Unseen Vogue

The Design Museum presented a treasure-trove of such memorabilia in a new exhibition, entitled Unseen Vogue – The Secret History of Fashion Photography. From Cecil Beaton, Horst and Lee Miller, Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin, to David Bailey and Bruce Weber, the exhibition showcases works by the very best photographers, which were commissioned by Vogue but never published.

Creative Director Robin Derrick and former Picture Editor, Robin Muir – co-authors of the complimentary book – made the final selection from an archive of more than half a million pictures.

Among the previously unseen masterpieces are Beaton’s 1936 portraits of Marlene Dietrich, David Bailey’s provocative 1974 shoot with his future wife Marie Helvin, and lost images from Nick Knight’s ongoing collaboration with Kate Moss. Modern-day lens maestros Corinne Day, Juergen Teller and Mario Testino also feature heavily.

While many of the evocative images were deemed too technically or stylistically inventive to appear in Vogue at the time, others were left out of famous shoots or simply abandoned because the photographer – or their subject – fell out with past Vogue editors.