Norman Parkinson: Revolutionary Fashion Photographer Who Defined a Century and Created the Supermodel Era

Norman Parkinson (1913-1990) was the Twentieth Century’s most celebrated fashion photographer. He pioneered epic storytelling in his images, taking portrait and fashion photography beyond the stiff formality of his predecessors and injecting an easy and casual elegance into the art. His photographs created the age of the supermodel and made him the photographer of choice for celebrities, artists, Presidents and Prime Ministers. He was a permanent fixture at historic moments photographing the British Royal Family, in private and public, as well as leading figures from the worlds of film, theatre, and music. Subjects include Audrey Hepburn, The Beatles, Twiggy, Grace Coddington, David Bowie, Iman, Jerry Hall and countless others. In a career that spanned seven decades, Parkinson dazzled the world and inspired his peers with sparkling inventiveness as a portrait and fashion photographer.

Parkinson worked for a wide range of publications, notably Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Town & Country and other international magazines, which brought him worldwide recognition. He reinvented himself and fashion photography throughout his career, from his ground-breaking, spontaneous images of the 1930s, through the war years and the Swinging Sixties to the exotic locations of the 1970s and 1980s.

By the end of his life he had become a household name, the recipient of a CBE, Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, and the subject of a large scale retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery, London. And yet fewer than 200 of his photographs have ever been seen or exhibited outside of their initial publication and his archive of more than 500,000 images provides a historic record, rich to explore. Norman Parkinson died whist on location in Singapore shooting for Town & Country in 1990.

Selected artworks from the shop

Young Velvets, Young Prices

From the roof of the Condé Nast building on Lexington Avenue. With a view of the Chrysler and Empire State buildings, New York, American Vogue, 15 October 1949.

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Beauty Is All Embracing

Vogue Beauty Book, No. 5, 1951.

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Connie Barr

Fashion model Connie Barr photographed on the back of a horse in Egypt for Queen magazine, February 1963.

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Frauke with Swan

Model Frauke Quast with Swan, 1984.

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Legroux Soeurs’ Hat

Model wearing a Legroux Soeurs’ Hat, one of the most sought after hat designers in Paris, from La Belle Epoque through the 1950s, 1952.

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Wenda and Ostriches

British fashion model Wenda Parkinson and ostriches, fashion by Spectator Sports. Photographed in South Africa for British Vogue, May 1951.

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Jerry Hall

American model Jerry Hall wearing a swimsuit by Martil and lipstick red sandals by Manolo Blahnik.
The plinth she is standing on was commissioned especially for the shoot and was inscribed “Jerry Hall, Vogue Magazine in the USSR, 1975”. British Vogue, January 1976.

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In the Blazing Sun at George Airfield

British fashion model Wenda Parkinson wearing a grey gabardine dress by Dorville at George Airfield in Nairobi, Kenya, South Africa, next to a Hermes aeroplane for British Vogue, May 1951.

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Fuchsia – for Autumn Brilliance!

Model Marie-Hélène Arnaud photographed for the cover of the August 1957 issue of British Vogue. Tweed suit designed by John Cavanagh for Berg of Mayfair, with matching beret by Simone Mirman. Arnaud poses in a Rover 10 S sprayed pink especially for the Vogue shoot.

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Audrey Hepburn

Belgian-born British actress Audrey Hepburn is photographed wearing a Givenchy afternoon cocktail dress from his Spring/Summer 1955 collection at ‘Villa Rolli’, a farmhouse in the Alban Hills of Cecchina, Italy, during the filming of King Vidor’s ‘War and Peace’, for Glamour magazine, June 23, 1955.

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Audrey Hepburn

British actress and model Audrey Hepburn photographed on location at ‘Villa Rolli’, a farmhouse in the Alban Hills, Cecchina, Italy, during the filming of King Vidor’s ‘War and Peace’, June 23, 1955.

Parkinson’s images were used in the September 1955 issue of British Vogue and as a cover story for the December 1955 edition of American fashion magazine Glamour.

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Cardin Hat Over Paris

American fashion model Nena von Schlebrügge wearing a damson velvet hat by Cardin.
Photographed in a helicopter flying over the Eiffel Tower. Queen, 31 August 1960.

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