The Back of Her Head: The Fashionable Wartime Ruins of Cecil Beaton

Abstract

What is she looking at? The woman in the black-and-white photograph (plate 1) pauses, as if in mid-step. Her head is turned away from us as she faces the devastation: smashed wooden beams, exposed brickwork, and lying before her, a piece of fallen masonry. She isn't caught in motion, but has come to a halt, right leg slightly lifted in indecision. She has a briefcase under her arm and black gloves on. Her suit is smartly cut, shoulders emphasized. The dark mass of the back of her head in the centre of the image fails to resolve into revelation, refusing to cue the viewer as to how to react to the destruction, leaving us to ponder her thoughts. It presents an aporia for the viewer to fall into.The photograph in its original context offers a powerful interpretative setting: published in the September 1941 issue of British Vogue, the image is placed above bold italics, inscribed with the legend Fashion is indestructible. In smaller type, beneath the photograph, is written: 'Her poise unshaken, she reads about the other fire of London in which the earlier Temple was destroyed.' The viewer is guided towards what the woman is experiencing, taking stock of the ruined Middle Temple, one of the Inns of Court in central London. Besides the caption are the credits: 'Digby Morton suit; Cecil Beaton photograph'. The model, Elizabeth Cowell, is left unidentified, as was frequently the case with fashion images in Vogue. 1 It is not an accidental photograph, but an image of couture.Beaton's photograph shows the damage which the Temple had endured after being bombed on Saturday 10 May 1941 (plate 2), the barristers' chambers above Christopher Wren's cloisters devastated. Cowell stands in Church Court, the unseen Temple Church just to her right, while she looks across the rubble to Pump Court on the other side. Wren had designed the cloisters after the 1679 fire, allowing one to walk between Middle Temple Lane and King's Bench Walk, the two main north-south thoroughfares in the Temple. 2 The claim that Fashion is indestructible positions this as a propaganda image, arguing that high fashion -as an idea and an ideal -can survive the Blitz, even when London is nightly being destroyed. We might be tempted to read it as embodying the 'keep calm and carry on' ethos, yet the clashing registers, where wartime destruction is used to advertise clothing, seem grossly inappropriate. Is there a hint of 'trauma tourism' at play here; the model as Beaton's avatar, seeking out the most aesthetic examples of bomb damage? 3 At first glance, this is a propaganda image; at second glance, a bad taste joke.Yet it is a more complex image than its ideological surface implies. It invokes intersecting temporalities (of fashion, people, and buildings). As I argue below, the