Good fashion books are few and far between. Sure, there are loads of gorgeous monographs out there, but those are bound for coffee tables, not your tablet buddy that you can cozy up with.

A rare text-based fashion tome, the new memoir from Vogue’s creative director Grace Coddington—the manuscript for which she lugged around during Fashion Week, proofing between shows—is slated for a November 20 release. Graciously, Vogue has included a smattering of quirky excerpts in its new November issue, as well as here.

Thank goodness some people have good memories, because the level of detail is phenomenal, like this recollection: “Catherine Deneuve and her sister Françoise Dorléac were the only ones I ever saw actually wearing the hard-edged space-age clothes of Courrèges and Paco Rabanne and looking completely at ease and relaxed. Except perhaps the evening when Catherine was sitting enjoying herself with Bailey, Albert, and me in the club Régine’s and the waiter spilled an entire bottle of red wine over her new white sculpted Courrèges couture shift that must have cost thousands of francs.”