The National Portrait Gallery Celebrates Vogue

To mark the centenary year of British Vogue in 2016, a major exhibition will open at the National Portrait Gallery, featuring fashion, beauty and portrait photography from the last 100 years.Vogue 100: A Century of Style, sponsored by Leon Max, will open on February 11 and run until May 22, during which time visitors will be able to see for the first time over 280 prints from the Condé Nast archive.

"I am incredibly proud of this collection of exceptional photography and of the whole concept of the exhibition, which shows the breadth and depth of the work commissioned by the magazine as well as Vogue's involvement in the creation of that work," said Vogue editor in chief Alexandra Shulman this morning. "The National Portrait Gallery is a wonderful place for this show, which mixes portraiture and contemporaneous artistic style in the same way as much of the Gallery's own collection.Anybody interested in photography, fashion, fame and magazines will find this an unmissable experience."

The work of world-class photographers - including Cecil Beaton, Lee Miller, Irving Penn, Snowdon, David Bailey, Corinne Day, Patrick Demarchelier, Nick Knight, Herb Ritts, Mario Testino, Tim Walker and Albert Watson - will feature, as will the fashion designers that defined the looks of the century, including Dior, Saint Laurent and Alexander McQueen.

"British Vogue has played a pivotal role in the development of photographic portraiture over the past century, commissioning leading photographers and designers to produce some of the most memorable and influential images in the history of fashion," said Dr Nicholas Cullinan, director of the gallery. "We are extremely grateful to Alexandra Shulman and her team for giving us unprecedented access to the treasures of the Condé Nast archive and for allowing us to present a panoramic view of this hugely important British institution on a scale that has never been seen before."

"I have always had an interest in art and fashion so it was a natural fit for Leon Max to support Vogue 100: A Century of Style, an exhibition celebrating two institutions: Vogue and the National Portrait Gallery," Leon Max added.

Curated by Robin Muir, the exhibition will explore, decade by decade, Vogue's unfaltering position at the forefront of new fashion, its dedication to the best in design, and its influence on the UK's wider cultural stage during some of the most inventive and exciting periods in style, taste, the arts and society.