Grace Coddington, the creative visionary and stylist of American Vogue for the last 28 years, announced she is stepping down from her post, effective immediately. She will assume the role of creative director at large and will begin to take on additional projects outside the publication.
Business of Fashion broke the news on Wednesday. Coddington told the publication, “I’m not running away from Vogue, because it has opened so many doors. But it will be nice to collaborate, and nice to go out [and] give talks to people. It’s just another approach. I’m certainly not going into retirement. I don’t want to sit around.”
Coddington will continue to keep an office at Vogue’s headquarters at One World Trade Center. She is contracted to produce four more fashion spreads for the magazine this year.
Most Millennials have never flipped through an issue of Vogue that wasn’t influenced by Coddington. In recent years, she gained celebrity status as the breakout star of the 2009 documentary The September Issue, which chronicled her tepid relationship with Vogue editor Anna Wintour. In 2012, Coddington released a successful memoir, Grace, which was followed up last year with the reissuing of Grace: Thirty Years of Fashion At Vogue, a book of her most memorable editorial shoots. The book was first published in 2002.