A magnificent new exhibition at London's National Portrait Gallery is offering visitors an unprecedented glimpse into the fashionable world of Cecil Beaton, the legendary photographer, designer, and aesthete whose creative genius extended far beyond the camera lens into the realm of spectacular interior design. Curated by Robin Muir, a longtime contributor to Vogue magazine, the exhibition demonstrates how Beaton elevated fashion and portrait photography into high art while developing a distinctive aesthetic that brilliantly combined wit, sparkling frivolity, beauty, and elegance.
Beaton's extraordinary talent for creating magnificent mise-en-scènes encompassed photography, film, and breathtaking interior spaces. At his pre-war Wiltshire estate, Ashcombe, he slept in a red and gold carousel-inspired four-poster bed designed by Rex Whistler, surrounded by elaborate murals featuring circus figures in trompe-l'oeil niches created by himself, Whistler, Lord Berners (the inspiration for Nancy Mitford's character Lord Merlin), and other prominent artists of the era. His studio-sitting room, influenced by designer Syrie Maugham, featured dramatic curtains made from hessian sacking studded with an astounding 300,000 pearl buttons, while the bathroom was covered with ink outlines of guests' hands, allowing Beaton to compare Siegfried Sassoon's thumb with Sacheverell Sitwell's while relaxing in his bath.
Tragically, as historian Steven Brindle noted, "interior design is the most fugitive and fragile of art forms," and none of these original spaces survive today. The house suffered severe bomb damage during World War Two, causing the ceiling of the famous Circus Room to collapse, and by 1945, Beaton was forced to abandon the lease altogether. However, other aspects of his extraordinary creativity have fared significantly better, with his photographic work serving as windows into these lost worlds.
Beaton's approach to self-presentation began early in his life. "I don't want people to know me as I really am, but as I'm trying and pretending to be," he declared while still a child, establishing the foundation for a lifetime of studied artifice. As curator Robin Muir explains, "What Cecil wore, what he possessed, what friends he treasured, what he was surrounded by – all were paramount to his sense of self." His homes, whether owned, rented, or the numerous hotel suites he was given complete creative freedom to transform, became extensions of his carefully curated persona and occasionally served as backdrops for his iconic photographs.
The construction of Beaton's aesthetic identity began during his time at Cambridge University in 1922, when he arrived as a self-proclaimed "rabid aesthete" sporting a scarlet tie, gauntlet gloves, and flowing hair. This was a pivotal moment in design history, as lingering preferences for grandeur and revivalist styles were meeting the influence of Bloomsbury, Ballets Russes reveries, and the early stirrings of modernism. In London, he transformed his bedroom in his parents' house with peppermint pink walls overpainted with large fleur-de-lys in light caramel and pistachio, pale pink furniture, and a four-poster bed dressed in scarlet silk, stenciled in gold, and topped with a bright pink satin bedspread.
The room's bold color scheme extended to a peacock blue carpet, yellow window frames, and red-gloss oilcloth curtains. This striking interior was photographed for Eve magazine, reflecting the growing trend of considering interior decoration as both a branch of fashion and a means of self-expression. Beaton had become part of a young aristocratic and artistic circle renowned for decadence, hedonism, fancy dress parties, and wildly flamboyant gatherings that represented a complete departure from the previous decade's solemnity.
This influential group, dubbed "the Bright Young Things" by the Daily Mail, included luminaries such as Nancy Mitford, Stephen Tennant, the Sitwells, Evelyn Waugh, Rex Whistler, and Oliver Messel. Beaton documented their lives extensively, both in London and at their grand country estates. His first exhibition took place at the Cooling Galleries on New Bond Street in 1927 when he was just 23 years old. That same transformative year, he began working regularly for Vogue and established his own photography studio.
A 1929 trip to Hollywood to photograph film stars proved immediately captivating for Beaton. "Oh, the glamour and romance of owning a mock Russian palace! I would like to live in scenery; to have the doors painted to look like wood and to have the columns empty," he wrote enthusiastically in his diary. The renowned American interior designer Elsie de Wolfe was so impressed that she gave him an exhibition in her prestigious 5th Avenue showroom. With his star firmly ascending and desiring a country house of his own, Beaton took on the lease of Ashcombe in 1930 for fifty pounds a year plus extensive renovations, beginning his most ambitious decorating project to date.
