The Arts Society - The Golden Age of Fashion Illustration

When Sketches Outdressed Photographs

Before fashion photography took over magazine covers, it was the hand-drawn plate that carried the glamour, and for three decades those drawings were treated as serious art in their own right. Connie Gray, who leads the Drawing on Style exhibitions at Gray M.C.A Gallery and has worked on shows from Kensington Palace's Crown to Couture to the Society of Illustrators in New York, unpicks how that happened.

She follows three artists who built the look from scratch: Georges Lepape, who folded Art Nouveau into Paris fashion plates in the 1900s; Erté, the self-styled Godfather of Deco, whose Harper's Bazaar covers turned opulence into pure geometry through the 1920s and 30s; and the American Carl Erickson, who brought social realism to fashion drawing and set a standard illustrators still measure themselves against.

It's a talk for anyone who's ever flicked past a vintage Vogue cover and wondered who actually drew it, and why it still looks so sharp a century later.

Free for members, donation entry for non-members.

Wednesday 23 September 2026 · Baptist Church, Chesterton Lane, Cirencester, Gloucestershire GL7 1YE · Doors 6:30pm