. 'I work on a magazine,' shrugs Grand. Then he tells us we are talking bullsh*t, which I'm sure we are, but still, what he really wanted was to pull up his chair and join in. She has this way of attracting friends as well as enemies. Whether people have an axe to grind with her depends, she says, on whether they were at college with her. 'I think all of our year at St Martin's have got certain issues with one another. Without going into detail, all the grudges they had at 21 are still there. On both sides.'

Grand didn't get much out of her stint at Central St Martin's. Having identified her aim in life - to edit Vogue - she enrolled for the Fashion Journalism and Promotion degree, but after a term changed to do Fashion Design with Print. 'I arrived expecting something really different from what it was,' she says, 'and I found it very difficult. I thought it was going to be instructive and positive, like you expect university or college to be, and I found the atmosphere very, very negative.'

As a child, Grand made her own clothes. Her mother, who taught her to knit, moved out when she was about seven, and she grew up with her dad, seeing her mum in the evenings after school. She is an only child. 'I was the centre of attention,' she admits, 'and quite spoilt in that me and my friends were just allowed to do whatever we wanted. When you're a teenager there's always someone's house where the parents don't mind what you get up to. That was our house.'

Her dad's girlfriend was influential in cultivating her fashion cravings. 'She lived in London and was completely obsessed with fashion.' As was her dad. Instead of going abroad on holidays, they would go to London and look at shops. Katharine Hamnett was a favourite. She didn't really know how to turn her penchant for chopping sleeves off T-shirts into the top job at Vogue. All she knew was she had to get into St Martin's. 'There was this complete determination I was going to go to art school, and I had to do that no matter how much work it took. I didn't see the point going anywhere but somewhere in central London.'

Poor Katie. She had worked her Fiorucci socks off to get into the college only to find it wasn't worth the effort, in her opinion. And then she met Rankin. 'We were spending a lot of time together, so I suppose it made sense to start sleeping with each other. I don't think it ever really worked. I was 23. It was quite funny. He's terribly charismatic.'

So she quit college before her final year, and, with financial assistance from her dad, as well as her earnings from a wool shop, where, as an avid knitter, she enjoyed discussing the merits of Kaffe Fassett patterns with fellow enthusiasts, she went to work on Dazed . 'We were quite blinded by our belief about what this thing could be. There was one year when we only actually put two issues out, but we were still saying we were a monthly magazine. We were quite led away by our own hype and we would have fly posters everywhere.'

By the mid-nineties, the magazine had established its own niche, with a slightly bigger office in Brewer Street, Soho. 'Bands such as Oasis had come along. It felt like there was something quite exciting going on in London - like Damien Hirst. It all sounds like such clichés in retrospect, but there was such a scene to report on and be a part of.'

As Rankin's career took off, Grand's fashion styling grew with it. She began to work for other publications, like Dazed's arch rival, the Face, and in 1999, she left. Things had already soured between her and Rankin. She threw him out of her flat the night before they were due to go on a trip to LA to photograph Kylie Minogue. 'We weren't professional at all. We were really rude and obnoxious and he carried on that behaviour with me until I left,' she recalls. 'It was really unpleasant.' These days, however, the two are the best of friends and Rankin is referred to as Pop 's favourite photographer.

Although she hasn't achieved her teenage ambition to edit Vogue, Grand has in a way, gone one better. She is the editor-in-chief of her own magazine. The idea was to make Pop a sister magazine to the Face. 'I didn't see any point talking about things I didn't know about, which is why Stella and Luella ended up being on the cover. They were my friends and that made sense. I don't see the point of working with people you don't get on with or you wouldn't choose to see socially.'

Grand is as fanatical about fashion as she ever was, and nothing if not determined. 'I'm probably worse now than I was five years ago. I stopped drinking. Up to the age of 30 I was out all the time. I've become much more motivated the older I've got. I'm probably more ambitious now.' She lives with her boyfriend, Steve Mackey, from Pulp, in a house in north London. She has two cars - a sensible Fiesta and a flashy vintage Ford Mustang.

Despite the fact that Pop is selling well and the advertisers love it (not least because they can be sure that they will be given some glowing editorial in return), the magazine is not going to make her or its publisher, Emap, rich. Her consultancies and ad campaigns will; but Grand insists it is not about money. 'I don't think I've ever been motivated by money. Obviously it's something that has come along later. I've ended up doing what I do because I like doing it.'

