norman lebrecht<\/p>\n
October 18, 2025<\/p>\n
To quote Noel Coward, I\u2019ve been to a maaahvelous party. Not actually a gathering but an exhibition of photographs, paintings and designs by the arch-society photographer and designer, Cecil Beaton. What a treat. In the 20s and 30s, he photographed everybody, Bright Young Things, debutantes and royalty, then travelled to Paris and New York for the fashions and to Hollywood for the stars.<\/p>\n
Cecil Beaton \u201cThe King of Vogue\u201d was an extraordinary force in the 20th-century British and American creative scenes. Renowned as a fashion illustrator, Oscar-winning costume designer, social caricaturist and writer, he elevated fashion and portrait photography into an art form. The new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery spotlights Beaton\u2019s ground-breaking fashion work, a pivotal aspect of his career that laid the foundation for his later successes.<\/p>\n
Here is Beaton at his most triumphant \u2013 from the Jazz Age to the high fashion brilliance of the fifties and the glittering, Oscar-winning success of My Fair Lady.<\/p>\n
Via London, Paris, New York and Hollywood, his era-defining photographs captured beauty, glamour, and star power in the interwar and early post-war eras.<\/p>\n
In addition to the photographs, letters, portrait sketches, fashion illustration and costume, Cecil Beaton\u2019s Fashionable World features portraits of some of the twentieth century\u2019s most iconic figures, including Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando; Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret; as well as Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon and Salvador Dal\u00ed.<\/p>\n
But Cecil Beaton, despite his effete public presentation, and highpitched upper-class voice, was much more than a hanger-on in high society. In a way, he could be said to have invented the society of his time or, at least, Society with a capital S.
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In this BBC documenatry, made in his lifetime, the middle-class boy from North London is revealed as the decorative genius of his time and a man for whom the surface was everything. But what a surface it was. This exhibition, at the National Portrait Gallery, and this documentary, Behind The Glitter, reveals it.<\/p>\n
Here is Beaton at his most triumphant \u2013 from the Jazz Age to the high fashion brilliance of the fifties and the glittering, Oscar-winning success of\u00a0My Fair Lady. Via London, Paris, New York and Hollywood, his era-defining photographs captured beauty, glamour, and star power in the interwar and early post-war eras.<\/p>\n