National Portrait Gallery stages first major ‘King of Vogue’ exhibition

Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World runs at the National Portrait Gallery in London from 9th October until 11th January 2026 and will feature around 250 items including photographs, letters, sketches and costumes. 

Curated by photographic historian and contributing editor to Vogue, Robin Muir, the display will bring together portraits of the 20th century’s most iconic figures from Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando to Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Margaret, Francis Bacon and Salvador Dalí.

The first of its kind

Never before has the spotlight been shone on Cecil Beaton’s work in this way. The exhibition will explore his contribution to fashion, charting his meteoric rise and distinguished legacy.

“Beaton’s impact spans the worlds of fashion, photography and design.”

Robin Muir, Vogue contributing editor and exhibition curator

It will celebrate how his signature artistic style – a marriage of Edwardian stage glamour and the elegance of a new age – revitalised and revolutionised fashion photography.

Visitors will be taken on a journey through the London of the 1920s and 1930s, the era of the ‘Bright Young Things’ and Beaton’s first commissions for Vogue along with his travels to New York and Paris in the ‘Jazz Age’. 

Who was Cecil Beaton?

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 20th century British and American creative scenes. Elevating fashion and portrait photography to an art form, his photographs captured the beauty and glamour in the interwar and early post-war eras.

Cecil Beaton’s first royal photographs appeared in the late 1930s. He endured the hardship of war as a photographer of the home front and Western Desert campaign.

He first captured Queen Elizabeth II as a young princess in 1942 and went on to photograph the Royal Family many times over the years, his images central to shaping the monarchy’s public image throughout the 20th century. 

The exhibition will end 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.

Robin Muir, exhibition curator said: “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.”