100 years of British Vogue

 

The sight of Kate Moss in her knickers is the first thing that greets visitors to the Vogue 100 show, which opened this week at the National Portrait Gallery in London, marking the centenary of the feted fashion magazine.

The picture of Moss, shot in 2008 by Mario Testino, is simultaneously beautiful and grotesque. The colours are those of a Renaissance painting, sullied only by the sleazy backroom atmosphere. Moss’s tanned, flawless legs, invitingly open, end in a rough pair of workboots. The elegance and femininity of the skirt’s pink cloud of tulle clashes with her military-style jacket.

As the present gives way to the past, not only do the tone and quality of the Vogue pictures change, with digital reverting to film and old-fashioned lighting replacing Photoshop, so do style and beauty take the centre stage, casting out modern-day cynicism and arrogance

So much of modern fashion despises the wearer. Caught up in an endless search for newness, it retreats into itself, replacing creativity with pretentiousness, artistry with attitude

 Clothes, style, fashion, these things are not frivolities. They are a source of dignity, humanity and sanity

 

 

It becomes a matter of historical record, a social monitor, a timeline not only of our changing tastes in clothing, but also — and far more compellingly — of our changing mores and attitudes