The Semiotics of Fashion Photography: “Vogue 100 – A Century of Style” @ The Manchester Art Gallery

Elegant swimmers pose next to a swimming pool ladder in an iconic 1929 shot for Vogue by George Hoyningen-Huene; Marlene Dietrich cuts a striking silhouette in a photograph taken by Cecil Beaton in 1936, while Naomi Campbell could be impersonating a genie in a gold sequined and bright turquoise outfit by Chanel shot by Patrick Demarchelier in 1987.

These images may be borrowed from very different fashion decades, but they all look perfectly composed. There is indeed a secret behind them: they were taken by very talented photographers and they were commissioned by one of the most famous fashion magazines, Vogue.

These images are currently on display in the "Vogue 100: A Century of Style" exhibition (free; until 30 October 2016) at the Manchester Art Gallery. As a whole the event, originally organised by the National Portrait Gallery in London in collaboration with British Vogue as part of the magazine's centenary celebrations, includes around 280 modern and vintage prints, some of them rarely seen.

The images were carefully selected by Robin Muir for the National Portrait Gallery show: Muir went through almost 2,000 issues of the magazine, examining also American and French Vogues and turning to private and public archives and institutions from all over the world to find the rarest prints to include in the event.

So there is definitely a wide range of talent here with shots by iconic photographers such as Cecil Beaton, Edward Steichen, Lee Miller, Irving Penn, Charles Sheeler, Erwin Blumenfeld and Man Ray, displayed next to modern names like David Bailey, Corinne Day, Patrick Demarchelier, Nick Knight, Herb Ritts, Mario Testino, Tim Walker and Jeurgen Teller.

There are obviously fashion models in key designs that defined the look of a century, ranging from Christian Dior and Yves Saint Laurent to Alexander McQueen, but there are also artists like Henri Matisse, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and Damien Hirst, music legends like The Beatles, actors and actresses going from Marlene Dietrich and Fred Astaire to Gwyneth Paltrow, and modern icons à la David Beckham.

In these images it is clear that fashion pervades other disciplines like art, literature and music, throughout different decades, from the Roaring Twenties and the Flying Forties passing through the Swinging Sixties and arriving to the Naughty Noughties.

There are some genuine treasures in this event: an unpublished print of Vivien Leigh in the studio by Cecil Beaton and of Mona Williams at home with her husband Harrison; Hoppé's rare portrait of Viscountess Maidstone; Arnold Genthe's print of actress Maxine Elliott from 1917 and Baron Adolph de Meyer’s (the first professional fashion photographer) picture of Dolores, a house mannequin for the couturier Lucile, in a bridal veil looking into a crystal ball (1919); Edward Steichen's shot of Marion Morehouse, photographed in 1927 in Condé Nast's Park Avenue penthouse apartment, and George Hoyningen-Huene's photograph of Javanese-born model Toto Koopman, descending a staircase in a dress by Augustabernard.

Further highlights include a series of exceptional Second World War photographs by Vogue's official war correspondent, Lee Miller, and a rare version of Horst's famous 'corset' photograph from 1939, the inspiration for David Fincher's video for Madonna's "Vogue".

Fans of modern photographers will undoubtedly recognise shots such as Corinne Day's controversial Kate Moss underwear portrait, taken in 1993; Peter Lindbergh's famous 1990 cover shot that defined the supermodel era and Nick Knight's 2008 photograph of Lily Donaldson engulfed in a fuchsia pink Galliano number.

Manchester City Galleries – comprising the Gallery of Costume, Platt Hall and Manchester Art Gallery – have recently started collecting high-end fashion, and purchased pieces by Christian Dior, Pierre Cardin and Christian Lacroix, among the others to enrich their already existing collection.

Manchester Art Gallery decided therefore to include one of their newest acquisitions in this event, a rare and dramatic Schiaparelli midnight blue silk jersey ensemble also known as the "Rococo Scrollwork", since it features a jacket is strikingly trimmed with cream patent leather in "Rococo" scrolls.

A model of this costume was chosen by Wallis Simpson (Duchess of Windsor) in 1937 as part of her wedding trousseau and she was photographed wearing it the day before her marriage to the Duke of Windsor in May that year. The outfit is shown alongside a Cecil Beaton studio photograph of the Duchess that was published in Vogue.

Fashion and photography fans can also go through a special library display of 101 Vogue magazines, one per year of the magazine's history, and look at two of Josh Olins' new portraits of HRH The Duchess of Cambridge published in the centenary issue of Vogue, that unfortunately do not look as timeless as the most striking and elegant ones from decades ago.

Visitors who are into art should atcually try and study these portraits a bit in-depth to spot those photographers who, in the early days of the magazine, first worked as fashion illustrators: this exercise may help them indeed establishing links and connections between drawing, painting and photography.

Another interesting exercise is to compare the light, poses, body shapes and silhouettes from the early days with more modern images, clearly Photoshopped and quite often looking supremely beautiful, but also a bit cold.

The images on display in this event may not be able to provide us with a clear view on the future of fashion, but this industry is now characterised by extremely fast rhythms and we're definitely not Dolores staring into the proverbial crystal ball. Yet "Vogue 100" is an interesting way to look at the developments fashion and society went through decade after decade, while analysing at the same time the history of photography and of its visually intriguing codes.