A Strange Time For Fashion | Uncensored with Michael Ware

NARRATOR: From Welsh girl from an unknown fly speck of an island to supermodel. Darling, hello. I'm Michael. You look like you're in hell. I'm sorry. You can see it in your eyes, darling. And [inaudible] a camera. [inaudible] Hold it, let me drag you away.

NARRATOR: In the end, a defining cultural icon of our times. As ageless art director of American "Vogue," she is fashion's version of a literary giant. I've got to admit, I've had some butterflies about all of this.

Oh, no. You mean about fashion generally. Well, that's a separate issue. No, I'm talking about meeting Grace Coddington, because it's like meeting any great leader in their field.

Hey, it's like--

• Oh, no.

NARRATOR: --when I meet one of the great Taliban--

No, no, no, I'm not that. When I meet a great Taliban commander, I get a little bit nervous--

• Well--

--or a four-star general.

--yeah, I would be too. It's the same. You know, I mean, you are Grace Coddington. I mean, how do you carry that? Forget "Vogue" and forget--

Don't ask me questions like that. [inaudible]

Well, tell me about fashion, all right? I'm a stranger in a strange land. I've been here a week. I think I know less than when I arrived.

Probably, yeah. It's confusing. Does any of this thing have any meaning? I think we're all more lost than we were before. We're at a very strange moment in fashion at the moment.

Has fashion ever been under such assault, if I may use that word, before? Because it's coming from you and me--

I think every so often it is, and it does, and one has to ask the question. I can't remember it being in such a kind of strange place.

And it's a cultural thing. It's not just the fashion thing. So all this is happening, because of all the different things that are happening in the world.

To wear clothes that are extreme and very fashiony doesn't feel right now, because it's not that moment in the political situation or the cultural situation. Obviously, it affects fashion.

It does. Fashion's not like a little island.

Well, this is precisely one of the burning questions I've had is about that interface between history or culture and fashion.

Right now we live in a relatively dark political age--

Yeah.

--where Paris can blow up at any moment, Brussels can blow up at any moment. Fashion can offer us an escape or it can offer us an expression of that mood or it can offer us--

It should offer all those things.

--a reflection.

Yeah.

And it does. It does?

And what we're seeing now is exactly that. It's a reflection of all the insecurities and the darkness and all those different things that you mentioned.

You really think it is, yeah?

Yeah, I do. I do. Because that's been a little pet theory.

As an outsider, it's nothing.

No, you get it, even though you're not really a fashion person, you know.

Don't you love the way she looked at me when she said that?

Oh, my god.