- LONDON (UK)
Exhibition: Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World
Cecil Beaton – ‘The King of Vogue’ – 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, Beaton elevated fashion and portrait photography into an art form.
National Portrait Gallery presents “Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World” as the first exhibition dedicated solely to Beaton’s ground-breaking contributions to fashion and portrait photography. The exhibition showcases Beaton at his most triumphant – from the Jazz Age and the Bright Young Things, to the high fashion brilliance of the fifties and the glittering, Oscar-winning success of My 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.
With over 200 items displayed, including photographs, letters, portrait sketches, fashion illustration and costume, Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World features portraits of some of the 20th century’s 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 Dalí.
October 9, 2025 – January 11, 2026
