What Katie Grand did next
Influential editor, stylist, and now orchestrater of a London fashion week casting coup. Is there anything Katie Grand can't turn to gold?
If there is one thing Katie Grand knows about, it is twisting convention. She also has the contacts to call in a few celebrity friends when she needs them. So when a pregnant Abbey Clancy, girlfriend of England footballer Peter Crouch and one half of a media storm, appeared on the catwalk for Giles Deacon at London fashion week, alongside actress Kelly Brook, all eyes turned to Grand. She had chosen the models for Deacon; and it was Grand who whisked Kerry Katona, Cinderella-style, from the Iceland adverts to a front row seat at the show. Result: a lot of headlines, and a few raised eyebrows in the fashion world.
Clancy, Brook and Katona have all been photographed for Love, the magazine of which Grand is editor-in-chief. None are obvious icons of high-fashion, and Clancy's gratitude is clear. "People always had me pigeon-holed and then Katie styled me in a way no one had seen before," she says. For her part, Grand, now in Italy for Milan fashion week, says, "Just because they haven't had the typical 'cool model' career path it doesn't mean they're any less valid than someone like Agyness [Deyn]."
Grand seems to have a magpie-like eye, always looking for something shiny and new. In April she was having dinner with friends and Katona was at the next table. "We couldn't stop staring at her, saying 'Oh my god, she's gorgeous'," says Grand. "I thought, 'Should we do something on her for the magazine?' It was as straightforward as that."
Yet Grand's influence is so forcible, she can take anything, or anyone, and make them interesting to a different audience. "Sometimes I think it's good to not be as highbrow," she says. "Often fashion is quite lofty. It's good to use different people."
If Grand, who is married to Pulp's bassist Steve Mackey, has a talent beyond her creative eye, it is in wriggling her way into the action, cultivating long-standing friendships and building connections with influential people. Her friends include Stella McCartney, Marc Jacobs, Luella Bartley, Agyness Deyn and Victoria Beckham, and her long-standing relationship with Deacon – first as his girlfriend, now as a collaborator – has changed both their fortunes.
In the late 90s, Bottega Veneta, the ailing Italian fashion label, asked Grand to transform its image - her big commercial break (since then she has worked with a huge range of labels from TopShop to Louis Vuitton). She encouraged them to hire Deacon to design their collection and in that one season turned the brand around. This year, the troubled French fashion house Emanuel Ungaro announced Deacon would be its creative director, and he is taking Grand with him.
Clearly a taste-maker, she is something of a contradiction: undoubtedly cliquey, yet with a reputation for being down-to-earth and unaffected. "She has never been one to feel the need to conform; she simply follows her instinct," says Victoria Beckham. "She has an incredible energy, and an addictive personality that can even make a moody b*tch laugh."
But could this be a case of the fashion empress's new clothes? After all, in 2004, a journalist from New York magazine asked Grand about her current inspirations. Off the top of her head, she said 60s Coronation Street, because she had been watching old episodes that weekend. Just like that, the Elsie Tanner look took off.
Grand grew up in Birmingham – she has never lost traces of her accent – the only child of a cancer research scientist and a teacher. Her parents separated when she was seven, and she lived with her father. She has described herself as a nerdy child, but she studied at Central St Martin's, became friends with McCartney and Deacon, and dropped out after the photographer Rankin asked her to help with the launch of Dazed and Confused. Grand stayed there as fashion director for the rest of the 90s, with Rankin and Jefferson Hack – perfectly placed to document the explosion of British art, music and design.
Grand launched a new title, Pop, in 2000, and by issue four bagged Madonna for the cover – a simple question of getting McCartney to call her and ask. Suddenly a fashion magazine, with an influence way beyond the 80,000 copies it sold, had a run of covers including Beyonce, Victoria Beckham and Kylie.
"Pop was the only fashion magazine we admired that wasn't already published by us," says Nicholas Coleridge, the managing director of Condé Nast. "We thought it was very good, and we thought Katie was the reason it was very good. So we tried to buy it, but they didn't want to sell. During that time, [Katie and I] started flirting professionally. If we couldn't buy it, what if she started a magazine for us?"
It was a sign of the loyalty Grand inspires that her entire team followed her to launch Love in February last year, a bi-annual magazine that has become every bit as influential as Pop. "Because she is famous as a stylist and as somebody cool, people assume she's going to be a diva and tricky but that isn't the case," says Coleridge. "She's very easy, responsible and commercial as well. And she's good fun. She has already sent me three very gossipy texts from Milan and it's only 4 o'clock."
Why does she have such an influence? "She's brilliant at enthusing people", he says. "Great photographers want to work with her because she has a good eye and she takes risks." She has become perhaps the most sought-after stylist in the world, but she plays this down. "The clients that I work with I have been with for years. We've built trusting relationships, and when you have that, you can be brave with what you do," she says. "It's not like I come along and wave a magic wand."
