“Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.”
Words to live by! Indeed, Cecil Beaton was certainly no "slave of the ordinary". From the Sitwells to the Jaggers, from Hollywood royalty to the late HM the Queen, from Garbo to Monroe, from Coward to Capote, from Lord Mountbatten to Tallulah Bankhead, he knew (and photographed) them all.
Cecil Beaton's first love, of course, was... Cecil Beaton - and no doubt he would have loved the fact that the first major exhibition mounted by the National Portrait Gallery in the heart of London since re-opening after a major refurb was a tribute to him, his work, and his life! And so it was that Hils, Crog, John-John, Bence, Madam Arcati and I went to see it today.
It was delightful - everything from his "Bright Young Things" era, through Vogue fashion shoots, the War, Hollywood and semi-respectable old age was on show. Here's a mere soupçon...
I was drooling over the sheer camp decadence and magnificence of it all...
Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World is on at the National Portrait Gallery until 11th January 2026 - catch it if you can!
[clcik any pic to embiggen]
