Vogue 100: A Century of Style

Direct from the National Portrait Gallery, London, Vogue 100: A Century of Style showcased the remarkable range of photography that has been commissioned by British Vogue since it was founded in 1916. The show brought together for the first time, over 280 prints from the Condé Nast archive and international collections to tell the story of one of the most influential fashion magazines in the world.

Featuring iconic images of many of the faces that have shaped the cultural landscape of the twentieth century, from Henri Matisse to Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and Damien Hirst; Marlene Dietrich to Gwyneth Paltrow; Lady Diana Cooper to Lady Diana Spencer; and Fred Astaire to David Beckham. Also featured in the exhibition are the fashion designers that defined the looks of the century, including Dior, Saint Laurent and McQueen.

Vintage prints from the early twentieth century, ground-breaking photographs from renowned fashion shoots, unpublished work and original magazines were also exhibited. Images by leading twentieth-century photographers, including Cecil Beaton, Lee Miller, Irving Penn and Snowdon were featured alongside more recent work by David Bailey, Corinne Day, Patrick Demarchelier, Nick Knight, Herb Ritts and Mario Testino.

Exhibition Curated by Robin Muir
Vogue 100: A Century of Style has been organised by the National Portrait Gallery in collaboration with British Vogue as part of the magazine’s centenary celebrations.

Further information

Decade by decade, the exhibition explores British Vogue’s unfaltering position at the forefront of new fashion, its dedication to the best in design, and its influence on the UK’s wider cultural stage during some of the most inventive and exciting periods in style, taste, the arts and society. Exquisite vintage prints from the early twentieth century, ground-breaking photographs from renowned fashion shoots, unpublished work and original magazines are brought together in this first retrospective survey of the celebrated magazine.

Vogue 100: A Century of Style includes work by many of the leading twentieth-century photographers, including Cecil Beaton, Lee Miller, Irving Penn and Snowdon. More recent work by celebrated photographers David Bailey, Corinne Day, Patrick Demarchelier, Nick Knight, Herb Ritts, Mario Testino, Tim Walker and Albert Watson are also included, reinforcing British Vogue’s keen editorial eye and dedication to commissioning world-class photography, as well as its role in nurturing new talent.

Highlights of the exhibition include the entire set of prints from Corinne Day’s controversial Kate Moss underwear shoot, taken in 1993 at the pinnacle of the ‘grunge’ trend; Peter Lindbergh’s famous 1990 cover shot that defined the supermodel era; a series of exceptional Second World War photographs by Vogue’s official war correspondent, Lee Miller; a rare version of Horst’s famous ‘corset’ photograph from 1939, which inspired the video for Madonna’s hit song Vogue; and vintage prints by the first professional fashion photographer, Baron de Meyer

Alexandra Shulman, Editor in Chief of British Vogue, says:

VOGUE 100: A CENTURY OF STYLE IS A LANDMARK EXHIBITION IN THE HISTORY OF MAGAZINE PHOTOGRAPHY.  I AM INCREDIBLY PROUD OF THIS COLLECTION OF EXCEPTIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY AND OF THE WHOLE CONCEPT OF THE EXHIBITION, WHICH SHOWS THE BREADTH AND DEPTH OF THE WORK COMMISSIONED BY THE MAGAZINE AS WELL AS VOGUE’S INVOLVEMENT IN THE CREATION OF THAT WORK. ANYBODY INTERESTED IN PHOTOGRAPHY, FASHION, FAME AND MAGAZINES WILL FIND THIS AN UNMISSABLE EXPERIENCE.

British Vogue was founded in 1916, when the First World War made transatlantic shipments of American Vogue impossible and its proprietor, Condé Nast, authorised a British edition. It was an immediate success, and over the following ten decades of uninterrupted publication, the magazine continued to mirror its times and put fashion in the context of the wider world – the austerity and optimism that followed the two world wars, the ‘Swinging London’ scene in the sixties, the radical seventies and the image-conscious eighties. In the magazine’s second century, it remains at the cutting edge of photography and design.

Large print guide

All of the panel and work label texts are available to download in a large print format here.