"With my original eyebrows in a picture taken on winning the British Vogue model competition. Photo: Norman Parkinson, 1959. Copyright Norman Parkinson Limited/ Courtesy Norman Parkinson Archive

On modeling [in which we learn that Coddington once had brows to rival Cara Delevingne's...until Eileen Ford destroyed them]:

When I entered the room, the first thing she wanted to know was why I didn’t possess a waist cinder (a wide elasticized belt), followed by the whereabouts of my sweater bra, which is a bra without seams to keep a cleaner line under your clothes. She then told me she didn’t think I had what it took to be a successful runway model anyway. To see if I could possibly look any better in fashion photos, she personally came at me with a pair of tweezers and plucked my eyebrows (they used to be dramatically heavy) into a thin arch–only to afterward declare me unfit material for fashion photographs as well. For goodness’ sake, I was five feet nine with an eighteen-inch waist, thirty-three-inch bust and hips, and long legs–and Vogue loved me. How bad could I honestly be?