The Fashion Stylist:
While I was rummaging around in my closet and finding the Cilla Black LP, I also found an old fashion magazine (a really, really old fashion magazine!) from The Sixties. The magazine pages seemed frozen in time, and yet, as modern as a copy of this month’s Vogue. It was full of “Swinging London.” Faces of women with names like Tania Mallet, Jean Shrimpton, Pattie Boyd, and Twiggy looked back at me. The fashions were created by people with names like Mary Quant, Pierre Balmain, Ungaro, and Yves Saint Laurent. And the black and white images were caught by the camera lenses of talented photographers with names like David Bailey, Terence Donovan, Patrick Lichfield, and -- my favorite -- John French.

John French was one of London’s top fashion photographers of the 1950s and 1960s, an era when those who wore and photographed clothing for a living could become famous overnight. The models he worked with included the most famous of the time, many were debutantes who went on to become well-known society figures. French was hugely influential, in particular for his use of natural light and bringing fashion photography into the mainstream mass media. He persuaded the art editors of the national press to use his flawlessly lit images of top models and his work appeared in virtually every newspaper and magazine.

After his death in 1966, the John French archive was presented to the Victoria and Albert Museum, the worlds greatest museum of decorative arts and design, and his work has been celebrated as part of a major exhibition “The Golden Age of Couture.” John French in one word: timeless.