So does she really still want to be doing this when she is 80? Surely at some stage, the shine wears off the Prada shoes and the glossy paper. But Grand fixes me with wide eyes and a look of absolute incomprehension. 'I'm not bored with it. I really like what I do. I don't get pissed off with it.' And just in case I hadn't got the message, she says it again: 'I really, really like it. I can't imagine doing anything else.'

 

[Acid]

i love Katie Grand, she is such a nice woman
shes so pleasant and friendly..

 

[mimiko]

she's one of my favourite stylists

http://www.thefashionspot.com/forums/2595686-post41.html

http://www.thefashionspot.com/forums/2595689-post42.html

 

[kimair]

katie grand has been named creative director at mulberry...
from fashionista.com

As if they could get any cooler: British bag brand Mulberry's new creative director is stylist and scene queen Katie Grand. The appointment will be announced officially tomorrow, but we know now.

The move seems natural, as Katie styles all the Mulberry ad campaigns and look books (which sheds light on the choice of Agyness Deyn as the Mulberry face - besides being a hot Brit, she's Katie's current favorite).
Katie replaces the current Mulberry Design Director Stuart Vevers, whose last collection for the company will be Fall / Winter '08.

The Mulberry move comes several months after Mulberry announced a high-profile push for their brand, which will include more presence in the US and more parties in the UK (and obviously, more must-have accessories).

 

[Miss Dalloway]

^^Great news.

I think Katie is such an inspiration and she is very talented love her work.

I still think she will get her wish to edit Vogue one day.

 

[BerlinRocks]

thanks for this because I always get confused with her and Katie England (that I don't like.......)
she is good, yes...

 

[wheneveriwakeup]

She's very talented and seems unaffected by the industry, which is admirable.

 

[MissMagAddict]

source | fwd

In the Red

Gap taps Katie Grand to curate special World AIDS Day collection
Monday, November 26, 2007

(LONDON) Katie Grand has been enlisted by the Gap to curate a special collection of (Product) RED clothing and accessories for World AIDS Day. The designers, who hail from all corners of the fashion industry and include Giles Deacon, Pierre Hardy, Stephen Jones, and Proenza Schouler's Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough, were each asked to develop new versions of their respective brand's iconic products while incorporating Gap values of quality, desirability, and accessibility.

The results are a creative and must-have lineup of pieces that will go on sale in Gap's London and Paris flagship stores, as well as Colette, Paris, and Dover Street Market on Dec. 1, commemorating Worlds AIDS Day. In recognition of the occasion, 50 percent of profits from the sale of the products will go to the Global Fund to help fight AIDS in Africa, with a focus on providing anti-retroviral drugs to women and children affected by HIV and AIDS.

The collection includes a significant series of T-shirts and tank tops each priced at £19.50, or $40, from the following brands: Giles Deacon, who reinterpreted his "Mouse" graphic tee in grey and pink for the project; ck Calvin Klein, who's offering a double-layered tank in grey jersey and men's and women's tees; makeup artist Charlotte Tilbury, whose shirt bears large, bold, close-up portraits shot specially by the fashion photographer Sølve Sundsbø; Proenza Schouler's Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough, who Grand consults for, whose design in fine jersey features a Rorschach-style grey and black blot print; House of Holland's Henry Holland, who designed his whimsical pieces in red, navy, and grey; and a Beth Ditto tee designed by Pop Magazine, the fashion-forward title which Grand founded.

"Throughout my adult life I have seen the effects of AIDS at close hand," said Grand, who oversaw the project from inviting the designers to take part to editing the final line-up. "So to be asked to curate this project with Gap and (RED) has been an honor and a privilege."

As for accessories, Grand worked with Mulberry--where she was recently named creative director--to rework the label's Roxanne bag in red and grey sweatshirt jersey versions for £85, or $175. Pierre Hardy, who created a capsule collection of shoes for the San Francisco, Calif.-based retailer (and whose designs are now rumored to be making their way to Gap stores in the U.S. next spring), created a £55 ($113) classic flat shoe in red satin, while milliner Stephen Jones designed a traditional men's fishing hat (£12.50, or $26) and a pack of three printed headbands (£5, or $10). Accessories expert Katie Hillier also designed a navy jersey bag with red ribbon detail based on an inside-out sweatshirt that will retail for £50, or $103.