Beaton explained that his primary design inspiration came from "the pink and silver churches of Bavaria, the exquisite decoration in the Nymphenburg Palace, and the luxurious frivolities of stucco cherubs frisking among garlands of flowers and arabesques." He confessed, "I thought only in terms of the Rococo." His shopping expeditions were legendary: a diary entry from Vienna notes that "antiquaries were ransacked for cheap baroque chairs and consoles." From Venice, he shipped home life-sized cupids, masses of silver and gilt candlesticks, silver bird-cages, glass witch-balls, engraved mirrors, shell pictures, and crumbling Italian consoles.
Beyond the circus-themed rooms, Ashcombe featured what writer Edith Olivier called the "Virgin Room," characterized by white glazed walls and a single four-poster bed dressed entirely in white satin. The Marie-Antoinette Room showcased walls covered in pink glazed tarlatan over pink linen, an ostrich-plumed four-poster dressed in pink satin, white carpeting, and furniture upholstered in pink and silver brocade. By 1939, Beaton's glamorous roster of photographic subjects had expanded to include major international artists and members of the British royal family.
After purchasing a London house and surviving the war years, Beaton's interior schemes demonstrated his growing sophistication and gravitas. Designer Nicky Haslam, who later rented the house with Beaton's décor still intact, described "black-velvet walls with silver-gilt leather borders, Alberto Giacometti bronze lamps, and Jean-Michel Frank's plaster lanterns hanging above angular banquettes and chairs covered in clashing pink and orange, sky-blue and turquoise tweeds and silks."
In 1947, Beaton acquired Reddish House as Ashcombe's replacement. However, when his stored Ashcombe furniture arrived, he took one dismissive look before labeling it "frivolous junk" and sending it all to London's Caledonian market. Architect Felix Harbord was employed to make structural changes, and the previous Rococo aesthetic was replaced with museum-quality French furniture and art, funded by Beaton's tremendous success as a costume and set designer for films, which earned him three Academy Awards and four Tony Awards.
House & Garden magazine described Reddish House's entrance hall in 1966 as displaying "a rare kind of grandeur in miniature, little seen in England at any time, but frequently to be found in the villas of the Italian Renaissance." The study-sitting room contained a writing table that had formerly belonged to Lady Juliet Duff and reputedly, before that, to Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, Napoleon's chief diplomat. A 1950 British Vogue cover shows American model Dorian Leigh standing before this historic piece, wearing a Victor Stiebel evening dress.
The house also featured a conservatory furnished with plants and wicker furniture, and a drawing room housing enormous Meissen porcelain jars, an inlaid Louis XVI desk with ormolu mounts, and an impressive art collection including works by Rex Whistler, Graham Sutherland, and Henri Le Sidaner. White and gold Corinthian-capped columns provided the satisfyingly film set-empty aesthetic that fulfilled Beaton's 1929 Hollywood-inspired dreams.
Decades later, the current exhibition proves the enduring appeal of Cecil Beaton's world, providing visual accompaniment to Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh's literary immortalization of the Bright Young Things era. Contemporary homes demonstrate our ongoing appreciation for fantasy, whimsy, Venetian grotto chairs, gilding, trompe-l'oeil effects, and similar decorative elements. Designer Luke Edward Hall is among those who have cited Beaton as inspiration, with Luke-designed Cecil-related merchandise available in the National Portrait Gallery shop. Other contemporary designers influenced by Beaton's aesthetic include Nicky Haslam and Beata Heuman, while Veere Grenney owns one of Beaton's original vases.
Perhaps the greatest lesson from Beaton's extraordinary legacy is the importance of embracing our design desires and harnessing interior decoration for creating havens of individualism, regardless of scale. "Cecil Beaton's Fashionable World" runs at The National Portrait Gallery through January 11, 2026, offering visitors a rare opportunity to explore the sophisticated visual world of one of the 20th century's most influential creative minds.
