Cecil Beaton, King of Vogue

At the National Portrait Gallery in London until 11 January 2026 a major retrospective on the man who “invented the selfie”. The exhibition, curated by Robin Muir, features over 250 items including photographs; sketches; videos; covers; illustrations; by one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century who redefined the aesthetics of fashion and portraiture with his refined and theatrical images. He immortalised icons such as Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Coco Chanel Fred and Adele Astaire and, the British royal family, whose public image he portrayed was not only sophisticated but at times even ironic, shaping the collective imagination of elegance through his work using the canons of staging.

National Portrait Gallery

It was 1968. the year the London institution dedicated a retrospective to him; the first granted to a living photographer. After 56 years, the exhibition in the gallery’s London premises focuses on Beaton’s contribution to the evolution of fashion photography. Beaton was an accomplished visual artist and had a peculiar predilection for the performing arts. A forerunner of his time, he was the most photographed photographer in history and loved to self portray himself, especially with his first camera, a Kodak Folding A3, with which he took all the shots for his first exhibition in 1927. A character who sublimated artifice and gender fluidity. His outfits were often en travesti: “I tried to make my work fantastic, extravagant and fun. I design the backgrounds and outfits myself, and I personally direct the poses of my subjects, this is what elevates photography beyond the ordinary”.

The craft of the set and costume designer

Yet despite being Britain’s most famous artist, Beaton thought of himself more as a theatrical set and costume designer, a career for which he reaped equal glory with the adaptation of Pygmalion: My Fair Lady, first in the theatre with Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison, and then with Audrey Hepburn in the film adaptation that won him an Oscar. It is impossible to forget Gigi, another Vincente Minnelli masterpiece with Leslie Caron, for which he designed the sets and costumes.

In Arcadia

The exhibition also dwells on the private sphere and his love at first sight for Ashcombe House, the mansion in which he received and which became a privileged stage for his experiments. Here he immortalised friends such as Truman Capote, Lucian Freud, and his family, sisters Nancy and Barbara and his nieces and nephews, creating almost a visual alphabet that he transported to the covers and illustrations of Vogue.

Fashion Is Indestructible

During the Second World War, Beaton contributed his lens to raising awareness in Anglo-Saxon and international public opinion through portraits that remain indelible in the history of documentary photography. Not only portraits of high-ranking officers and soldiers, but the Life cover of Eileen Dunne, a three-year-old girl wounded by shrapnel, and images of the bombed ruins of the City of London and other symbols of the city, which became the protagonists of a very famous Vogue fashion shoot amidst the rubble and emblematic of a spirit of rebirth and resistance that pervaded the United Kingdom and beyond.