Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World ★★★★ National Portrait Gallery | Oct 9, 2025 - Jan 11, 2026


Fashion, photography and fantasy converge in the fabulous life of Cecil Beaton. This must-see exhibition traces the life and career of the style-setting celebrity creator and self-promoter who defined the 'Bright Young Things' of the 1920s and who ended up winning two Academy Awards for Best Costume Design and Best Art Direction in the 1960s. Across thirteen galleries, his capacity for image making and style setting is displayed. In A Gallery for Beauties, and in his chronicling of the 'Bright Young Things' he captures the sirens of the time poised and posed. Their expressions run the gamut from sultry to sulky, and the same hauteur is captured in the portrait of Beaton in Room 2, The Essence of Artifice. Indeed, it is a refreshing change when we come across the photograph of a young Cecil smiling in his "Self-Portrait for Christmas card." The stylised society grande dames, theatrical divas and whimsical portraits of Beaton's friends seem to cry out for Evelyn Waugh to skewer them in works such as Decline and Fall. These pictures are followed up by portraits of literary personalities like the Sitwell siblings and Truman Capote, and there are also some wonderful depictions of Hollywood royalty like a youthful Marlon Brando and Greta Garbo. Then, there is the ostentatious depiction of Princess Margaret and an attempt to glamorise the Queen Mother. Inhabiting a world of aristocracy, movie stars and socialites, Beaton's presentation of them sought to create a mystique which eventually developed into the cult of celebrity that plays such an important role in our current value system. It is notable that the experience of World War II and the documentary photography which Beaton considered his most important work is only briefly presented in Room 11. It really is not his strongest work, and the show rightly concludes with the ultimate representation of the fantasy factory, Hollywood, and Beaton's receipt of the Academy awards for his work on the film My Fair Lady. It is not without a hint of irony that the movie for which Beaton received his awards is about the manipulation of a working-class girl's image in a way that allows her to enter the alluring society of glamour and surfaces that Beaton celebrates. In fact, the ongoing fascination with Beaton's work is largely due to that ability to create and make us share his fantasy about that world of celebrity. Although Beaton would probably deplore the lack of refinement and sophistication of his successors, this exhibition provides intriguing insight into one of the most important architects of a value system which now finds expression in TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.

Rated: ★★★★

Reviewed by J.C.
Image: Cecil Beaton, c.1935, Gelatin silver print, The Cecil Beaton Studio Archive, London

When, Where, Getting there:
Map & Location: St. Martin's Pl, London WC2H 0HE, UK

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