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On Friday evening I went to see the Vogue 100 exhibition 📷 at the National Portrait Gallery 🎨 which is hugely worth it. I reckon it will appeal to any avid fashion lover (Editor of Vogue wannabe ✏️👗) - there was just so much joy - fashion photography 📷👗 blown up to huge proportions, by everyone 📷 and of everyone 💃, and covers and copies of Vogue galore 📚📚.Going in the evening was a very good choice, we had a couple of hours ⏰ to look at everything 👌.The exhibition is ordered backwards - they start you off in the 2000s with nice images of everyone from Keira Knightly to Prince Charles at High Grove 🐥, both by Mario Testino and a superb image of Helena Bonham Carter in Charlie's Glass Elevator 🍸by Tim Walker. There are some wonderful glitzy images in bizarre settings by Javier Valhonrat - Private Dancer 💃, and strangely normal images by Alastair Mcllellan - I liked Lara Stone in 'Brighton Rock' 🍭.And then they take you back, era by era so in the 90s you pass Kate Moss by Corrine Day 🚬(when they first extracted her from Croydon), a candid photo of Beckhams ⚽️🎤 lying on the floor of a hotel corridor with their matching pixie hair dos, a lovely pic of Winona Ryder in a tutu 👯 by Herb Ritts from when she was living with Johnny Depp, and giant blow up of image called 'Rebekka' of a grey Mikimoto pearl between someones pearly white teeth 👄.The 80s is all about Lacroix (darling) 👠 and Margaret Thatcher 📺 turns up; and the 70s is very nice - we liked Norman Parkinson's 'Space between the Sea and the Sun' 👒🚬 and Helmut Newton somehow gets Grace Coddington into a swimming pool 🏊.60s is Jean Shrimpton 👩 and don't miss the blow up of Cecil Beaton's image of Daivd Hockney painting with Maudie James in a Leslie Poole dress 👫🎨👗.After that Cecil Beaton takes over, there are some surreal images including women in beautiful gowns standing among the ruins of a post second world war London 💣👗. And there is some wonderful Vogue history - for instance Lee Miller, one of the first Vogue models 💃went on to become a war correspondent during the First World War ✏️🎥📻.There are so many super images 🎠, so definitely give yourself much time ⌚️. And don't miss the 'Planning Room' which is a nice big powerpoint 🎥 showing you how many of Vogue's final edits came into being. All the photos 📷taken on a shoot are displayed one after another, until they show you the final edit, the images actually chosen for the magazine, in situ - the girl in the original shots of the Vogue cover by Claude Virgin looks distinctly hungover 🍷😳...The last room is the very best, on display is a copy of Vogue from every year since the beginning 📚. And there was so much fantastic advice for ladies of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s - we particularly enjoyed the 'Primer of Art' 🎨 from 1938 -'..A lady of quality should be able to walk into any drawing room, to look at the picture over the mantlepiece and to exclaim 'oh what a charming Picasso of the early blue period'. If she guesses right, she is a gentleman and a scholar. If she is wrong her cultural standing is usually sadly impaired..'(why I studied Art History obviously 😉😇)Some fun advice on how to recognise Dali 'when in a cheerful mood..he might decorate a tumour with roses' 🌹And articles on what to wear to costume parties were superb -Chelsea Arts Ball in 1936 'she was wearing a Fascist black shirt and nothing but a pair of tights' 🙊And in 1927 'go in pyjamas as a suburban parsons dashing daughter' - ⛪️💃It was SO fun. Oh and in 1944 they suggested some excellent skirts to wear whilst riding your bicycle 👗🚴... a far far better suggestion than all this terrible lycra. They just did it so much better in the 1940s, I mean Dior's first collection in 1947 did 'retrieve the general situation' - so there we go.It rarely says who wrote the article, only who the photographer is, which is rather a shame. Sadly NO 📷❌ photos (they are watching very closely) and the copies of Vogue are all shut away in glass cases, so no leisurely flicking rather understandably. I do wonder how you get access to the Vogue archives..There is lots to see, the thing about Vogue is, they just do and always have done, exactly what they want. So everyone is there - Hugh Grant, Jerry Hall, Boris Johnson (actually) and all the obvious beautiful lithe human beings that have ever been in existence, wearing incredible concoctions in superbly fantastical settings - I slightly wish I lived inside Vogue 👸🐩🏰.The entrance is really fun too, with Vogue covers organised by colour 🍎🍓❤️ - I am a big fan or colour co-ordination. And they have been clever in the gift shop - collaborating with everyone from Charlottle Tilbury makeup 💄 to Lulu Guiness clutches 👛to Charbonnel & Walker chocolates 🍫, oh and someone has made Vogue biscuits 🍪 too. I think my favourite though are Roos Productions 'make-your-own' barbie outfit....You can make her a nice Yves Saint Laurent dress, or a Burberry outfit.. there are many choices ..... 🙋💁👰So after SO MUCH FASHION FUN we had some burgers 🍔🍔 in Meat Market in Covent Garden which we thoroughly enjoyed.I disappeared to the countryside 🌳🌿 for the rest of the weekend, took some lovely photos of camellias 🌺, ate many yummy things and drank some cider 🍺 made in Sussex (everyone is at it at the moment - vines 🌿growing all over Sussex and Kent). This cider is from Kingscote and comes in a sophisticated bottle 🍶 - it's good, nice with Sunday lunch 😊🍺.Today I am 100% not appreciating the cold ❄️❄️❄️and am contemplating emigrating, like seriously, it is so unnecessarily cold everywhere 😨❄️.Alice xxx