"Working with great designers to help raise awareness of the AIDS epidemic in Africa has been an amazing opportunity," Grand added. "Creating the collection has been a lot of fun, too. It's not very often you get the chance to take designers from fashion's more exclusive areas and make them accessible to a wider audience through a high-street icon." Stephen Sunnucks, president of Gap Inc. Europe, added, "We think the role-call of talent represents a cross-section of contemporary fashion--brands both emerging and established, from household names to niche, united in a project that will help some of the most vulnerable people in the world."

The collaboration will be fêted this Thursday in London with a dinner hosted by Grand and Sunnucks at Bistrotheque

 

[MissMagAddict]

source | WWD November 28, 2007

A RESHUFFLE AT MULBERRY?: Katie Grand will not take up her post as creative director at Mulberry next year. Industry sources in London said Grand, who was set to take over from Stuart Vevers beginning with the spring 2009 season, has handed in her notice. Mulberry plans to name a design director later this week, and it is unclear whether Grand will continue to collaborate with the brand as she has done in past seasons. Grand did not return phone calls Tuesday, and a Mulberry spokeswoman declined to comment. Grand's appointment at Mulberry was confirmed in August. She is the editor of Pop magazine, and consults with labels including Giles, Prada, Miu Miu, Luella, Louis Vuitton and Proenza Schouler.

 

[Acid]

something big is about to happen.
i dont know exactly what is is but the cards are being played

 

[MissMagAddict]

source | nytimes | December 4, 2007

Proenza Schouler Interview Katie Grand

We’ve been working with the London-based stylist Katie Grand for about a year. When conceptualizing the collection, we engage in an intense dialogue with Katie that somehow evolves into what you see on the runway. She has been a huge source of inspiration to us, and we find both her work ethic and her creative output fascinating.

Hey, Katie. You seem to break the mold, in that your creative endeavors transcend traditional boundaries. For those who may not know: What exactly do you do?
Errrrrr, it depends on the day of the week. Sometimes I’m a magazine editor — for Pop magazine; sometimes I work with designers, helping them with their collections — yourselves, Giles Deacon and Marc Jacobs at Louis Vuitton; sometimes I’m a shopkeeper, having done retail projects with Gap, Dover Street Market and Selfridges. Who I’m with determines how well behaved or how subservient I am!

Is time management ever a problem for you?
I have a really amazing team at Pop, so the magazine bit is kind of easy — unless we’re in the final stages of production, and then I’m so grateful that I’ve got a BlackBerry. The most depressing time I’ve ever had with time management was during the last Vuitton show, where we were working until 4 a.m., and then I’d have to go back to the hotel to sign off on cromalins for Pop until 5 a.m. every morning. I thought I was going to die of exhaustion. I do love what I do though. The hours can be insane, but it’s not usually depressing.

What is it about fashion that makes you so interested in it?
I like the contrast of working with designers on clothes and bags, and then being able to go and create images with clothes — and to be a bit bossy. (I love working on Pop so I can be in charge!) It’s lovely being able to work on all aspects of fashion. And then adding the retail bit to my CV has been really interesting, too. I’ve just been working with Gap on a project for RED, getting designers to create special limited-edition projects for charity. I loved waking up on Saturday morning and hearing there was a queue around the block for the products and then calling the stores all day for an update on how many each item had sold. I love the idea of people actually buying stuff I’ve been involved with.

How do you find enough creativity for all these projects? Does an idea ever overlap your projects?
Sometimes it’s really difficult when you’re working with one designer and they say, ‘I was thinking about this,’ and then the next day you’re working with another who suggests almost exactly the same thing. You never know whether to say something or not. Experience makes these things easier. You know that even if someone starts on the same path,it’s never going to end up being the same, so better to keep your mouth shut until the last minute, when things are getting too close!

Speaking of creativity, where do you find inspiration? Is it research? Decision-making on the spot? Talk a bit about your process, making an abstract idea into something we see on the pages of a magazine or in a show.
It can come from anywhere. I have a pretty good memory for strange details in films, magazines and clothes. I’m not one of those people that would ever say, ‘I saw this exhibition.’ I’m much more likely to say, ‘You know that scene in “Working Girl”?’ (my favorite film). Or it can even come from pets. I love animals. My team at Pop know that if a shoot is going wrong, all they need to do is get in a dog or a stuffed rabbit — that will always get the thumbs-up. I also have a pretty good archive of clothes. I have kept every piece of clothing I’ve owned since I was 12. Being a complete hoarder, I also have every magazine I have bought since I was 13.

