I spent this Sunday afternoon sitting on the floor with my legs curled under me at my parent’s painfully low set family room table (a blessedly short-lived foray into Asian style home décor). I was making Seder puzzle pieces out of poster board and watching The September Issue.

As I agonized over how to depict--in the most child friendly way-- the Ten Plagues, my kitchen-addled brain slowly registered how much I like Grace Coddington. Of course I knew from the outset that I would love watching Anna Wintour edit the living shit out of Vogue’s 2007 September issue. The ever poised Ms. Wintour, hovering at just half a decibel below bitchy, did not disappoint. But Grace Coddington, of whom I knew nothing, was completely entrancing.

Let me begin, please, with exhibit A: the hair. Oh the hair! Unbelievably long and as orange as a creamsicle. Grace Coddington’s hair is the perfect frizzy foil to Anna Wintour’s smoothed bob. It trails behind her in a frenzy through the offices of American Vogue, everywhere making a mockery of Ms. Wintour’s tightly-held leaky red pen.

Her unabashedly ornate photo spreads are full of little fuzzy dogs and severe black wigs, leaping models and pot bellied photographers caught in front of the camera. One gets the sense that this very serious woman has, deep down, a fully intact sense of play and a refreshingly childlike approach to revealing the artistry in fashion.

In the immortal words of Liz Lemon; I want to go to there.

There is something so satisfying about allowing the imagination to wander where it desires. Sometimes, I will admit, I spend hours fantasizing about outfits. I will hook into the stationary bike in our workout room, and as my little legs spin furiously against the wheel’s resistance, I let my mind drift to…oh…let’s say the upcoming all class reunion at my high school.

I will naturally be having a great hair day. My lazy waves will swish against my back as I walk through the old halls in a ridiculous pair of nude patent leather high heeled pumps. I will be wearing a dove gray rouched pencil skirt paired with an impossibly delicate, nude lace blouse with flutter sleeves and a bow at the waist. And the kicker? A royal blue clutch purse; the iris in a field of wheat. Minimal makeup will surely convince people that I barely made an effort to pull myself together. Anyone I ever had a crush on will be quietly and unshakably wowed. The diamonds on my left hand will sparkle greatly, as will the very handsome husband on my arm.

Grandiose, I know. But this is where my mind goes.

And I feel strange about revealing this because it seems both so private and so vain. And if you see me, you’ll think that spacey look in my eyes means I am in the process of envisioning myself sitting on a white cloud, wrapped in Hermes scarves (really, I’m just spacey…a product of ever present diffuse anxiety mixed with ever present sleepiness). But to my surprise, I am going to let you know this about myself. I like to picture what I will wear on any given occasion. It helps me feel like I can walk into a room and not completely implode under the weight of my insecurity. And there is the other thing; the delicious feeling of granting yourself a little vanity. I hope you do it too. I’d like to think that my very hard working mother with a PhD in education spends a little time during the day just thinking about how luminous she is. Because she is luminous. And I’d like to think that my incredible Maid of Honor has started to realize how captivating she will look at the wedding in her chocolate brown pencil dress. I just have the nagging feeling that this stuff isn’t so trivial.

So I will continue to let myself play. To think of that orange haired terror of Vogue Magazine, and the very intelligent mentor who reminded her to always keep her eyes open to the world and its brilliant, fantastical beauty.