In more than 2,000 issues, British Vogue magazine has acted as a cultural barometer, putting fashion in the context of the larger world in which we live - how we dress, how we entertain, what we eat, listen to, watch, who leads us, excites us and inspires us. The century's most talented photographers, illustrators and artists have contributed to it. In Lee Miller it had, unexpectedly, its own war photographer; in Norman Parkinson, Cecil Beaton, David Bailey, Snowdon and Mario Testino the greatest portrait and fashion photographers of their generation; and in Beaton and Irving Penn two giants of twentieth-century photography.
Decade by decade, Vogue 100: A Century of Style celebrates the greatest moments in fashion, beauty and portrait photography. Illustrated throughout with well-known images, as well as the less familiar and recently rediscovered, the book focuses on the faces that shaped the cultural landscape: from Matisse to Bacon, Freud and Hirst, from Dietrich to Paltrow, from Fred Astaire to David Beckham, from Lady Diana Cooper to Lady Diana Spencer. It features the fashion designers who defined the century - Dior, Galliano, Balenciaga, Saint Laurent, McQueen - and explores more broadly the changing form of the twentieth-century woman.