Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton

Cecil Beaton's striking image of his friend Stephen Tennant, a member of the aristocratic bohemian set known as the Bright Young Things, embodies the romantic ideal of the dandy. In 1927, both figures were at the height of their youth and vigor, negotiating their respective callings as photographer and writer. Taken at his London house, the photograph shows Tennant posed against a gleaming silvered background wearing a bespoke pinstriped double-breasted suit under a much-loved slick black mackintosh, an unusual ensemble significant for the idea of shelter offered by the outermost layer. Beaton's portrait shows Tennant as beautifully fragile and reliant on a deliberately crafted outer shell for protection from the crudeness of quotidian society, a world that he would soon shun as he became ever more reclusive, retreating to his family house in the English countryside.