LONDON.- Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World at the National Portrait Gallery is the first exhibition to exclusively explore Beaton’s pioneering contributions to fashion photography.

From Hollywood stars and titans of art, to high society and royalty, the exhibition features 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.

The exhibition is curated by photographic historian and Contributing Editor to Vogue, Robin Muir.

Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World (9 October 2025 - 11 January 2026) at the National Portrait Gallery is the first major exhibition to spotlight the renowned twentieth century photographer’s trailblazing fashion photography, the core of his illustrious career which laid the foundation for his later successes. Often highlighted, but rarely examined in detail, the exhibition – curated by Vogue contributing editor Robin Muir – explores Beaton’s contribution to fashion, charting his meteoric rise and distinguished legacy. The exhibition celebrates how his signature artistic style – a marriage of Edwardian stage glamour and the elegance of a new age – revitalised and revolutionised fashion photography and led him to the pinnacles of creative achievement.

Renowned as a photographer, Beaton was also a fashion illustrator, Oscar-winning costume designer, social caricaturist and perceptive writer. ‘The King of Vogue’ – was an extraordinary force in the twentieth century British and American creative scenes. Elevating fashion and portrait photography to an art form, his era-defining photographs captured the beauty, glamour and star power in the interwar and early post-war eras.

With around 250 items displayed, including photographs, letters, sketches and costumes, the exhibition showcases Beaton at his most triumphant.

Through several interwoven themes, the world of Cecil Beaton is examined in detail. The exhibition follows Beaton’s career from its inception, as a child of the Edwardian era experimenting with his first camera on his earliest subjects, his two sisters and mother (c. 1910), his years of invention and creativity as a student at Cambridge University, to his first images of the high society patrons who put him on the map. Including Stephen Tennant and the Sitwell siblings.

The exhibition journeys through the London of the 1920s and 1930s, the era of the ‘Bright Young Things’ and Beaton’s first commissions for this greatest patron, Vogue, to his travels to New York and Paris in the Jazz Age. Drawn to its glamour and star wattage, Beaton photographed the legends of Hollywood in its Golden Age.

Cecil Beaton’s first royal photographs appeared in the late 1930s. As the Second World War loomed, he defined the notion of the monarchy for a modern age. Appointed an official war photographer by the Ministry of Information, his wartime service took him around the globe.

The war’s end ushered in a new era of elegance and Beaton captured the high fashion brilliance of the 1950s in vivid, glorious colour. The exhibition ends with what many consider his greatest triumph and by which he is likely best known: the costumes and sets for the musical My Fair Lady, on stage and later on screen.

Almost entirely self-taught, Beaton established a singular photographic style; a marriage of Edwardian stage portraiture, emerging European surrealism and the modernist approach of the great American photographers of the era, all filtered through a determinedly English sensibility.

“Cecil Beaton needs little introduction as a photographer, fashion illustrator, triple Oscar-winning costume designer, social caricaturist, elegant writer of essays and occasionally waspish diaries, stylist, decorator, dandy and party goer. Beaton’s impact spans the worlds of fashion, photography and design. Unquestionably one of the leading visionary forces of the British twentieth century, he also made a lasting contribution to the artistic lives of New York, Paris and Hollywood. It’s a delight to return to the National Portrait Gallery with this exhibition.” --- Robin Muir Exhibition curator