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.
Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World is the first exhibition dedicated solely to Beaton’s ground-breaking contributions to fashion and portrait photography. The exhibition will showcase 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 will feature portraits of some of the twentieth 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.
Lead image:
1. Princess Emeline De Broglie, 1928, Gelatin silver print, The Cecil Beaton Studio Archive, London
2. Cecil Beaton, c.1935, Gelatin silver print, The Cecil Beaton Studio Archive, London
3. Audrey Hepburn in costume for My Fair Lady, 1963. Original colour transparency. The Cecil Beaton Archive, London.
| Duration | 08 October 2025 - 11 January 2026 |
| Times | Open daily: 10.30 – 18.00 Friday & Saturday: 10.30 – 21.00 |
| Cost | £23 / 25.50 with donation |
| Venue | National Portrait Gallery |
| Address | St Martin's Place, London, WC2H 0HE |
| Contact | / archiveenquiry@npg.org.uk / www.npg.org.uk |