July 11, 2026–January 10, 2027

Photographer, fashion illustrator, Oscar-winning costume designer, social caricaturist, and writer Cecil Beaton (1904–1980) was an extraordinary force in the twentieth-century British and American creative scenes. This is the first exhibition dedicated to Beaton’s fashion and portrait photography, which he elevated into an art form.  

This exhibition showcases Beaton at his most triumphant – from shaping the public image of the “Bright Young Things” (a group of exuberant and artistically inclined socialites in 1920s London) to fashion photography for Vogue and other magazines, his vital role as photographer in World War II, and his reinvention of royal portraiture for the modern age, to award-winning costume and set designs for My Fair Lady on stage and screen. Via London, Paris, New York, and Hollywood, his era-defining photographs captured beauty, glamour, and star power in the interwar and early post-war eras.

Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World features portraits of some of the twentieth century’s most iconic and glamorous figures, including Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, and Marlon Brando; Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret; as well as stars of the artistic and literary scenes, Truman Capote, Francis Bacon, and Salvador Dalí.

This exhibition is organized by The National Portrait Gallery, London, and presented by The San Diego Museum of Art.

Funding for this exhibition is provided by the Bern Schwartz Family Fund.

Featured at top right: Cecil Beaton, The Second Age of Beauty is Glamour, Checked Suit by Norman Hartnell (detail), 1947. Modern print from original colour transparency. © Condé Nast Archive UK.