Why did you decide to start your own magazine when there are so many out there? Do you find it necessary to sell magazines by putting celebrities on your covers?
I started my own magazine called Eat Me! when I was still at college with Rankin [photographer] and Jefferson Hack [a magazine editor and publisher]. I then went on to help start up Dazed & Confused, and then at 24 I was the launch editor on Another. For a good portion of my life, I have started magazines. Rankin had a very good mentality, which I always found pretty inspiring: ‘Why would you go and work for someone else doing their thing when you can just do it yourself?’ It’s a really good maxim. And you get to only answer to a publisher — which I love, being an only child!

On Pop I think sometimes we have to put celebrities on the covers, but at other times it feels right to do a very “fashion” issue. Obviously we’ve had amazing sales figures with putting Madonna and Kate Moss on the cover, but we also got equally great sales with Agyness on the cover when she was still pretty much unknown. I love photographing celebrities, though; it’s so interesting to work with someone mega-famous and help make them look completely different and in a way they’ve never been seen.

What’s cool about having your own magazine, we’re assuming, is that you get to work with a variety of people. How do you select the people you are going to be working with? What makes an ideal team?
I love working with inspiring photographers, hair and make-up people, and models. And when you get all the right clothes —the ones that you actually wanted! — it’s amazing. I always feel like a bit of a witch, putting a bit of this and a bit of that into a cauldron, stirring it up, casting a spell, and hoping it’ll all work out magically.

If you weren’t doing what you do now, what could you picture yourself doing?
I’d quite like to work on Hampstead Heath [a London park] tidying up leaves, but that’s only because it’s so beautiful up there at the moment. I’ve also always had a dream about working in Starbucks — just because you wouldn’t get emails at four in the morning canceling shoots. That’s about the only bit I don’t like about my job — when stuff goes wrong.

In terms of fashion, how would you compare working with the English versus the Americans?
Ha! You know my answer to this. Well, I think of you two as being the closest to English people out of any Americans I’ve ever met — along with Louie Chaban from DNA models, whom I had such a riot with last week. Quite often Americans are much stiffer than the English and find it harder to have a laugh, which you guys don’t. I love Italians too, they are crazy — in fact, the craziest. I think in general Americans worry a bit more about what people think, and the English are usually too drunk to care!

 

[softgrey]

i have to agree with her on working with europeans as compared to americans...

this is FASHION...it's good to have a LAUGH!!!......


i love working with the italians and the brits and even the french...
the americans are a bit too uptight for my personal sensibilities...
i am more like a crazy italian...

...

 

[softgrey]

something big is about to happen.
i dont know exactly what is is but the cards are being played

hmmm...sounds juicy!!....

 

[Marnieg]

Katie is in NY
she came to shoot POP magazine with Peter Lindbergh. This will be a great story I am sure !!!!

 

[MissMagAddict]

source | fwd

10 Chic Citizens that Changed 2007: #5 Katie Grand

Why her: The editor-in-chief of Pop magazine, Harper’s Bazaar contributor, and consultant and stylist for the likes of Prada, Miu Miu, Giles, Proenza Schouler, Luella Bartley, and Louis Vuitton has had a whirlwind year that’s flung her into fashion’s forefront. She was named creative director of Mulberry in August, set to replace Stuart Vevers who’s leaving to helm Loewe–and she turned down the position before even starting the job. In addition, Grand was tapped as curator of a Product (RED) project for Gap in Europe, in honor of World AIDS Day. She’s also BFF with a veritable who’s who on the British fashion circuit: Agyness, Giles, Luella…

Our favorite moments: Every time she wears those Mickey Mouse ears. We’re also obsessed with her Gap pieces–Grand worked with the likes of Proenza Schouler, Giles, Pierre Hardy, Henry Holland, Charlotte Tilbury, Calvin Klein, Stephen Jones, and Mulberry to create a collection of super stylish, wearable, and coveted pieces that we’ve been begging friends across the Atlantic to snag up for us.

What’s next: Although Grand turned down creative directorship of Mulberry, she will be staying on as a creative consultant for the brand. Also, stay tuned for more of her styling prowess to show up on catwalks this February!

