Following the success of 2017’s 1920s Jazz Age: Fashion and
Photographs, we are thoroughly excited to announce our Winter 2018 exhibition:
Night and Day: 1930s Fashion and Photographs!
As a decade of design, the Thirties saw off the excess of
the Jazz Age and ushered in the utilitarianism of World War II. As the flapper
grew up, so too did her fashions. The new silhouettes of the 1930s played with
the hard edged chic seen in the Art Deco and Moderne styles, the unexpected as
seen in the surrealists and the sensuality of silver screen sirens.
The exhibition will explore the day and evening styles of
the decade, complemented by photographs of the stars who championed them. With
fashion as the lens, Night and Day: 1930s Fashion and Photographs will traverse
the great period of social change that was the 1930s.
Exhibition Dates: 12 October 2018 – 20 January 2019
Open Tuesdays to Saturdays, 11am–6pm
Thursdays until 8pm
Sundays, 11am–5pm
Last admission 45 minutes before closing
Closed Mondays
Published on 14 September 2018
Cecil Beaton and more star at the Fashion and Textile Museum
written by Diane Smyth
Merle Oberon wearing a pearl headdress designed by Cecil
Beaton and costume by Oliver Messel, photograph by Cecil Beaton, 1934, courtesy
of The Cecil Beaton Studio Archive, Sotheby’s copy
Night and Day: 1930s Fashion and Photographs features a
special display devoted to Beaton plus images by pioneering photographers such
as Paul Tanqueray, Madame Yevonde and Dorothy Wilding
Born in London’s prosperous Hampstead in 1904, Cecil Beaton
went to school with Evelyn Waugh (who bullied him), and Cyril Connolly (who
admired the beauty of his singing). Taught photography by his nanny, Beaton
found work assisting cutting-edge young photographer Paul Tanqueray, and became
famous for his portraits of the Bright Young Things – the decadent young
socialites of the 1920s and 30s, whose hedonistic lives were captured in
Waugh’s glittering, somewhat fatalistic novel Vile Bodies.
Beaton was taken on by Vogue in 1927 and moved to the US in
1929; he was a staff photographer for both Vogue and Vanity Fair until 1938,
when he was fired for inserting anti-Semitic phrases by the side of an
illustration of New York society in American Vogue. Returning to Britain, he
went on to take photographs for the British Ministry of Information during
World War Two and later rehabilitated his career, going on to photograph stars
such as Mick Jagger, Marilyn Monroe, and Andy Warhol. He also launched a
successful career in set and costume design in the 1950s and 60s.
But it’s his photographs from the 1930s that star in The
Fashion and Textile Museum, where a display titled Cecil Beaton: Thirty from
the 1930s – Fashion, Film, Fantasy will show off the work that helped define an
era. Curated by Terence Pepper, the display includes Beaton’s photograph of
heiress Daisy Fellowes, wearing a custom-made Cartier necklace, for example; it
also takes in Beaton’s icily glamorous portrait of Merle Oberon, who was born
in the-then Bombay and went on to star in films such as The Scarlet Pimpernel
and The Dark Angel.
The Beaton display is part of a much larger exhibition
titled Night and Day: 1930s Fashion & Photographs, which includes day and
evening fashions of this tumultuous decade, the advertising photographs and
magazines that helped popularise them, and iconic photographs of the stars who
championed them – shot by pioneering image-makers such as Beaton’s one-time
employer, Paul Tanqueray.
Night and Day: 1930s Fashion and Photographs and Cecil
Beaton: Thirty from the 30s – Fashion, Film and Fantasy are on show at The
Fashion and Textile Museum, 83 Bermondsey Street, London SE1 3XF from 12
October 2018 – 20 January 2019 www.ftmlondon.org
Night and Day: 1930s Fashion and Photographs - in pictures
Photograph: Rights Managed/Fashion and Textile Museum
A new show at the Textile and Fashion Museum in London
recalls classic garments from the 1930s. Meanwhile, Cecil Beaton: Thirty from
the 30s explores the photographer’s works on fashion, film and fantasy.
Both shows run from 12 October to 20 January 2019
Fri 12 Oct 2018 07.56 BST
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