Morning:
9°c
In the days before London Fashion Week, a new magazine lands on my desk. I barely look up from my egg sandwich. But what do we have here? Duffy looking like a gritty Welsh truck driver. Kate Moss sans make-up. And a naked Beth Ditto, all voluputous, marshmallow flesh and tangerine hair.
In a fashion firmament that worships size zero, who would dare to rebel against images of Botoxed perfection? Stand up maverick stylist Katie Grand, editor of the new fashion magazine, Love. In the corridors of Condé Nast it is whispered that only Grand could put a plus-size lesbian on the cover - and still pull in the high-end advertising. Not to mention a Bruce Weber shoot with Iggy Pop and intimate portraits of Anjelica Huston.
But who is Ms Grand? Recently poached from her own title, Pop, Grand is widely regarded as the queen of "anti-fashion". Where most fashion mavens are impossibly groomed, Grand, 38, often looks shy of a hairbrush. With her wonky fringe, gappy teeth, unmade-up face and penchant for huge bows, she is part urchin, part grande dame.
As a stylist she perfected the impossible act of marrying street style with couture. As an editor she published images of Alisters such as Madonna, Drew Barrymore and Liz Hurley (whom she put in six-inch fetish shoes weeks after the birth of her son). In Love, her editor's letter is virtually a feminist call for arms. "No one is a sample size in the whole issue, and it's not so retouched," she boasts.
Growing up in Birmingham (she still speaks with a slight accent) she was no fashion victim. She failed her 11-plus. Her parents divorced when she was seven. Her obsession with style started when she was ill in bed aged 12 and her scientist father brought her Vogue to read.
Today she is the most influential woman in Brit fashion - and one of the best connected. She is the stylist who has finessed the collections of Miuccia Prada and Marc Jacobs for the catwalk. Before Pop, she worked on Dazed & Confused and The Face. Her inner circle includes actors, rock stars, models. She dated Rankin and Giles Deacon (she still styles his fashion shows) and her longtime boyfriend is Steve Mackey of Pulp.
Though her image is carefully understated she is actually a fashion obsessive. She admits having 1,500 pairs of shoes and keeps all the clothes she has ever owned in alphabetical order - A for Alaïa, B for Balenciaga. And she earns a lot (her friends call her "Katie-Grand-A-Minute"). But don't envy her too much. She battled an eating disorder in her teens and twenties and drank too much. She puts her excess creativity down to giving up alcohol in her thirties - and finding she had more hours to fill.
Love (£5) weighs a ton. The typography is impossible if you're over 40. I'd probably never wear a thing in it. But finally I have found the magazine for me.
Grand's own motto is: "Love the imperfect. You know it makes sense." In a world where yesteryear's expensive gloss suddenly seems tarnished, Katie Grand's uncynical vision makes perfect sense.
