Racked Bookshelf: Grace Coddington's Catwalk Cats

Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here.

Need something to read on the subway en route to the next sale? In Racked Bookshelf, we pull new titles in fashion and design to see what's worthy of the printed page.

It's not new, in fact, its in its seventh printing—but Grace Coddington's The Catwalk Cats just keeps popping up. Maybe it was just a reason to drum up some holiday season sales, but Coddington recently appeared at Clic and signed copies for adoring fans. Pair that with the newest trend in fashion—cats—and we couldn't not take a closer look at the charming, Coddington-illustrated gift book and post a short review.

What can we say—it's a little silly; it's definitely for cat people (maybe even more than it is for fashion people). The book opens with a Sally Singer (as Coddington cat Puff) introduction before a charming, captioned photo gallery of Coddington and partner Didier Malige's children—er, cats. The photos are black and white, adorable, a little grainy, and all by Malige. The gallery is followed by a very loose graphic narrative detailing a year in the life of the family crew of five cats via Coddington's pretty adorable ink illustrations and hand-written text.

These cats walk the runway for Karl Lagerfeld, pose for Arthur Elgort, are feted by Rei Kawakubo, sit front row with Anna Wintour, Isabella Blow, and André Leon Talley, and even win Oscars—just like us! It isn't all flash bulbs, glitz, and golden statuettes, however—the Coddington cats deal with racism, weight problems, and drug addiction. Life is hard.

Retailing for $32, copies on Amazon are currently starting at a mere $9.78. A pittance considering the priceless chance to make every weird cat nerd on your holiday shopping list feel cool for about three minutes!
· Grace Coddington Brings Her Catwalk Cats to Clic [Racked]
· RackedWire: Grace Coddington Predicted Fashion's Cat Fixation [Racked]
· The Catwalk Cats [Amazon]