 

[kasper!]

from hint fashion magazine

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica][SIZE=-1]She helms the British style ship known simply as Pop magazine—among styling for oodles of other titles and consulting for the Prada, Miu Miu and Louis Vuitton shows each season—but Katie Grand keeps her feet planted firmly on the ground. Unaffected and easy-going, she sits down (on the floor, no less) with MURRAY HEALY and opens up about the things that drive her, from silly English soaps to a serious aversion to anything "wanky."

[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Arial,Helvetica][SIZE=-1]Interviewing someone is weird enough at the best of times—firing questions at a famous stranger with the kind of abandon usually only enjoyed by cops or psychoanalysts—but when that someone isn't a stranger at all, it feels even weirder, as I'm about to find out. I've been working with Katie Grand on Pop, her twice-yearly fashion magazine, for the past four years, but now my task is to interview her. Off the top of my head, there are all sorts of office trivia I could write about, such as her catch phrases—things she likes are "fun," "jolly" and "marvellous," while things she doesn't like are "dreary." She enjoys a long swim every morning. She's just had the walls of her North London home decorated with William Morris wallpaper. She's discovered the world's greatest moth-buster, which helps keep away unwanted visitors from her vast collection of vintage designer clothes, pieces from which she often wears to the office—an early Westwood jacket with embroidered lapels, say, or a billowing black 80's Comme dress, or a smart Chanel suit jacket with faded jeans. But to get the kind of information one would expect from an interview—where she was born, why she loves fashion so much and how she became (in the words of The Daily Telegraph, a terribly respectable British newspaper not given to hyperbole) "one of the most powerful stylists in the world"—requires a tête-à-tête.

[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Arial,Helvetica][SIZE=-1]Finding time to sit down with Katie isn't easy. Ironically, after spending the last six weeks chained to our desks finishing off the latest issue of Pop, she's now impossible to pin down, endlessly zipping between jobs and capital cities. Eventually she finds a gap between helping to prepare Giles Deacon's show for London Fashion Week and styling the cover of Arena Homme +, so we sit cross-legged on the floor of the empty office where The Face (RIP) used to be based. She's always brimming with energy and ideas, and this almost child-like alertness and curiosity shows on her face. I begin firing off questions which make her laugh at first, because they're not the kind of things one asks a friend.

[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Arial,Helvetica][SIZE=-1]Katie was born in Leeds, which I didn't know, and grew up in Birmingham—which I did, because when I first knew her she would occasionally slip into the local accent for comic effect—where she discovered fashion at the age of twelve. "I was really nerdy. And then, kind of overnight, I can clearly remember thinking, 'I just want to be cool.' Around that time, my dad's girlfriend moved up from London and I thought she was terribly chic. She always used to wear Warehouse, which had just opened and was really good, because Jeff Banks was still in charge. So there are photos of me aged twelve wearing waist-high tight red jeans with a puffed-sleeved blue sweater and awful hair, and then aged thirteen in an ankle-length black gathered skirt, white shirt tucked in, braces (suspenders), a black tie, black lace tights, navy blue stilettos and a black beret with a veil. So it was quite quick! And I really got into going to London and going to the Great Gear Market and all that kind of thing."

[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Arial,Helvetica][SIZE=-1]Academically she was a bright spark, excelling at math, history and English—but not at art, which was unfortunate, because "around fifteen I decided that I wanted to do something in art or fashion." So while studying for her O-levels (exams) she took night classes at the local college to get her design skills up to speed: "sculpture, life drawing, jewellery making, even pottery, because I really wasn't very good." It was only during her foundation course at Birmingham's Bournville College of Art that her design skills blossomed. "I was student of the year and got 96 percent!" So getting into St Martins, London's formidably prestigious design school, didn't prove a major hurdle, although once there she found it hard to settle on a single subject on her degree course. "I tried design, marketing, journalism, knitwear�and ended up doing print, which I still find weird."

