“If you wish to attempt any definition of me as a photographer, you might say that I am a photographer of the fantastic.” – Cecil Beaton   Audrey Hepburn in costume for My Fair Lady, 1963 – by Cecil Beaton Triple Oscar-winning costumer designer and fashion photographer Sir Cecil Beaton (1904 – 1980) launched his career as a society photographer in 1926 with an exhibition in London that secured him a contract with Vogue magazine, where he worked for the next 30 years, . The man for whom fashion was “‘the triumph of the ephemeral” assumed the title ‘King of Vogue’. His blend of stagey Edwardian portraiture, European surrealism and American modernism, fed his essentially English sensibility. In 1937 the once middle-class suburban schoolboy became court photographer to theBritish Royal Family and turned his flattering gaze to styling the extravagant world of the Bright Young Things. He worked as a successful set and costume designer for stage and film productions, most notably My Fair Lady (1956) and Gigi (1958).   The Second Age of Beauty is Glamour (suit by Hartnell), 1946 Painters’ Print (dresses by Eta Hentz, Nettie Rosenstein and Sophie of Saks Fifth Avenue), 1947 ‘Best Invitation of the Season’, Nina de Voe in Ballgown by Balmain, 1951 The Value of Unclutter (dress by Henry Rosenfeld), 1947 “I don’t want people to know me as I really am. “but as I am trying and pretending to be.” – Cecil Beaton   Worldly Colour (Charles James evening dresses), 1948 Princess Emeline de Broglie, 1928 Princess Natalia Pavlovna Paley, 1935. Beaton: “Her eyes are star bright and her laughter tinkles like a mountain stream over pebbles”’ In his novel Vile Bodies (1930), English writer Evelyn Waugh satirised these Bright Young Things: “Miss Mouse (in a very enterprising frock by Chéruit) sat on a chair with her eyes popping out of her head… She never could get used to so much excitement, never… It was too thrilling to see all that dull money her father had amassed, metamorphosed in this way into so much glitter and noise and so many bored young faces.”   Beaton as King Cnut. Audrey Hepburn in costume for My Fair Lady, 1963 Fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli, 1935 Gwili Andre, 1932 Elizabeth Taylor at the Dorchester Hotel, London, 1955 Marilyn Monroe, Venus Unmasked at the Ambassador Hotel, New York, 1956 Cecil Beaton working on My Fair Lady, 1963 Gary Cooper, 1929 Salvador and Gala Dalí, 1936 Cecil Beaton, c.1935 Self-portrait as King Cnut, circa 1915, London Aircraft Recognition Room 1941 Lucian Freud, 1948 Francis Bacon, 1951 See more at Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World at the National Portrait Gallery from 9 October until 11 January. The post Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World: The King of Vogue’s Glittering Portraits appeared first on Flashbak.