Life during wartime
John Wyver writes: One of the wall-size blow-ups in the NPG’s current Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World exhibition is one a well-dressed young woman, seen from behind, looking into the wartime ruins of Middle Temple (above). Nearby is a silver gelatin print of image, immaculately mounted and framed, and with an informative caption. The title is ‘Fashion is Indestructible’, with the descriptive addition ‘Elizabeth Cowell in suit by Digby Morton’, and the date is 1941, during the captial’s Blitz.
The presentation is typical of a show that, despite the disappointing corridor-like ground-floor galleries that stress the temporary quality of temporary exhibitions, is mounted with flair and even flamboyance. (Contrast this with the austere line-of-postage-stamps presentation of Tate Britain’s current Lee Miller display.) At the NPG there are gorgeous images, as both vintage prints and striking murals, that are frequently pleasing, often dazzling and always, but always, beautiful.
I’ll return to Elizabeth Cowell in a moment, but the inevitable question that your £23 ticket prompts is how to reconcile, if it’s possible, the aesthetic glory of these photographs with, yes, the class structure and capitalist exploitation that underpinned the social world, at least in the first rooms, that they depict. The early spaces drip with debutantes and are filled with the flutterings of social butterflies, to the extent that, when other Beaton ill deeds were also recognised Charlotte Jansen, reviewing for the Guardian, found impossible to enjoy:
Fantasy and frolics are fine but Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World is pat, reinforcing a very English idea of beauty and fashion that now seems constricted and parochial. It might be Beaton’s world, but I’m glad I don’t have to live in it.
I respect this, but I also acknowledge the fascination I felt throughout the show, and especially towards the end, when we escape to the different dream world of Hollywood. In between, along with some remarkable shots of the royal family, there is a small selection illustrating life during wartime. Including ‘Fashion is Indestructible’.
This is a remarkable image, finely composed with the woman’s silhouette against the central column and the off-balance arches suggesting antiquity askew as well as a sense of survival. The density of the destruction is striking, with daylight peeking through the left of the left-hand opening, suggesting perhaps a new dawn that will come one day.
But I am also captivated by the fact that this is an image of Elizabeth Cowell, now a driver for the Air Ministry, but between 1936 and 1939 one of the two female announcer-‘hostesses’, along with Jasmine Bligh, of the BBC’s high definition television service at Alexandra Palace.
In early 1936 there had been huge press interest in the choice of a young woman to partner handsome male announcer Leslie Mitchell as the new faces of television. The short-listed applicants were challenged to announce programmes in French, German and Italian, memorise a fifty-word telegram, record screen tests, and (astonishingly) show their legs to, among others, deputy director-general Vice Admiral Sir Charles Carpendale and director-general John Reith.
The choice fell on not one candidate but two: stage and film actor Jasmine Bligh, and Elizabeth Cowell, who had studied dress design and worked as a fashion model. Both women were in their early twenties and from well-to-do families, both were impeccably groomed with cut-glass accents, and both were taken on at the modest annual salary of £300.
Both were also given a meagre dress allowance of just £25 and as Jasmine Bligh later said, ‘the evening dresses wardrobe bought for us were appalling… grey worsted skirts, little polka-dot blouses, terrible organza evening dresses.’ And now, five years later, here was Elizabeth Cowell posed in a tailored ‘utility wear’ suit and snapped by Cecil Beaton.
For background on the re-booted blog, and my hopes for it, do take a look at yesterday’s post.
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