[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Arial,Helvetica][SIZE=-1]It was while she was studying there that she became involved with the recently launched style mag Dazed & Confused, after getting drunk with co-founder Rankin at the opening night of his exhibition Hello Sexy And Welcome in 1993. She helped assemble issue two (as in physically putting the pages together and folding them), and by issue three she had already overturned the magazine's no-fashion policy and started styling shoots.
She remained at Dazed for the remainder of the 90s, where her work was essential in establishing the magazine's fashion credentials. "Brilliant" is how she remembers those days. "Whatever you wanted to do, you just did it. No one could tell you what to do—although you had to argue for what you believed in." But a potent combination of self-consciously talented and artistically ambitious staff, creative freedom and monthly deadlines rarely made for a harmonious working atmosphere. "I ended up going out with Rankin, which was kind of a nightmare, and after we split up it was really difficult working together because we're both quite bullish. And I never had much of a relationship with Jefferson (Hack, the editor). But working with those two was hilarious—every other day would be a screaming row, with stuff being thrown round the office—really juvenile. It wasn't entirely different from being at St Martins, in fact."

[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Arial,Helvetica][SIZE=-1]It didn't help when Katie started styling shoots for The Face, the style title for whose throne Dazed appeared to be vying—even promoting itself as The Face Of The Nineties—and its biannual menswear stablemate Arena Homme +. When the owners of The Face and Homme + sold them to the publishing conglomerate Emap, Katie was invited to take on an official position within the new set-up, becoming fashion director of The Face and editor-in-chief of an as-yet unnamed new title. "The new directors were looking at launching a twice-yearly version of The Face in the same way that Homme + had sprung from Arena." She put off the painful job of breaking the news of her new job to the Dazed team until moments before her first Face cover shoot—a portait of the model Guinevere looking hoity-toity in a leather collar and a holding white cat—hit the newsstands in August 1999. "Well, it was a really, really hard thing to do."[/SIZE][/FONT]

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[FONT=Arial,Helvetica][SIZE=-1]The new title that Katie, now 33, was brought in to oversee as editor in chief became Pop, launched a year later. "I don't think Emap really knew what it was going to be. I'm not sure that I did either. I just wanted it to be really jolly. And pink—I was obsessed with it being pink. Which I think it kind of is." The very pink fold-out cover famously featured various friends of Katie's, designers Stella McCartney, Phoebe Philo, Luella Bartley and model Liberty Ross among them, poledancing in a dodgy-looking nightspot. "Yes, I suppose the first one was very clique-y. But it's definitely very jolly. I remember when it came back from the printers, I thought it was the best thing ever."

[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Arial,Helvetica][SIZE=-1]The closest that first issue came to celebrity was a small article featuring Tony Hart, the retired presenter of a kids' art series on TV in the Seventies. It's a very different situation now, nine issues later, with Madonna, Kylie, Liz Hurley, Demi Moore, Beyoncé, Victoria Beckham and Christina Ricci all having appeared on the cover, and the British press crediting the magazine's front page with the power to revive high-profile careers. "I don't think it was until issue four, the one with Madonna on the cover, that we really worked out what the magazine was about. But now I get nervous when it comes back from the printers, because so much expectation has built up about it. Everyone's got their 'Ooh, it's not as good as issue six' or whatever."

[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Arial,Helvetica][SIZE=-1]If the magazine's profile has increased, so has Katie's. Successfully restyling such universally recognizable faces has led the British press to dub her "the maverick princess of cool." A year ago, the London Evening Standard even claimed that "What Katie does—and Katie says—is as influential as it gets," which might have sounded like overstatement. However, it was borne out in August of this year, when an off-the-cuff remark in an interview in the US made front-page news back in London. "That was very weird. It all started when someone rang up from New York Magazine and said, 'What were you feeling for next season?' And as they'd been interviewing lots of proper magazine editors who were probably talking about, I don't know, leopard print or short skirts or a longer length, I thought it'd be funny to say Sixties Coronation Street [a British soap that's been running for 40-odd years]. Which was kind of true, actually, because I'd been watching old clips of Elsie Tanner [principal character from the original cast and man-eater to boot] on TV that weekend." It quickly grew into an obsession. In fact, Katie rallied her assistants to scour the Internet for tapes of Sixties Corrie featuring Elsie.

[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Arial,Helvetica][SIZE=-1]A New York correspondent for a British daily read the piece and 'Elsie Tanner chic' quickly became big news in Britain. "I was very surprised how that blew up. It was obviously a very slow news week." Nevertheless, there's a small piece explaining Elsie Tanner's relevance to the immediate future of fashion in the latest issue of Pop.

[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Arial,Helvetica][SIZE=-1]There's one question in particular—"What happens on a fashion shoot?"—which sends Katie into a fit of snickering, probably because it's such a dumb question. Of course, I know what happens on a fundamental level, but I'm interested in how she does it. I suppose I want to know about the magic—why one shot in a story just works when another similar one doesn't. Although I don't actually use the word 'magic,' of course, as she hates anything carrying so much as a whiff of pretension (she won't even watch films with English subtitles).

