The Easel | Art journalism

21st October 2025

Taking a dance through Cecil Beaton’s fashionable world

Amy de la Haye | Showstudio | 16th October 2025

Photographers can achieve fame because of their images or their glamour subjects. Beaton did both as well as becoming a celebrity himself. A “neo-romantic”, he conjured the glamour of English aristos and Hollywood stars, influencing fashion, photography and design – usually through the pages of Vogue. Beaton’s narrow view of fashion makes him somewhat anachronistic today with one writer admitting that “the artificiality of it all [is] wearying”. A piece about the giddy thrill of what goes with what is here.

14th October 2025

Inside the V&A’s Marie Antionette Style with curator Dr Sarah Grant

Staff | The Cultivist | 20th September 2025

A show about Marie Antionette’s legacy is probably more culture than art. Joining the French court aged 14, dress was one way for her to project “feminine power”. The few pieces of original fabric that survive, together with reconstructed dresses, signal that this was a life of performance. Muses one writer, what carries most impact is less the eye-popping jewellery than an appreciation of Antoinette’s very human dilemma. She was being set up, and we, “caught up in looking … [are unwittingly] a part of a mob.”

Britain decorative arts fashion France French revolution London Marier Antionette textiles

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