[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Arial,Helvetica][SIZE=-1]"Well," she starts, hesitantly, concerned about saying anything that might sound "wanky," as she puts it, "lots of stylists work from the clothes, and then have an idea about the shoot. Whereas I think of a reference—photography, art�" [/SIZE][/FONT]
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[FONT=Arial,Helvetica][SIZE=-1]Or Elsie Tanner?[/SIZE][/FONT]


[FONT=Arial,Helvetica][SIZE=-1]"Yes! Or Miss Marple! [The septuagenarian sleuth's dress sense was an influence Katie brought to the putting together of Miu Miu's autumn/winter 2004 collection.] Yeah, I'd probably start with a character, and then work out what the clothes are." Katie's assistant will call in the clothes, from which she'll make her selection, adding some of her own vintage items from home. "And then you turn up at the studio, your assistant turns up with all the trunks, and you sit around and drink tea for about five hours. If you don't get anything shot before two o'clock, it's never a problem. In fact, I wouldn't expect to get anything shot before lunch on the third day."

[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Arial,Helvetica][SIZE=-1]The best bit of the process, she says, is looking at the first set of Polaroid tests and discovering that the ideas are working. The worst is the very first bit, when the models try on the clothes before their hair and make-up are done, so that the photographer, hair stylist and make-up artist can see what the shoot's going to be about. "Everyone stands around and has an opinion about the clothes, which is really difficult. I feel like I'm being scrutinized and get really defensive." But it's vital for the other creatives on the shoot, giving them their cues. "And good fashion photographers are so experienced, if they can't get inspired about the clothes then they find it really difficult to photograph."

[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Arial,Helvetica][SIZE=-1]There's a similar stage of stomach-churning exposure when she's acting as a consultant for the shows—currently for Louis Vuitton menswear, Prada and Miu Miu. "You'll have the whole design team there, and the creative director and the director of the whole company, all there watching you perform as you show your ideas. It's a bit like being Tommy Cooper!' [For the non-Brits, Tommy Cooper was a very famous, slightly eccentric stand-up comedian and magician who, tragically, suffered a fatal heart attack on stage during a live televised show, upon which the audience laughed politely, thinking it was part of the act.]

[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Arial,Helvetica][SIZE=-1]Consulting for fashion houses seems a curiously nebulous, shadowy business for anyone not directly involved. Katie has no official title at either of the houses for whom she currently works, and some that she's worked for previously she's not allowed to talk about in interviews, a common restriction for freelance consultants. So what exactly does she do?

[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Arial,Helvetica][SIZE=-1]Her input for the runway shows for both the Prada and Louis Vuitton houses differs according to the character of the houses themselves, Katie says. "At Vuitton it's very organized. You have the clothes six days before the show, and your job is a matter of putting them together and working with Marc [Jacobs] and their design team to make sure they like how it's put together." The process at Prada, on the other hand, she finds far harder to describe. "Mrs. (Miuccia) Prada works in a particularly unique way where the show evolves very late in the day. You're probably not working with actual garments until the night before the show, because she really believes that fashion is about what's happening now rather than yesterday. And that's very exciting to be around. She likes working out what the look is, and then the clothes evolve from that. She works on absolutely every part of the process, and all you're there to do, really, is facilitate what she wants.'

[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Arial,Helvetica][SIZE=-1]So what is it that Katie brings to Prada and Vuitton, and that makes her own work so shiny and glamorous, and yet so substantial at the same time? Is it a certain sensibility, a trademark aesthetic?

[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Arial,Helvetica][SIZE=-1]"Um�," she says, taking her time with this one. "Oh God, I don't know how this is going to sound. Without sounding wanky, um, I really understand fashion and the history of fashion and craftsmanship, and appreciate the amazing things people have done with clothes. And there are certainly a lot of stylists out there who don't really know much about� much, really." Another pause. "But I did design and fashion at school, and read magazines for years, and bought clothes for years, and I suppose there's a proper fashion history education there that not everyone has. I suppose it helps when you're a client and you're trying to explain, I don't know, a dress from 1917. I know what that means, and I'm not sure that everyone else does."[/SIZE][/FONT]

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